OS upgrade issue

T

trekow

Registered
I recently upgraded my 1st gen Macbook pro from Tiger to Snow Leopard. I made sure I had what was required, 1gb of ram, plenty of space on the hard drive. I used the comp 4-5 times after the install. I backed everything up through Time Machine on an external drive. I ran Drive Genius's defrag software. It stalled, said there was an error. I rebooted my comp and now it just loads to a screen with a large power button icon and a notice to restart the machine in 4/5 different languages.

I have restarted about 10 times now with no progress. Ive tried booting with the OS disc in the drive (like you can on a pc) but it gives me the same thing.

How can I get past this?

I am replacing my HD in the Macbook as well, as it is making a lot of noise and need to know if once thats put in how do I put the OS on that if it is an unformatted drive (bare bones)
 
What you've experienced is a kernel panic. Was the Snow Leopard disc a retail version, or was it from another Mac?
 
Out of curiousity, what kind of noises is the hard drive making? Seems to me as though the hard drive is starting to fail on you and did so during the process of the upgrade. No amount of defragging is going to resolve a failing hard drive. The good thing is that you have your data already backed up, so once you have the new hard drive installed along with a fresh installation of Snow Leopard, you should be able to bring back all your data via Time Machine.
 
It sounds like the motor in the drive is dying it's like a loud revving sound.

I ordered a new bare bones drive. I'm installing it myself. What I'm wondering is once that's in do I just turn the comp on and put the snow leopard disc in and it will go from there? I've built pc's but have no clue how to do this with a mac
 
Yep, turn it on, pop in the DVD, and it should automatically boot from the DVD. You can help it along by holding the 'c' key as the computer boots. Then, you would simply follow the on-screen instructions to install a fresh copy of OS X.

If I also may offer a suggestion: ditch the defragmenting software. Mac OS X does its own, internal and transparent defragmenting of certain files, and running another defragmenter on top of that would be working against the grain (basically, undoing the optimizations that OS X is making).

While it may not hurt, it definitely does not help. Mac OS X is not Windows -- it is built different, runs different, and has a much different underlying architecture. UNIX (what Mac OS X's underpinnings are) can run for decades without needing a defragmentation operation, if at all. Defragmenting a drive like that will not yield any kind of benefit, and any perceived speed increases are that and only that: perceived, and not real.

Maintaining Mac OS X is different than maintaining Windows: while in Windows, it's best to be very proactive with scheduled defragmenting sessions, system "optimizers" and registry "cleaners," that kind of mentality under OS X is only going to cause problems. Mac OS X takes care of itself -- just make sure you keep adequate free space on the drive and have plenty of RAM in your system and you can keep your Mac running 24/7 for months without the need for a restart or any kind of maintenance.

There are special cases where a non-boot drive in a Macintosh may benefit from defragmenting -- if you don't already know what these special cases are, then you definitely do not need to defragment. Mac OS X does that itself -- automatically and transparently to the end user. All defragmenting an OS X drive does is put additional wear and tear on the drive for absolutely no benefit.
 
To reiterate what an actual Guru--ElDiabloConCaca--wrote: there is a great deal of controversy regarding defragmenting HD with OS X--particularly the later versions. Growing up on older OS and the need to defragment, I found giving up that urge difficult. I researched it and the basic actual problem is as described in another thread where a person may simply not have enough of a free block for something "Big." I have heard some other arguments regarding the volume, but basically all I have found is minor compared to the larger issues: RAM, processor, and free space on a HD.

I have stumbled over a lot of problems defragmentation programs. The bottom line is you are moving things around your HD. If something interrupts this process you have potentially frelled your volume and rendered your OS useless. This is why they always tell you to back up before defragmentation.

The good news is you backed everything up. While you wait for you new HD, you can simply erase and install the OS then simply connect your computer to your backup. You will be asked after installation if you wish to transfer a previous account. It will do this. Very handy.

You can do the same thing when you get your new HD.

--J.D.
 
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