What do I do for 96% complete installation of OS X?

[fogluver]

Boy, anyone who can help me out, please send me the bill! I can't even PAY someone around here to fix this -- it has been in for service 3 times.

Okay, now that that's out of my system (pardon the pun...)...

Chronology: Had ram installed up to 752MB by Apple registered service center. Upgraded to Tiger 10.3 (and subsequently downloaded 10.4 because I thought my problems may have been fixed in the upgrade). System consistently freezes or quits programs in no consistent manner.
Apple checks my RAM and it tests out o.k. Hard drive needs some repairs which they do. Take computer home, and it is the same. Have a martini (or two).

Apple suggests that I do an archive and install before doing an erase and install. When I try to do the install, it completes up to 96% and freezes. What do I do now? If I turn off the computer, will this do any harm?

Does anyone know what is causing these freeze-ups? Forever in your debt if you can figure this out for a non-technical person!!!!! I have gotten NO work done in about 4 days. Thanks.

 

[andychrist]

I had a similar problem installing Tiger onto an old iMac using CD media. At first it reported that the disk was scratched or dirty after disk verification. After cleaning the disks again install proceeded but kept stalling after BSD subsystem on the second disk. A dialog box would pop up and ask to restart,cancel or proceed anyway. Tried restarting with disk 2 but it again stalled. The second time a dialog box asked if I wanted to Proceed, or Stop & Report I chose the latter, at which point installation instead proceeded and actually made it to the finish line! I would have been really freaking had it been my Mac; fortunately it was just my downstairs neighbor's. But I digress.

I think most Install problems arise with older optical drives, which themselves may already have some dust on the lens. Cleaning the lens on my tray-loading iMac helped a lot. Don't know how you do that on a slot-loading drive though.

So make sure everything is real clean before trying another install.

Good luck!

 

[bobw]

and subsequently downloaded 10.4

Tiger is 10.4, not 10.3, and you can't download 10.4 anywhere legally.

Do you have the Tiger 10.4 DVD or CD set from Apple?

If you do, I would remove all added ram and try installing.

 

[fogluver]

Hi - thx.

Sorry for confusion on package version. I had 10.4.3 installed and upgraded to 10.4.4, or whatever the Software Update said I could do online.

Right now, I am really just concerned with whether it is okay to restart my computer, or will I lose any data if the installation didn't complete the final 4%? When I do restart, should I remove the OS X DVD from the tray first, or leave it in there?

Somewhere I read that even though RAM may have been tested, it may not be good. Said to use something called Remem(?) -- I don't know where I would get this, etc.

Also, I will be calling the Genius Bar at my local store again to see what, if anything, they can do when I can't even reload the software due to freezes.

Thanks again for any assistance you can give me.