Cory Collier

A while ago, I replaced a broken screen on my macbook. It was a difficult thing to do, and after I was done, I noticed I wasn’t able to use the CD / DVD drive any longer. I didn’t really care too much about the problem, until I got Leopard, and wanted to get it installed on the machine.

So, I got some tools from my buddy Derek, and got to work on it tonight. Taking apart a macbook is a delicate thing to do, and should be taken seriously. I laughed when my wife suggested I just screws into a bag so I didn’t lose them. Ideally, one should have a clean white surface to place screws that mimics the placement of them in the actual computer.

Anyways, after about an hour of disassembly and inspection, I figured out the issue. One of the brackets that sit above the CD / DVD drive was lodged underneath the CD / DVD player. I fixed the issue and re-assembled the computer in about 10 minutes. Not bad if I may say so myself.

Then I went to install Leopard .

The first time I attempted the install, I got everything started and left the machine alone. When I went to check on it about a half hour later, I saw a large notification that the install had failed. I tried to restart the machine to re-attempt the install a few times. Each time however, the installer couldn’t find the HD to install to.

Finally, I got a notification that the HD was formatted in a way that was incompatible for Leopard. If I proceeded with the install, I was going to have to wipe the HD clean. That was a bit daunting to hear, since my wife is the primary user of the computer. If I lose something she cares about, well, I don’t have to tell you the horrors I’d face then.

So, I got out my handy-dandy external HD. It’s really just a shell with an old 120GB IDE thrown in there, but it does the job well. I got everything I could figure she might want off of the computer, and re-started the install process.

When the computer asked where to install Leopard, I recieved the same prompt as before, but this time I went ahead with the install, knowing that I was formatting the hard drive.

After the format was complete, the installer proceeded. I left the machine alone, figuring that I had a while before I needed to do anything with it. About another half hour later I checked on it, only to see another “Install Failed” screen. Now I was in a serious bind: would my wife be without a computer at all?

Well, I’ve always been one to keep trying until something gives up and works for me . So, I re-started the install again. This time however, I was happy to see that it worked! I went through the typical post-install steps, and was delighted to see my wife’s macbook successfully running Leopard.

The one issue that did come up afterwards however, was all my iLife apps were gone. I suppose I can’t complain too much about it. I didn’t pay for the original iLife apps, so I’m not out any money. But still, It’d be really nice to not have to buy soemthing I already had on here.