I had reason to reinstall OSX because of an earlier problem. Disk 1 installed fine, then halfway through GaragBand Loops (which I don't want anyway) on the 2nd it crashed reporting a faulty install DVD. The install DVD's are another matter they were mailed to me from the Far East because they didn't come in my iMac (17" Intel - Jan '06) box and are copies of original discs.

The situation I'm in now is hat every time I boot it asks for Disc 2 and I can't get past it. This is really annoying because the OS is on the 1st disk and installed fine.

I've tried borrowing the 2nd disc from someone else who has a later iMac - bombs out at a later stage.
I've tried booting from Disc 1 and opting not to install GarageBand - Disc 1 now bombs.

I've also read up that my problem may be with faulty 3rd party RAM, mine is fitted with 1gb of RAM on 1 chip installed by Apple itself. I will run the hardware test tonight.

Does anyone know how I bypass the disc 2 scenario - any other suggestions are also very very welcome.

Buy a legal copy of Mac OS X.

Every Mac comes with install disks, without exception. If you bought a Mac, you are entitled to the disks that came with it--not copies of the disks, but the original disks themselves. If you were given copies, you are probably using illegal software.

Tacit has the correct solution to your install problem. But you also said:

In reply to:

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I've also read up that my problem may be with faulty 3rd party RAM, mine is fitted with 1gb of RAM on 1 chip installed by Apple itself.

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Although third party RAM often gets the bad rap, Apple RAM can and does fail too, just less often.

You can't buy a legal copy of tiger for intel macs.

Every Intel Mac comes with a legal copy of Tiger, without exception. If a person sells an Intel Mac but does not include the Tiger installers, then the sucker who buys the Mac has been scammed, and has a problem on his hands. This problem is not solved by getting an illegal bootleg Tiger install disc.

A replacement for the Tiger install disc should be available directly from Apple as an Apple service part, but of course it won't be free.

Here is how to fix it. This definitely works if you're upgrading from an older version of OSX and run into the problem you're having where the second cd isn't recognized or the cancel button is ghosted out in the installer at that point but the installer doesn't even try to read your second cd, etc etc etc.

I have done this on computers that were being upgraded from panther (10.3) to tiger (10.4) without much trouble (although many new applications weren't installed which isn't a big deal (you can add them after using pacifist and the dashboard wigits may not be installed but you can add them from the otherwise working (but empty) dashboard). If you are installing clean or from os9 I have no idea if this will work, but you know... it's worth a shot! This may also help people installing on an unsupported machine using XPostFacto, the incredible tool that gives older macs the power of OSX.

boot into single user mode (from the hard disk will work if you've successfully installed the first cd of tiger). to do this hold down command (apple) and the s key right away as soon as the mac powers up, even before the startup sound happens. you might have to reboot a couple of times doing this kind of thing to get the timing just right, but you'll know it worked when you see the black text-based startup screen appear after a few seconds, at which point you can let go of the command-s keys.

type:
fsck -y
[repeat until it no longer says that the Filesystem was modified]
mount -uw /
cd /var/db/
mv .AppleM* /

Summary:
You should have two (probably) files in that /var/db folder called .AppleM... something or other, this command should move them to your root folder (rather than deleting them), so if this doesn't work you can always do this whole process again but instead of the cd and mv command do cd / and mv .AppleM* /var/db/

After this type reboot (or whatever the command is, restart maybe? I think it's reboot) to restart your mac. Voila... you should be in Tiger. Then do a software update and then install what you're missing using pacifist (you can find out about pacifist elsewhere on the web, great tool).

Cheers,
Don Kelley
Mac Guy

In reply to:

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type:
fsck -y

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That works only if the volume is not journaled. Otherwise, it will run a check but not modify anything. The command for a journaled volume is fsck -fy or /sbin/fsck -fy

Would you please explain precisely what your instructions accomplish (for instance what is/is the purpose of .AppleM*) and why.

Thanks.

yes, of course... my bad. I was rushing, you are correct, although the command isn't vital to my instructions working anyhow. It was just a nice to have, but yes you are correct I gave the wrong command there for a modern journaled filesystem.

Cheers,
Don

I'm not too comfortable with the ethics of this thread. Dispensing with legally acquired Install disks is perfectly possible, but should these forums be offering help in that direction?