Problems upgrading to Tiger from Panther!

I have a 4 year old G5 Power Mac that currently runs Panther (osX10.2.8). I recently bought an iPhone that requires an iTunes V:8. Unfortunatley 10.2.8 will not support this. I sourced a legit copy of Tiger to install to enable me to upgrade my OS and therefore iTunes. About 20 mins into the installation I get a message that says "There were errors during the installation...Please try again". Having looked on the Apple site it reccomends removing any 3rd party RAM. As my Mac had an upgrade, I removed this and tried again to no avail.

Please somebody help! I am pretty Mac illiterate and am pulling my hair out.

have you tried giving the disk a good clean

Ok, tried that. No luck.

Yup, it is spotless. I can get as far as the "Verifying Destination Volume" section in "Preparing the Disk" then the error message appears.

when you start up from the DVD, before you install, select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu at the top.

Reformat the drive and then try and install again

Will I loose all my files?

I assume in doing this I will loose all files, MP3's etc? I have only backed up a certain amount of data so far.

Good point, is there any way you can do a back-up at this point, it is a good idea anyway

You can clone your existing disk using SuperDuper

Hmm....

I have a loan of a WD external drive. I have to format it for Mac but for the life of it I can't find the software anywhere. As I said, I am pretty hopeless with technology at the best of times. Thanks, though for all the advise. Once I have figured out the Hard Drive I will try the reformat option.

Connect up the external drive by firewire, and when icon appears on desktop go to Disk Utility, erase drive, go to partition and select one partition, go to Disk Utility and format Mac OS Extended (Journaled). OS X.2.8 is Jaguar and not Panther (OS X.3) and there have been man y reports it is not possible to uopdate Jaguar to Tiger so do a clean erase and install.

PowerPC machines will boot from external firewire drives.

The Tiger install disc is a black coloured retail install version and not a silver grey system restore disc, which is model specific?

Thanks Harry B

Hi there,

Thanks for that man. It is a black retail edition that I have. I first tried it with restore disks and was unsucessfull. I will have a bash at it tomorrow. Not sure that I have Firewire though.

Check the external drive case and see if there is a firewire fitting. The G5 will have both FW800 and 400. To be able to boot from the drive you will need firewire.

SuperDuper seems to be the fastest backing up tool when you get Tiger installed and your external up and running.

Thanks folks!

Right folks,

Thank you all so much for the advise. I backed up all my files and did a clean install. I am now back up and running. iTunes and my phone seem to be working fine.

Regards,

Big Balls

good news

Very nice and have a Happy Christmas!!

Oh perfect. I just ordered the grey backup CDs. I reckon I have to go and buy the black 10.4 CDs now. Grr, this is more expensive than I wanted it to be. Unless I borrow someone's firewire disc, but I don't know anyone with one.