Erase And Install On New Hard Drive

MacMessiah

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I'm having problems installing Mac OS 10.3.5 on a new Hard Drive I purchased.

I get this message:

There were errors installing the software.

How can this be its brand new Hard Drive, a Brand New Panther CD Install CDs.

I'm using a Power-Mac G3 Blue, 300MHz.
 
Have you tried formating the drive with Disk Utility?
After the Insataller window appears, go up to the Utility Menu to Disk Utility.

You may have to select Languages in the Installer window first.

Format the disk as Extended, then try installing.
 
I would try and download and install it yourself anyways. If it's actually upgraded, it will let you know. It never hurts to try.
 
MacMessiah said:
How can this be its brand new Hard Drive, a Brand New Panther CD Install CDs.
Marginal or bad RAM can cause that as can any attached USB and Firewire devices (including hubs), third party PCI cards.
 
The machine has nothing new attached, the same way it came out the box 6 years ago.

The original Hard Drive has Mac OS X as well, but it wasn't allowing me to upgrade it to 10.3.9 to resolve a Video Driver issue.
 
MacMessiah said:
The machine has nothing new attached, the same way it came out the box 6 years ago.

The original Hard Drive has Mac OS X as well, but it wasn't allowing me to upgrade it to 10.3.9 to resolve a Video Driver issue.
RAM does age and as it ages the timing etc begins to drift. Eventually it can drift far enough that it becomes marginal or even out of spec. This happens even with the Apple branded RAM that comes in Macs from the factory. I have had third party DIMMs that were dead or unusable on arrival. But, the only DIMM that has ever failed me in service was an Apple branded DIMM that was installed by Apple at the factory. So your problem may be caused by a RAM problem even though "The machine has nothing new attached, the same way it came out the box 6 years ago."

The fact you were unable to update your other drive and that you were having a video problem lends credence to my suspicion your problem may be RAM related. If you can still boot from one of your drives, get the freeware application Rember (that is spelled correctly) and set it to run at least four times. Eight is better but that would almost certainly take overnight or longer to run. Three or four passes is the minimum for an accurate test. It will run faster if you allow it to shut down all applications including the Finder and do not use your Mac for any other purpose while the test is running.
 
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