upgrading to 10.5.6 from 10.4.11?

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dpuleojr

Registered
Hi Everyone,

I currently have a PowerBook G4 1.5Ghz 2GB RAM 167Mhz bus. In the process of troubleshooting a minor problem, I was instructed to delete some .plist files. Since then, I am experiencing application crashes which seem to be related to the video card? QuickTime crashes every time I try to play something. iPhoto crashes whenever I try to play a slideshow, and all of my screensavers are gone and System Preferences crashes every time i try to access the screensaver pane. The errors all start with "EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION" and "GLRendererFloat."

A colleague told me to just upgrade to 10.5 and that should fix my problems. I have a copy of 10.5.6, but I am nervous. Can I upgrade directly to 10.5.6 or do I have to get 10.5 installed first? Will all of my apps still run on leopard? I am worried that Cubase LE will not work (primary use of the powerbook is as a DAW.) Any tips from someone more experienced would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you kindly

Dominic
 
If you say you have a "copy of 10.5.6", do you mean the combo updater or a retail disk? You'll need a full retail disk in order to upgrade from 10.4.x to 10.5.x.

For software compatibility, I'd check with the creator of the software.
 
Yeah fryke is right, it sounds like you have tiger.
Yes you can upgrade from tiger to leopard, but as stated about, you'll need a leopard install disc/ not the update you get off apple.
You could try to re-install the 10.4.11 combo update though.
 
Thanks Fryke. I was thinking to call Steinberg before I attempt an upgrade. I have a DMG file called Mac.OSX.Leopard.V10.5.6-HOTiSO; not sure if it is the combo updater or retail. I bought my powerbook refurb'd and it didn't come with an installation disk. In light of all the app crashes lately, i'm wondering if a clean install isn't the best way forward? Ideally I wouldn't have to mess with any of my apps and could just repair the existing OS. But since i've had no luck in finding a solution and no advice other than upgrade, I'm exploring the upgrade option. I'm just not sure how to do this. I've got a 500GB firewire drive and i've backed up my data and apps. At the end of the day, i just want a stable mac on which to browse the web, run iTunes and iPhoto, and Cubase LE above all else. Not sure how i'm going to get there though...
 
I would stick with 10.4 if you can, I have installed 10.5 on a couple of machines with the same specifications as yours and they have really struggled, especially with more than one application open or doing stuff like image manipulation.
 
hmmh. Thanks to both Tommo and Jesse714.

btw, I believe what i have is retail as it is ~7GB in size whereas the combo update is ~700M.

I am intrigued by the suggestion to reinstall the 10.4.11 combo update though to see if that fixes my crashing probs...I am downloading it now. How do I go about reinstalling this; any precautions I should take?
 
So you do in fact have Leopard, its in an ISO? This doesn't sound right, where did you get it from? If you would like to use it, Make a new blank disk image in disk utility, as a DMG file. Then restore the DMG with your ISO file, and then burn it using disc utility, you Have the 15" Powerbook if im correct, they didn't make a 12" with a 2 gig max, so burning a DL disc shouldn't be a problem for your computer.
And Tommy isn't correct, your computer will run much faster with leopard, and there's also alot of benefits from it. I've installed leopard are quite a few unsupported G4's, ones with only 500MHz processors, and they actually didn't do to bad. Infact, chickenhawk actually bought a 15" Powerbook from me, with a 500MHz processor.
 
dpuleojr said:
I am intrigued by the suggestion to reinstall the 10.4.11 combo update though to see if that fixes my crashing probs...I am downloading it now. How do I go about reinstalling this; any precautions I should take?
Click to expand...

No, everything should be pretty straight forward, just let it do its thing, and hopefully it will fix your plist problem. But i would highly suggest upgrading to leopard. :)
 
Jesse714 you are my hero! Reinstalling the 10.4.11 combo update solved all of my crashing problems!

I am curious about trying Leopard, but I called Steinberg today and my ver of Cubase LE won't run on Leopard and I cannot get an upgrade from them that will. The whole reason I bought this used 17" PowerBook G4 was to run this software. So maybe when i'm ready to switch to ProTools i'll be doing so on a new mac with Snow Leopard.

Thanks so much for your help!
 
Oh yay!! I feel so good know that i actually helped some one :)
Your very welcome, i love this site, ive needed help a few times my self.

Sometimes running leopard does cause problems with old needed programs, but i would highly recommend giving it a shot, even if you wanted to install it on an External drive. you can always do that.

So now that all your problems are solved, How do you like your 17" Powerbook?
I bought a 15in that needed a few parts. but the guy i bought it from didn't know anything about macs and sold it to me for 60 dollars :) After a few parts off eBay, i have a up and running 1.67 PowerBook.
 
I might try to run Leopard on my firewire drive...it would be a good experiment! plus I am very curious to see if it would improve performance. I love my powerbook but I am kind of miffed that even after maxing the RAM i still see far too much technicolor pinwheel beachball. sometimes even after a clean reboot there is a lot of latency between keystrokes and cursor movement. And it seems that i can tax the system's resources by running a few firefox windows and iTunes simultaneously. In order to run Cubase LE without problems, I can't really have any other apps open. I was told that these 1.5Ghz PowerPCs "scream" but I have to say this Mac is not as fast as I expected it would be...but it's far more stable than any windows box i've worked with so i'm happy for that.

thanks again
 
hi djackmac - Thanks for the suggestion. Yes the system recognizes both slots.

Hardware Overview:

Machine Name: PowerBook G4 17"
Machine Model: PowerBook5,5
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (1.1)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.8.3b2

i also ran a memory test with applejack and no trouble was found.
 
Well, you should also remember, that tiger was released in 2005, and tiger in 2007, so your going to see a good performance upgrade when/if you decide to load leopard. The spinning colorwheel could be caused by alot of things.

What size hard drive do you have, and whats the RPM speed?
 
Please help!!!
Bought a new Iphone4 came home to find out it don't work with Tiger that is on my Imac (dual core Intel 2.16; 1G RAM)!!! (10.4.11) Dug around and found a retail disk with 10.5.6 on it (from my work mac book pro). Tried installing and once it gets past the select language it tells me it can not be installed??? Any ideas? thanks
 
Disks that shipped with a specific model of Mac will only work with that specific model of Mac.

Your only legal option is to purchase an upgraded version of Mac OS X. The most recent version costs $29.

The system requirements for all Apple products are listed both on the box they're sold in and on the product's page on Apple's website.
 
Thanks El Diablo that is what I was afraid of! Will the $29 upgrade get me from 10.4 to where I need to be "10.5.8 or higher..."? or is there more to it?
 
That $29 upgrade will let you install a complete virgin 10.6 Snow Leopard system, and yes thats from your existing 10.4
 
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