Updating to Leopard with external optical drive

M

millerem

Registered
The Combo Drive on my G4 Power Book broke last fall, and not having the $300 to have mac technicians replace it, and being too scared to attempt it on my own, I opted to purchase an external Io-Magic CD/DVD-RW optical drive. So far the drive has been able to read music CDs just fine, but when I tried using it to install Leopard, I only get as far as the initial restart, even when holding down the C key during restart, and then I end up back to the very first installation page, like the computer is just recognizing the DVD again.

I also tried going through Start Up Disk options, but I just get the "negative gong" sound when I try to select and restart from the Leopard DVD.

Is this an optical drive problem? I know that it is Windows based, but I just assumed that it would read all CDs and DVDs. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
 
You may be able to read disks, but not actually boot. Some optical drives do not have booting capability on a Mac. You may have been unlucky in choosing a drive that just won't allow booting.

But, try inserting your Leopard DVD, then restart while holding your Option key. You will get the boot screen that will show any bootable disks. Wait until you see the normal mouse pointer. If you can see the OS X 10.5 install disk, click on that icon to select it, then click on the right-facing arrow.
If you don't see that disk at all, or it still won't boot to the disk even if you do see it as a choice, then your DVD drive (though a good disk reader/burner) likely can't boot your Mac.
 
I actually read on another forum in the mean time that I can connect to another Mac via firewire connection and boot up from that Mac's drive, so I'm going to use my roommates. Thanks for the replies though!
 
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