Tiger to Snow Leopard-wont upgrade :(

Hi,
Im new to all this so hope Im doing it right ! I recently bought a secondhand Macbook. It runs Tiger 10.4.11 so I bought Snow Leopard having read online that its possible to upgrade but then when I went to install it says it cant upgrade unless its a 10.5 or higher. So annoyed because its says everywhere that its possible. Is there anyway of sorting this out without having to buy Leopard?

Thanks for the help !

Did you buy a black upgrade disk directly from apple such as here?: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple Store (U.S.)

If so, the only way to install using the upgrade disk is to erase tiger entirely, and install SL as if Tiger never existed on the machine.

Be sure to back up all of your data first as well.

I bought the SL disc on amazon.
Ok if I erase Tiger is there any chance it snow leopard wont work and then ill be stuck with basically a useless laptop?
Sorry for my ignorance !

LiviaBrennan said:

I bought the SL disc on amazon.
Ok if I erase Tiger is there any chance it snow leopard wont work and then ill be stuck with basically a useless laptop?
Sorry for my ignorance !

Click to expand...

Are you 100% positive this is a "MacBook"...and not Powerbook or iBook?

If it definitely is a MacBook...and you're getting the OS 10.5 message...are you sure this SL disc is not an upgrade disk...instead of a full retail install disk? If you're not sure...post the Amazon link that you purchased from so we can look at it.

Thanks,

- Nick

Its definitely the full Snow Leopard. and my macbook specs are: 10.4.11, 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB 533 MHz DDR@ SDRAM.
It is a 2006 Macbook, if that makes any difference.
How do I erase Tiger and is it 100% safe?

LiviaBrennan said:

Its definitely the full Snow Leopard. and my macbook specs are: 10.4.11, 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB 533 MHz DDR@ SDRAM.
It is a 2006 Macbook, if that makes any difference.

Click to expand...

Everything looks good to allow for the SL upgrade.

LiviaBrennan said:

How do I erase Tiger and is it 100% safe?

Click to expand...

Sure it's safe...as long as there's nothing on the HD now that you want to save.

As far as the install process. If you boot the computer from the SL disk...at what point do you get the OS 10.5 message?

I'm asking this because if you can at least boot the computer from the SL disk (before starting the install process)...then you can open Disk Utility to verify, repair, or reformat the disk before proceeding with the install.

- Nick

I think I've just made a very stupid rash mistake. Having watched several videos on YouTube of people who upgraded from tiger to sl I restarted my mac then held control and then clicked into the sl disc, erased everything in disc utility thinking that would fix the problem. Went to install sl and the same message came up again after I clicked English as my language - saying it cannot upgrade because it needs to be 10.5 or higher. Now I can't get on to the Internet or anything.

Please please help ! I don't have the money to go get it fixed. How come other people ate getting it set up ?!
Thank you !

I meant option there, not control.

Pleaseee someone help!

You say you bought the Snow Leopard disk off of Amazon correct?


Are you POSITIVE it is a black, retail disk? If it is silver or gray it will not work.

The cd itself is white with a picture of a sl says Mac OS X Snow Leopard, CPU Drop-in DVD

At this stage I don't care about upgrading, do you know of there is a way I can reverse what I did and just go back and use Tiger?
Thank you

LiviaBrennan said:

The cd itself is white with a picture of a sl says Mac OS X Snow Leopard, CPU Drop-in DVD

At this stage I don't care about upgrading, do you know of there is a way I can reverse what I did and just go back and use Tiger?
Thank you

Click to expand...

You have the wrong disk. It's not going to work.

Also, probably not. It appears as though you erased the Hard Drive (I really hope you took my original advice and backed up your stuff first)

LiviaBrennan said:

The cd itself is white with a picture of a sl says Mac OS X Snow Leopard, CPU Drop-in DVD

At this stage I don't care about upgrading, do you know of there is a way I can reverse what I did and just go back and use Tiger?
Thank you

Click to expand...

Back in post #4 of this thread I asked you..."are you sure this SL disc is not an upgrade disk...instead of a full retail install disk?"

In post #5 you said..."Its definitely the full Snow Leopard."

A "drop-in" disk/DVD is an "upgrade disk"...and NOT a "full retail install disk"!

With a "drop-in disk" yes...you do need OS 10.5 installed first BEFORE the SL drop-in disk will work.

On the positive side there's really no big problem here...you simply need to get a "full retail install DVD" for $29 bucks...and you will be fine!

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple Store (U.S.)

- Nick

MacDude121 said:

Did you buy a black upgrade disk directly from apple...

Click to expand...

Snow is white. Just sayin'...

toMACsh said:

Snow is white. Just sayin'...

Click to expand...

The disk itself is white?

My Snow Leopard disc is white, yes.

chas_m said:

My Snow Leopard disc is white, yes.

Click to expand...

Huh, I guess you learn something new every day.