upgrade G4 to Tiger help

[Johng1]

Hello,

I am a Windows tech person and have my MCSE cert. I know very little about Macs, however. I am trying to upgrade my sister's G4 Quicksilver mac from os x10.1 to Tiger OS X10.4.6.

First my sister does not have the original install CDs so she would like to keep OS X 9 on the system this is true 9 that I can boot to. She runs Office 2001 and I know Classic is part of Tiger, she did not want to erase OS X9 untill she has a chance to see how well Classic in Tiger works. Plus she does not have a way to backup her important files/Video, etc.

I tried doing an Archieve and Install and this is the error message I receive...

There were errors installing the software. Please Try Again!

Any help will be appreciated!!

G4 Mac Quicksilver Specs.

80GB HD 33GB Free
Graphics card has the Geforce2 Twinview nVidia chip set on it.
SDRam-1.2GB
Super Drive CD/DVD drive
Firewire and Eithernet


Thanks,

John

[nixgeek]

I'm assuming when you say "OS X9" you mean Mac OS 9. While Classic is shipped with the discs that come with the Macs, it's not included with the retail version of Mac OS X. You would have to purchase Mac OS 9 seperately.

As for upgrading her version of Mac OS X 10.1 to Mac OS X "Tiger" 10.4, you would have to purchase Tiger. The farthest she can upgrade 10.1 is up to 10.1.5. Think of each 10.x revision as a new release of Windows while the 10.x.x updates are like the service packs.

If she purchases Mac OS X 10.4 (the latest version that can be bought is 10.4.6, and 10.4.7 can be downloaded for free), she can perform an Archive and Install and she'll have a new System folder while all her applications and files are kept in tact. Either way, if you have access to a firewire or USB hard drive, I recommend backing up the files that way. I recommend Firewire since USB might take a bit longer on that Mac (I believe that one has USB 1.1 ports unless a USB 2.0 PCI card was installed aftermarket).

You can find both Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 here at a good price.

if she isn't too attached to Office 2001, she could give NeoOffice a try. It's basically OpenOffice with a much more Mac feel than the actual OpenOffice (which is also available for the Mac but is rather clunky interface-wise). It supports the new OpenDocument ODF format as well as formats from other productivity software like MS Office and WordPerfect....even all the way back to WordStar if I'm not mistaken!

Good luck!

[DeltaMac]

A tiger install will often fail with that message about errors, due to an older DVD drive not reading that Tiger DVD reliably. You can often get that to complete by 'trying again'. My personal Mac, and older iMac G3, took 8 tries before it would install. I usually have another Mac with a newer DVD drive that I would use to install through a FireWire connection. Try again...

[Johng1]

Thanks for the replies. I have tried to install Tiger 3 times already but from what you have said I will try a few more times and see if it will go. The only other DVD drive I have is on my Windows Sony notebook if there is any way to use it to install from.

Thanks,

John