2006 mac mini trouble loading 10.6

i had 10.5.8, loaded 2gb memory, fired it up and put it thru paces to make sure all worked ok.& it was fine.
loaded 1/3 of 10.6 and stopped w/fail message, I did restart and it began again and further loaded about 2/3rds this time, then fail message again after blackout.. I realized I hadnt turned off screensaver/sleep feature now it wont boot either from old system, old software disk or from the new disk tried holding c key with disc in screen just shows a grey icon that looks like a file folder w/a question mark.
Please advise.

You need to buy a legal, retail version of Snow Leopard.

And the 2005/early 2006 Mac Mini was a G4 and Snow Leopard will only install on an Intel model.

harryb2448 said:

And the 2005/early 2006 Mac Mini was a G4 and Snow Leopard will only install on an Intel model.

Click to expand...

yes it's an intelmodel and quite capable of handling SL.

BTW, I am trying to load a legal retail version of SL.
What are you suggesting, chas_m?

This is a firmware password problem!
Before commenting-please carefully read my orig post here.
Thank you.

What happens when the install failed? What was the error message?

With the Snow Leopard DVD in the drive, what happens if you hold down the C key right after the Startup sound and keep it down?

It sounds like either the 10.6 DVD is dirty or the Optical drive is failing or dirty.

Also try booting with the Option key down after the startup sound.

Report back.

roscozen said:

yes it's an intelmodel and quite capable of handling SL.

Click to expand...

I assumed you meant that.

BTW, I am trying to load a legal retail version of SL.
What are you suggesting, chas_m?

Click to expand...

I'm suggesting that that's generally the most common issue when someone has trouble loading Snow Leopard onto an Intel Mac.

This is a firmware password problem!

Click to expand...

And your original post told us this ... where exactly?

If you don't want assumptions made about you, maybe you could start by not making assumptions yourself, eh?