02-01-2008, 12:05 AM

i bought a new imac a few months ago which comes with 10.5. my laptop was running 10.4 and i was going to upgrade it to 10.5 WITH THE COPY OF 10.5 I LEGALLY BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. as far as the license, i don't see anything illegal.

my laptop crashed a few years ago and when the repairs were done, they upgraded me to 10.4, even though the computer was running 10.2 and that's what the restore disk is.

it just crashed recently and i figured i'd go ahead and upgrade it to 10.5. however, the restore disk puts it back to 10.2 and the 10.5 install DVD requires the current system to be 10.4.

SO I'M TRYING TO CONFIRM THAT THE ONLY WAY TO GET 10.4 IS BY LEGALLY BUYING IT. leave a reply or let me know by pm.

it seems ridiculous that i'll have to buy 10.4 just to upgrade to 10.5... SO I'M LOOKING FOR LEGAL SOLUTIONS.

02-01-2008, 12:10 AM

Your best bet is to go ahead and do an Erase and Install of Leopard rather than trying to upgrade.

02-01-2008, 12:17 AM

Originally Posted by Kash

Your best bet is to go ahead and do an Erase and Install of Leopard rather than trying to upgrade.

Agreed, the issue isn't a licensing one, it's a technical one.

To the OP - you're probably worried that Leopard will only update the old OS - but it's a full retail disc - not like when you buy Windows upgrade discs.

02-01-2008, 12:28 AM

i tried that but never saw the option to do so. i'll give it another go. thanks to the moderators for reading this first and not immediately shutting it down.

when i load the 10.5 dvd into the drive, it pulls up the installer then says "searching for Mac OS X" and then says "in order to ugrade to 10.5 you must have 10.4 installed."

the only think can think of is going to disk utility, and doing a restore. setting the source as the 10.5 dvd and the destination as the hard drive on the powerbook.

any thoughts, suggestions, etc?

much thanks.

02-01-2008, 12:33 AM

Your Leopard DVD is the one that came with your new iMac or a separate Leopard 10.5 you purchased after the fact? Not trying to trap you by the way but find out what is going on.

02-01-2008, 01:18 AM

When installing Leopard, there should be an Options button. Click on that and choose the Erase and Install option.

If it doesn't give you an Options button, then open up Disk Utility and Erase the hard drive. Then go back to Setup and it should let you do a fresh install by default.

02-01-2008, 01:47 AM

Originally Posted by thisismymac

i bought a new imac a few months ago which comes with 10.5. my laptop was running 10.4 and i was going to upgrade it to 10.5 WITH THE COPY OF 10.5 I LEGALLY BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. as far as the license, i don't see anything illegal.

The copy of 10.5 that came with your iMac is only licensed for the iMac. You didn't purchase a license to install it on whatever other Macs you please also. Besides... that copy should be machine-specific.

02-01-2008, 01:48 AM

Originally Posted by Zoolook

To the OP - you're probably worried that Leopard will only update the old OS - but it's a full retail disc - not like when you buy Windows upgrade discs.

It is not a full retail disc. It is an upgrade disc if it came with the iMac. It can only be installed on a system that has 10.4 installed on it first. As the OP stated:

Originally Posted by thisismymac

i bought a new imac a few months ago which comes with 10.5. my laptop was running 10.4 ....

...it just crashed recently and i figured i'd go ahead and upgrade it to 10.5. however, the restore disk puts it back to 10.2

From that statement, it would appear that the iMac had 10.4 installed and the Leopard Upgrade drop-in was included. Now, technically it isn't illegal to use the drop-in disc on another computer, providing it is the only computer you use it on. However, since your PowerBook is currently running 10.2 it cannot take the drop-in Leopard upgrade. This is why you see the message:

Originally Posted by thisismymac

...it pulls up the installer then says "searching for Mac OS X" and then says "in order to ugrade to 10.5 you must have 10.4 installed."

So, the only way you will be able to use the drop-in Leopard disc on the PowerBook is to first purchase a retail version of Tiger... then upgrade the PowerBook to 10.4,... then you can use the drop-in disc. But, if you are going to do that you would be better off just getting the PowerBook its own Leopard full retail disc.