Hi guys I was given a Apple mac G4 laptop by a friend to have a fiddle with. It has got alot of bollocks on it, so i was hoping to wipe it and start a fresh. I have downloaded a retail image of the mac os 10.5 leopard and burnt it to a DVD-DL. when i stick it in the drive it pops up and says click to install, then it says its gonna reboot. However it just reboots back into the existing OS. as if the dvd had been removed. Ive also tried pressing the option? key and it brings up a menu when booting but the hdd is the only option. Ive tried burning a couple of time with different software but its always the same. Any ideas? Matt
Thanks for the reply. Surely a iso image of the retail disk would be bootable? Can i make it bootable or do i need to find another? Thanks Matt
I've struggled with this before. The problem most likely isn't the source file (although it could be). Most likely, I would say 90% of the time, its the media. You need to get high quality media like Verbatim and burn it very slowly. This is because the DVD reader in the PowerBook G4 is very old. The other option is installing from an external hard drive but for a Powerbook is has to be firewire. They refuse to boot from USB. And even then you need specific firewire chipsets. My advice is to find someone with a Genuine CD. Those will definitely boot or try higher quality media.