Can't boot from system disk. Please help!

I have a Powerbook G4 that came with 10.4.10. I eventually upgraded to Leopard via the upgrade DVD.

Today I decided to wipe the drive. I want to get the machine up and running again in Leopard, but I have to install Tiger first since my Leopard disk is an upgrade DVD and not the full install. Unfortunately I forgot that part and I booted from the Leopard DVD when I wiped the drive. Now I can only boot successfully from the Leopard DVD, but of course I can't install the OS. Even though I can eject that and insert the factory 10.4.10 disk 1 (of 2) that came with my PBook, it won't boot. I get stuck with the "you must restart your computer" message and a bunch of root level junk on the screen.

It seems that wiping the drive with the Leopard disk is probably the cause. What should I do now?

Thanks in advance...

I just made the same mistake last week. I restored my drive from my TM backup I made and then proceeded. You did make a backup .... then perhaps use CCC to restore the drive (much quicker).

It will also make tons of sense to get and hold a Tiger Retail disk for just kind of issue. I also found that even if you have the Retail disk (I do of Tiger) it would not allow an install since it "knew" the earliest I could use on my Aluminum iMac was 10.4.8 (Retail was 10.4.0). It took a call to Apple Support to get that one figured out.

Thanks for the response, Chilbear

Unfortunately, the PowerBook in question is basically just a backup Mac for my MacBook Pro, so the PBook isn't backed up. In its current state, I suppose you could think of it as a hard drive that's totally clean and has merely been formatted for Mac with a Leopard DVD but contains no OS.

Might there be a way for me to use my MacBook (running Leopard) or an external HD to install Tiger onto the PBook via Firewire?

Otherwise I suppose I could restore my MacBook backup (via Carbon Copy Cloner) to the PBook. (Is that gonna work?)

If it's a retail Leopard disc, it is perfectly capable of doing a clean install.

The Leopard disk is not a full install disk; only an upgrade. Must have Tiger installed first.

What happens if you insert the tiger disc, boot her up while pressing the alt key

Try it. I bought the Leopard upgrade back in the day and you could do a clean install.

louishen said:

What happens if you insert the tiger disc, boot her up while pressing the alt key

Click to expand...

Whoa! Never seen this screen before.
I get a blue background with three images on the screen. There's an icon in the center that looks like what musicians get when their albums go platinum. It says "Mac OS X Install Disk 1" underneath it. To the left, there's an icon with an arrow in a semicircle (like the refresh button on a browser window) and to the right, there's an arrow pointing straight to the right.

I went with the arrow on the right to continue booting.

Bummer... same result. Grey background with the "You need to restart your computer" message in a black box in the middle. And in the top left and covering part of the black box I see "panic(cpu 0 caller 0x002E59BC): Unable to find driver for this platform: 'PowerBook5,7'.

This is follwed by a lot of other data and ending with "panic: We are hanging here..."

So I'm still wondering, when I used the Leopard upgrade disk to erase the drive did that somehow tell the machine to require that Leopard be installed? Does something happen during the erase/format process that made my machine want to see a Leopard install disk and reject the Tiger install disk?

RESOLVED!
I rebooted from the Leopard updater disk once again, but this time I had my PBook connected to an external drive which has my MacBook (running Leopard) backed up via CCC and Time Machine. This seems to have satisfied the Leopard disk's desire to see a version of OSX somewhere even if it wasn't on the target drive. Yippee! Thanks to all who offered input.

That's odd, but glad things worked out for you