Snow leopard won't start (spinning wheel)

mbahundra

Registered
I've just bought a new MacBook Pro, it came last week (or perhaps the week before) with 10.5.7 and I immediately bought the upgrade to 10.6. It seemed a little buggy, but nothing I could put my finger on, but this morning I couldn't start - just the apple and spinning wheel. The only thing I've done since my last restart is install software for mobile broadband usb.

I can't reinstall my system software because it's "old" (ie 10.5.7 and I've installed 10.6).

What's wrong and how do I fix it?

Thx

M.
 
I should probably add that I can't start 10.6 in safe mode (a progress bar appears at the bottom of the screen, fills, then disappears, leaving the wheel to spin).

I have, however, been able to reinstall 10.5.7 on a partition that I intended for Bootcamp, and it starts fine.
 
Boot with your original OS X install disk and when the disk's install almost starts look around in the menu items for "Disk Utility". Use that to fix you hard disk because it most likely has some hard disk error and booting from a DVD with let you "repair" that drive to see if that helps.
 
Try a new user account, then if that doesn't help (and it just might, since that partition works) resetting the PRAM and the Power Manager.

You can't do an Archive and Install on 10.5.7? I thought so.

If you've got a working partition, I would try re-partitioning into one and try Archive and Install on the newer OS.
 
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