Tiger Install Prob On G4

richard48

Registered
Hi,

I have a G4 Dual 500 with 2 internal hard-drives, 1.12gig RAM, 2 PCI cards (an Audiowerk soundcard, and a TV card). I am running OS 9 on one drive, os X on the other.

I was running 10.3.9 perfectly on the slave drive. My problems started when I tried to upgrade to 10.4 on this drive. The installation initially failed for an unknown reason. I received the, 'There was an error, please restart and try installing again' message (or something similar). I did so and the install seemed to work the 2nd time round. When the machine re-booted the Mac doesn't boot up. It gets as far as the grey screen with the spinning timer and stays there. There is a 'no entry' symbol in grey on the screen also. I think that is X's version of the missing folder icon?

I have tried taking all 3rd party items out of the machine, including RAM out and re-booting, still no joy. I have also tried changing the OSX drive to the master and putting the other drive to slave, this doesn't change anything. I cannot do a clean install as I don't have another drive to back-up my work etc. I have been warned not to try installing over the top of the OS so I haven't tried installing again, as yet. Can you suggest how I can get my Mac to boot in Tiger?

When I use the Tiger disk to boot into OS9 I can see the other drive, and access all my work. So it appears the drive is OK as far as I can tell. Any idea what has happened?
 
Did you have any of the third-party stuff connected when you install Tiger? It is better to not have those items connected when you install a fresh OS.
If you can move the files you want to the OS9 disk, unplug any accessories, and do a reinstall.
 
Yep. Keep your audio-cards and TV cards out at install time and leave all FW/USB devices you don't need for the installation disconnected.
 
Hi,

Yes, I did have the PCI cards/extra memory in the Mac when I installed Tiger. I have since taken them out and tried a re-install. I still have the same problem.

My next move is a reformat and reinstall with all the 3rd party stuff taken out if I cannot think of anything else. Do you think this will work?

Thanks for your time!
 
Sure hope so... Make sure to zap the PRAM also before trying the install... (Start up holding down "Cmd-Opt-P-R".
 
During the install, watch the log file. You can access it from the tool bar at the top. This might tell you a few more things....
 
Thanks for the tip about the log file, I didn't know that. Someone has told me they had pretty much the same problem on their G4 500 (mine is the G4 Dual 500) and was suggesting that maybe the problem was a fundamental incompatibility with that model/generation of Mac. He couldn't get it to work at all and had to go back to 10.3.9. I'm hoping against hope that I don't have to downgrade as I cannot find my 10.3 anywhere!
 
I have not read anywhere there is a fundamental problem with installing Tiger on specific models. It is best to install the OS with out any third party stuff, and install those after you get the OS booted.
 
I thought it was unlikely, but maybe just possible. Tonight I will be re-formating the HD and re-installing Tiger with the all the 3rd party stuff out of the machine. Is it true that Tiger needs 256 meg of ram to run? My Mac only came with 128 meg of Apple ram. Will Tiger install with that OK, or do I need to use 256 for it to install? I ask because every other memory stick I have is 3rd party other than the 128 meg the G4 came with. So to install with a 256 meg stick of memory in the machine I would have to use 3rd party ram. The 3rd party ram is decent quality, and checks out through System Profiler in OS9. I think I remember it was OK in 10.3.9 but I'm not totally sure of that.

One other thing. I have a lot of music in iTunes in OSX. The music is on another HD so that is safe, but what I will loose with the re-format is the playlists in iTunes. Is there any way to save them out so I can put them back into iTunes later?

Thanks for your time folks!
 
i have a g4/466 and had no problems with tiger installing, and i had all my 3rd party stuff plug in at the time. but i always do a fresh install, wipe out the drive, reformat and then install. as far as itunes goes, the playlists should be in your itunes folder, so if it was on a different drive, they are okay. look for the itunes libaray file, if my memeroy serves me right, they are in there ( not being at my mac, i can't check ) . then at the first launch of itunes, tell it to import libaray.
 
I did as was suggested and did a clean install with all 3rd party memory and harware taken out. Tiger installed fine. I managed to get all my work backed up just about and I copied the XML and library files out of iTunes and dropped those over the ones installed by Tiger. All my old playlists imported fine!

Thanks for taking the time to help me out! Cheers folks!
 
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