If the Leopard DVD supplied is scratched, call Apple. Our restore media was stuffed in my mums MacBook. So I logged a call and got replacements. Took about 2 weeks though

Ok, I try to do that.. but is a 32GB disc! So it won't fit to my iPod mini...

I have however 2 external HD via firewire.

Do I simply create a disc image on one of them and boot from it?

How do I boot from an external HD?

He means doing this:

Get a .dmg of the Leopard DVD (creating one from your retail Leopard DVD is obviously the most convenient :P).

Partition your drive so there is a partition with 7gb of free space (Or whatever the size of the partition is).

Restore the Leopard DMG on the partition using disk utility.

Boot from the partition.

In leopard because you can now non-destructively resize partitions you can delete the partition and resize the drive back to normal.

You can probably do this within Tiger (restoring a Leopard DVD Partition), but if there is no OS [I'm not sure what your situation is] You'll have to run disk utility off say a Leopard installation disk and use an external drive [e.g iPod] to be the source of the Leopard .dmg to restore it to. Will probably take a while over USB 1.0 if that's all you have.

That's a bit like saying it might rain if it don't fine up.

Q. So, Antonino Giglio, you called Applecare on this issue, and if so, what do they suggest?

I just came back from Harvey Norman whit a DVD lens cleaning disc.

Just finished running it and now I try to reeboot with Leopard DVD and see what happens.

Would you also suggest me to open the iMac and clean it inside with the vacum cleaner brush on low power?

Just called Apple, they are open only from Mon to Fri!

That's the first thing to do, Monday morning, call Apple and take it from there, good luck!

I've verified the Leopard DVD (which is not 32GB but only 7) with Disk Utility and this is the result:

Verifying volume “Mac OS X Install DVD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Mac OS X Install DVD appears to be OK.
Mounting Disk

1 HFS volume checked
Volume passed verification

This might sound totally stupid, but seeing as how you can't talk to Apple untill Monday morning, how about trying a fresh install of your current "Tiger" operating system from your install discs, download the updates online up to 10.4.11, then when you have tiger fresh and up to date, try installing leopard again.

I would even go so far as to delete all third party apps beforehand, (save to disc or whatever suites)
so that the new install of Tiger is "Clean", then Try installing Leopard from there.

Do I need to create a partition of the size of Leopard DVD?

Can't I simply do it on the whole 120GB HD?

It seems that if I create 2 partitions then it will destroy all data I already have...

Hum... I actually thought about it but at the moment I don't have Tiger's discs, only Panther ones... I guess I should try with Panther...

OK, from what I have read, here is my story and take on the situation...

When I first got Leopard I attempted to install it on my MacBook. This wasn't successful as every time I inserted the disk, the drive read it and spat it back out. After I tried this a few times, the same thing kept happening.

I then put the disk in another Mac and it read it immediately and then continued to install perfectly fine, without a hitch. I noticed that when I put the install disk in my MacBook it made weird sounds, almost sounding as if it was smashing the disk into pieces.

A few days later I took it into a Next Byte store. They took a look and found that there was an error in the disk drive. The drive was replaced and the Leopard disk worked flawlessly.

What I am saying is that instead of trying all these other options that people are providing, think about the drive. The soul reason the disk may not be working is because of the disk drive. I know, it reads DVD's and so on, so did mine but Leopard didn't work.

If your looking to get this fixed up ASAP do what Huy and others are saying because it's spot on, but be sure to get the drive fixed for the future!

Thanks,
Tim

Well you'd need to be able to install OS X itself on the other partition (Assuming it's an internal drive), sorry if I misunderstood. I guess you can't really do it from within Tiger unless you use some 'payware' partitioning software like Drive Genius.

If it's a (firewire) external drive then it would work fine.


I guess, It's much cheaper to try and 'get around' the issue I guess.

Okay, so now we have a certain clarification. Your attemting to update from Panther to Leopard. It still should work okay so I am leaning towards a problem with your Drive as suggested by Tim Collier.
.

Hey, I totally agree with you, but after so much trouble shooting and so on, maybe it's best to get it fixed and future-proof it. I'm not sure if it was posted here anywhere, but do you have Apple Care? Sorry if it's already been said