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Martin CotterillFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Create bootable Mac partition using Windows

Hi Experts

I know that this is going to sound odd but....

I have a friend's Powerbook G4 15" 1.67MHz Aluminium that won't install Tiger from the DVDs that came with it. There is nothing on the hard drive so it won't boot from there either. The whys and wherefores as to why there is this problem would take a bit of time to explain.

I have the PB's 80Gb HDD inside my Windows Vista driven desktop. Using MacDrive, I have created and formatted (HFS+) two Mac partitions. I want to put an image of the Mac install disk onto one of the partitions and then, with the HDD back inside the PB, try and install the OS from the partition with the image onto the other and see if the PB will boot as normal.

Is there any way I could do this and how would I do it using my windows machine? I cannot use the PB for anything at the moment.

Regards

Martin
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virtuatech
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If your issue is with the internal DVD drive, you should borrow an external one to install the DVDs.  I check on this forum: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=81498 and it seems you can use another Mac computer with a firewire cable to install the DVDs with its DVD drive.
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Hi virtuatech

Already tried that and it didn't work. I have also tried installing a different HDD in case that was the problem but that didn't work either.

Also I do not have access to another Mac.

Regards

Martin
Did you boot holding down "C" to boot from the DVD?
Did that and using the option key.
Could it be that the install DVDs are damaged?
Thought about that and took the PB to a local Apple store and they couldn't install a copy of Tiger from their disk either.

I have installed Ubuntu onto the PB and that loaded and worked just fine.

At the moment what I'm trying to do is all we feel we have left before we hand it over to Apple.

Regards

Martin
Exactly what happened when you try to install from the DVD? Will the DVD not boot the PB? Does it boot but give you an error message?
Hi strung

All that happens is a blue screen. The PB DVD drive works away, the Apple logo appears, the cog spins, the screen turns blue and everything stops.

Regards

Martin
I know this maybe a stupid question  but  did ya check the  disk  to make sure no scratch ot a hairline crack ??  from what i  have read if you  can put  ubunto on this and worked  fine  id lean  more towards  disk.   Do you  have a friend  with a retail OS X  disk ya  can  try boot  from that ??  Also ya never know  if you have never used the disk before  that hey   it could  be a bad  disk  anyhow....
Hi mrfixitpc

The disks appear to be perfect. No scratches or cracks that are not the norm.

Although we haven't been able to test them as the store didn't have a machine to try them out on.

However, on further checking, it seems that the PB has had a new logic board installed within its warrenty period.

We are awaiting further news.

Regards

Martin
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Martin Cotterill
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