How to bypass install limitation to one computer?

[speedrush]

Hey everyone! - First post on this board :-)

 

Here's my story and below my question.

 

One year ago I bought a 24" iMac (the white one ),which I'm very happy with, and it was of course shipped with Tiger. A couple of months ago I realised that I wanted to replace my old noisy media PC with a Mac Mini. Due to my special media/audio set-up I needed to run windows XP (of which I do have a orginal version ) on it so when I learned that Leopard was coming I went to my local mac-shop to ask if I could use the Leopard disc shipped with the Mini and upgrade my iMac - only to erase Leopard from the mini and install XP.

 

The obviously not knowledgable sales guy said yes and I thought until now that apple is a fair company, so instead of buying a used Mini (= cheaper) with Tiger I waited 4 months and bought a new mac mini when Leopard was finally released. I installed XP on the mini , backed up all important stuff on the iMac and popped in the Leopard DVD only to learn that "This Software Cannot Be Installed On This Computer".

 

Reading on the web I learned that the sales guy was incorrect and that the dvd that was shipped with my mini is not possible to install on any other computer. As you can understand I was kind of frustrated to learn this so my simple question is - Is there any way to bypass this system check? I've tried to install through firewire (which apparantly helps with non-approved slow models) but that didn't work :-(

 

I'm really thankful for any help I can get. Since I do have an orignal XP and an original Leopard I'm not really thinking I'm doing something bad here.

 

cheers //anders

 

 

ps. I've already thought of the option of going back to the local mac-store, but without trying I'm 99% sure they will just neglect my question and say that I must have misunderstood something - this is Sweden, where service sucks bigtime most of the times. ds.

[idividebyzero]

Install it on the mini then make a backup copy of the disk using Superduper, then boot via the imac disc on the other computer and see if you can restore it using the backup from Superduper with disk utility.

 

Otherwise there are plenty of other ways to get a non-restore leopard disc with bittorrent.

[equilibriumuk]

Wonder if you could install (upgrade to) leopard using pacifist?

 

http://forum.osx86scene.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2146

 

I know the howto is osx86, but it might work as you don't use the installer app you could skip all of the kext copying etc aswell.

 

I guess all you'd need is:

3. Since Apple hides most of the files and folders, you have to use finder to get to your destination, please click on finder menu, go to folder, type in /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Installation/Packages/, as it shows on pic 2.

4. Finder will open a new folder window, as pic 3, find a file called OSInstall.mpkg;

5. Right click on OSInstall.mpkg, open it with pacifist; (pic 4)

6. After a while, it will show up a window with all contents, (pic5)

7. Select what you want to install, must have: contents of essential systemsoftware, contents of osinstall.pkg, then optional languages, audio, and etc. multi selection with option key(windows key), right click and select "install to other disk"(pic 6)

8. Select your destination partition for Leopard (pic 7);

9. Pacifist will then take care of installation, it will take about 30 mins or so to finish it up, if system ask you to confirm any overwriting or replacement, just click yes;

10. After pacifist finishes up, repair permissions under tiger terminal

12. Then reboot your system

Not sure if it'll work, but I'd guess it would bypass the installer and install checks.

 

I'd make sure you backup just in case, but might be worth a try?

[speedrush]

Hmm... the second alternative actually sounds promising - I think I'll give it a try.

 

Regarding a retail version from the web - we'll I bought my mac mini to get leopard in original shape as I want the op.system (at least ) to be original.

 

thanks for your advice - If I get through with pacifist I'll report it here! :-)

 

 

cheers //anders

[elviejo]

Or you can install Leopard in the mini, get an external HDD, make an external backup with Time Machine, connect the HDD with the backup to the iMac, boot with the Leopard disc, go to utilities and restore from the Time Machine backup; the good thing is that you are going to have a backup drive and Time Machine would save you a lot of problems in the future.

[ScottMcUK]

Or you can install Leopard in the mini, get an external HDD, make an external backup with Time Machine, connect the HDD with the backup to the iMac, boot with the Leopard disc, go to utilities and restore from the Time Machine backup; the good thing is that you are going to have a backup drive and Time Machine would save you a lot of problems in the future.

 

I think this will work. Problem is I don't have an external drive at the moment.

 

Hmm... the second alternative actually sounds promising - I think I'll give it a try.

 

Regarding a retail version from the web - we'll I bought my mac mini to get leopard in original shape as I want the op.system (at least ) to be original.

 

thanks for your advice - If I get through with pacifist I'll report it here! :-)

cheers //anders

 

Don't know what happened speedrush, but I tried doing the install from using the Pacifist technique and it appeared to install alright. If I peek into my iBook G4's hard drive from my MacBook, all the applications etc are there. The problem is that the hard drive on the G4 won't mount. It isn't even being recognised. I have tried repairing the permissions using the disc utility on the Leopard installation disc I got with my MacBook. I wiped the drive of Panther in one of my numerous attempts to get Leopard running on the iBook and cannot do a reinstall as I no longer have the Panther install discs.

 

I don't know if there is anyway I can get into an image of the installation disc and alter the coding for it to run on other mac's other than the MacBook, or whether there is a program that can assist me with this. I don't want to DL Leopard as I have an original copy right in front of me.

 

I am running a G4 iBook with 1.25GB RAM and a 1.03Ghz processor. The drive is partitioned as an Apple Partitioned Scheme (unlike my MacBooks GUID, something that caused me problems earlier on). I have run repairs and verifications. I have tried the Cmd S disc repair but it is not even recognising a volume being there. The drive does appear on the MacBook, but as a firewire external drive as a opposed to a HD like it did when Panther was running on it.

 

Stumped

[Superhai]

+One option is to modify the install disc, there are guides how you can do it, so you remove the hardware check. It will cost you a dvd-dl disc. (Same thing done when trying to install on older G3's) Otherwise, you must ensure that you dont use GPT or MBR on the harddisk, open firmware is not able to boot from those.

[ScottMcUK]

+One option is to modify the install disc, there are guides how you can do it, so you remove the hardware check. It will cost you a dvd-dl disc. (Same thing done when trying to install on older G3's) Otherwise, you must ensure that you dont use GPT or MBR on the harddisk, open firmware is not able to boot from those.

 

My idea was to modify a disc image but I can not find a guide for love nor money. If I have to burn a DVD, I imagine it will only have to be the first disc as the second won't have the system restriction. Would you mind telling me where I might find a guide that will assist me with this?