02-03-2010, 05:38 PM

Well, I rescued a 15" Powerbook G4 from the trash. It needed a new keyboard and hard drive. I bought and installed both and am now stuck at install of OS.

I called apple help and had an install DVD sent out. I think it must be too old to boot. When I restart holding alt it goes thru to the apple logo with the spinning gears. It's been spinning gears for over an hour. I don't know what to do now.

help is monumentally appreciated

02-03-2010, 06:08 PM

Maybe the optical drive is bad. Attach a USB2 or FW external optical drive and find out.

Perhaps the disk is faulty. If it is a gray disc, it MUST be the one for that specific model, otherwise it will not complete. If its a retail disc, that should work fine -- check the non-label side for damage.

02-03-2010, 07:12 PM

No, the drive is working fine. I have a startup disk from a family member with a newer powerbook G4 and it will load past the "Select a language" screen. From there I get a message informing me that the disk won't work on my computer. I think my disk must be faulty. IS there anywhere to get another copy? Do I have to use 10.1? Can I use a different version? Ugh

02-03-2010, 07:41 PM

Once you get past the language screen go to Utilities in the drop down menu and open disk utility and then erase the disk and then try the install.

02-04-2010, 04:25 PM

After the language selection screen the Alert appears. IT says "This software cannot be installed on this computer". I went ahead and erased the disk and closed disk utility. This just brought me back to the alert screen. On the alert screen there are two buttons, Restart or Startup Disk. I chose the install disk as the startup and restarted and came back to the same alert.
The only other option in the startup disk is Network Startup, but I have no idea what the heck that means...but am trying it right now.