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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Bad Hard Drive

bobsport11 - Nov 9, 2005 - 10:47 am

I have a Powerbook G4, 867mhz that the hard drive failed last night. In Disk Utility when trying to repair the drive it gave me my "hard drive" & "mac os" volume in "red" instead of black and the S.M.A.R.T. indicated "failure" in "red". When I tried to repair I received a message that the hard drive was failing and to back up any important files but by this time it was too late. With the OSX Install disc already booted I was able to shut the computer down by going to Start Up disc and selecting shut down.

I have several questions:

1. How can I get the OSX disc manually out of the CD/DVD bay. I tried using a paperclip to the side of the opening without success. I have tried re-starting holding down the trackpad mouse without success because the computer will only start from the OSX Install Disc which is in the Bay.

2. I know I will have to get a new hard drive and my next question is can I just use my retail OSX Disc to reinstall the operating system. Do I need to do anything special after a new hard drive is installed? I do not plan to partition. I will only be using OSX. The other question regarding this computer is that if I remember correctly I had an updated version of IPHOTO on my computer when it was purchased so when I use my OSX Install Disc will it recognize the "age" of my computer and install the proper IPHOTO version or will it just install the 2.0 version.
I do have all the original install discs but if I use the original install discs it will probably give me the original upgraded IPHOTO software (10.3) but when I install Tiger. If I do an Archive and Install all that will stay, I assume, but if I do an Erase and Install what happens to the upgraded IPHOTO. This is not a major issue but I guess what I am really asking am I going to be missing any important operating system software by just installing Tiger on the newly installed hard drive.

Thanks
Bob

theDan - Nov 9, 2005 - 12:22 pm

Hi, my name is Dan, and I'll be helping you today.

Sorry to hear about your hard drive. Tiger comes with iPhoto 4, and through software update, it goes to 4.0.3. As for getting the Disc out of your drive, start up your computer while holding down CMD-OPTION-O-F right after pressing the power button. this will boot you to a scary looking screen.
type in
eject cd
and press return.Your mac should spit out the cd.
then you can type mac-boot to continue booting normally or shut-down to shut down your Mac.

Cheers!

bobsport11 - Nov 10, 2005 - 12:12 am

I had a new hard drive installed. Did clean install of Tiger but there is no IPhoto. Reading the manual it looks like I will need to purchase this product, it doesn't appear to come with Tiger. Any thoughts.

Bob

theDan - Nov 10, 2005 - 3:15 pm

Sure. Firt though, just to make sure you really don't have iPhoto, click the magnifying glass in the upper left hand corner, and type in iPhoto. It Should come up as the Top Hit. If it DOES NOT, then it really is not installed. Pop in the Tiger install disk, and click on the package that says "Optional software installs" From there you should be able to install iPhoto.

Cheers!

bobsport11 - Nov 16, 2005 - 1:22 pm

Regarding iPhoto:

I tried looking in the "optional installs" on the Tiger install CD. Nothing there for iPhoto.

I then went to this Computer's System Restore CD and tried to install via System Restore>Applications and it tried to install but I kept getting "fatal error" and it would not install. Now this computer originally came with OSX 10.3 and I am now running 10.4.3 but I am not sure if this makes any difference. I don't really care what version iPhoto I run. I have 3 other Mac's and they all have iPhoto version 2.0 and it works fine for those machines. Can you just drag the application from one machine to the other and will it work?
Is there anywhere I can get iphoto 2.0 installer for this machine?
Does anyone have any ideas how to get the System Restore to work just so I can download the applications that came with the computer.

Any help would be appreciated.

I have run Disk Utility (Permissions & Repair). Still having problems with System Restore App.

theDan - Nov 17, 2005 - 5:41 pm

iPhoto is part of apple's iLife package, and is nowhere to be found on the tiger disk. Sorry!

bobsport11 - Nov 19, 2005 - 1:46 pm

Per another website I received a hint to extract iPhoto from the System Restore Disk using Pacifist. I was able to extract iPhoto and install on my computer.

Bob

theDan - Nov 19, 2005 - 2:17 pm

Great!

As I said, iPhoto is nowhere to be found on the TIGER install disk, but it will be on a system restore disk, because all computers come with iLife installed.

Cheers!