But then I noticed that now, when I start the Mac mini up, after I get the grey apple sign I don't get the aqua loading bar which says that it's loading the OS, I just get a light blue screen then the page with the accounts I can log into.
Leopard no longer shows the progress bar when loading MacOS X. This is perfectly normal. Leopard loads the OS more quickly and Apple didn't want to slow down the startup process by drawing the interim loading screen anymore.
Do you always need a previous install ? I want to install Leopard on a new internal drive, do I really need to go trough all this external-HD-with-an-earlier-OS mumbo-jumbo ?
So when you buy Leopard, it is essentially an upgrade (even if it contains the full OS on the DVD) ? ...
If you purchased a Leopard commercial DVD, it will install a clean version of MacOS X 10.5. You only need to have the previous version online if you want to migrate the apps/user accounts/folders to the new OS using the Migration Assistant at startup. Or,
You could leave the previous version on your hard drive, and simply upgrade from Tiger to Leopard (not recommended by me, since you would be retaining any problems you may have had hidden in Tiger in your upgraded OS).
I installed Leopard last weekend on my Power PC G4 1.25 Ghz with 768Mb memory, primarily for the Time Machine function (which I love). Install went flawlessly, (back-up? who me? I don't need no stinking backup!, but I had a problem with iTunes and video replays in that they stuttered, were painfully slow etc. In fact the system was slower by an order of magnitude. I Went to the local Apple store yesterday and was told that although the operating system claims the minimum system is the G4 8xx and 512 Mb of memory, that I really needed an Intel Processor and at least a GB of memory. I was wildly disappointed and accused Apple of the same bait and switch tactics of Bill Gates! We thought maybe more memory (2GB) would maybe solve the problem, but the young man was not certain. I came home a little depressed and jumped into research. I found a few others with the same issues. However, I did skip a step and as was suggested by one user I reinstalled the system, but this time I went through the Disk Verify process. I figured that I had cleaned up the disk, I did not zero it, and I ran disk Util and Disk Warrior to solve any remaining hidden issues. Alas, that is not sufficient. When I ran the install again without skipping the disk verify, it took three times as long to install, but my system is faster than Tiger (or at least seems to be) audio and video are great, an the graphics on the GForce Nvidia card are terrific.
I went back to the Apple store today and filled them in on this. None of them had heard that this was and issue, but they all wrote it down to be passed along in the future to people upgrading to Leopard. Hope this is helpful to others.
Preparing the hard disk with your old Tiger volume is very important if you're going to perform an upgrade, vice a clean install and migration of your old apps/accounts/folders to the new OS.
I do the following when planning to do a simple upgrade:
1. Use Disk Utility to Repair Permissions on the destination hard drive, so the installer won't have any issues with permissions.
2. Use Disk Utility to Repair Disk (while booted from the Leopard installer DVD - it's in the Menu Bar at the top of the screen) to assure the directory structure is accurate. This is critically important, because the installer will assume things are where they're supposed to be, and undamaged when it starts replacing files.
3. (Optional) Use Disk Warrior to rebuild the directory structure and optimize it on the destination hard drive, to get a more robust check and repair of the destination hard drive.
After you've rebooted with Leopard running on the Mac, boot up from an external hard drive running Tiger and re-run Disk Utility/DiskWarrior to make sure everything is recorded properly in the directory structure. Then, and this is important on older/slower Macs, run Coriolis-Systems' iDefrag from your Tiger volume to defragment the files on your Leopard startup volume. This will assure all your Leopard volume files are contiguous at a specific location on the hard drive (will speed reading/opening files since it doesn't have to pull in pieces from all over the hard drive), and it will also rearrange the location of those contiguous files so that those needed more frequently by the OS are closer to the spindle on the hard drive (this will reduce the time needed to access files that are used more often). This process is called optimization. iDefrag is a great tool for tuning up your hard drive, once you're sure that the directory structure is pristine.
If you use DiskWarrior and iDefrag regularly (while booted from a Tiger volume) on your Leopard volume, you'll be assuring you're getting the best performance you can from your hardware.
Note: DiskWarrior and iDefrag should NOT be run from a Leopard volume. While they will work on a Leopard volume just fine when run from Tiger, they need to be upgraded to run natively in Leopard.
Do you always need a previous install ? I want to install Leopard on a new internal drive, do I really need to go trough all this external-HD-with-an-earlier-OS mumbo-jumbo ?
So when you buy Leopard, it is essentially an upgrade (even if it contains the full OS on the DVD) ? ...
No, you don't always have to do that if you buy the Leopard Install disc for $130, but I did the $9.99 Leopard Upgrade, so it was an Upgrade disc, which meant I needed to have a previous OS to install it.
I've run into a problem on the install on my iMac G5 1.8GHz. My dad bought the family pack and we installed it on 3 MacBooks and a Mac Mini. We copied the original disc, which we used to install it on 2 computers (so I know the copy works). I brought the copy to school so I could install it on my iMac G5, but when I insert the disc, it acts like it is reading it, then spits it out. The iMac has a superdrive in it. Do you think it is a problem reading the burned disc or computer related? I have to wait another week before I can go get the original disc so I thought I'd post and see if I could get any alternative routes to go. Thanks.
just installed leopard and... wow. even though spotlight is still indexing, its still quite snappy. i like spaces, thats coming in useful for all the different windows that are about, stops cluttering up the screen, may even replace expose.. for me anyway. all the other major new features are good too. im not to sure about the new apple tv syle front row yet, might need to get used to that. other than that, its all good!
Anyone having trouble with devices plugged into a pci usb card not showing up after the computer goes to sleep. I have a Quicksilver 2002 with a GD 1.8 G4 with a Belkin usb 2 card. I have never had any problems with this card until Leopard. I have to restart after sleep for any devices to show up on the card.
Comments
But then I noticed that now, when I start the Mac mini up, after I get the grey apple sign I don't get the aqua loading bar which says that it's loading the OS, I just get a light blue screen then the page with the accounts I can log into.
Leopard no longer shows the progress bar when loading MacOS X. This is perfectly normal. Leopard loads the OS more quickly and Apple didn't want to slow down the startup process by drawing the interim loading screen anymore.
Do you always need a previous install ? I want to install Leopard on a new internal drive, do I really need to go trough all this external-HD-with-an-earlier-OS mumbo-jumbo ?
So when you buy Leopard, it is essentially an upgrade (even if it contains the full OS on the DVD) ? ...
If you purchased a Leopard commercial DVD, it will install a clean version of MacOS X 10.5. You only need to have the previous version online if you want to migrate the apps/user accounts/folders to the new OS using the Migration Assistant at startup. Or,
You could leave the previous version on your hard drive, and simply upgrade from Tiger to Leopard (not recommended by me, since you would be retaining any problems you may have had hidden in Tiger in your upgraded OS).
I installed Leopard last weekend on my Power PC G4 1.25 Ghz with 768Mb memory, primarily for the Time Machine function (which I love). Install went flawlessly, (back-up? who me? I don't need no stinking backup!, but I had a problem with iTunes and video replays in that they stuttered, were painfully slow etc. In fact the system was slower by an order of magnitude. I Went to the local Apple store yesterday and was told that although the operating system claims the minimum system is the G4 8xx and 512 Mb of memory, that I really needed an Intel Processor and at least a GB of memory. I was wildly disappointed and accused Apple of the same bait and switch tactics of Bill Gates! We thought maybe more memory (2GB) would maybe solve the problem, but the young man was not certain. I came home a little depressed and jumped into research. I found a few others with the same issues. However, I did skip a step and as was suggested by one user I reinstalled the system, but this time I went through the Disk Verify process. I figured that I had cleaned up the disk, I did not zero it, and I ran disk Util and Disk Warrior to solve any remaining hidden issues. Alas, that is not sufficient. When I ran the install again without skipping the disk verify, it took three times as long to install, but my system is faster than Tiger (or at least seems to be) audio and video are great, an the graphics on the GForce Nvidia card are terrific.
I went back to the Apple store today and filled them in on this. None of them had heard that this was and issue, but they all wrote it down to be passed along in the future to people upgrading to Leopard. Hope this is helpful to others.
Preparing the hard disk with your old Tiger volume is very important if you're going to perform an upgrade, vice a clean install and migration of your old apps/accounts/folders to the new OS.
I do the following when planning to do a simple upgrade:
1. Use Disk Utility to Repair Permissions on the destination hard drive, so the installer won't have any issues with permissions.
2. Use Disk Utility to Repair Disk (while booted from the Leopard installer DVD - it's in the Menu Bar at the top of the screen) to assure the directory structure is accurate. This is critically important, because the installer will assume things are where they're supposed to be, and undamaged when it starts replacing files.
3. (Optional) Use Disk Warrior to rebuild the directory structure and optimize it on the destination hard drive, to get a more robust check and repair of the destination hard drive.
After you've rebooted with Leopard running on the Mac, boot up from an external hard drive running Tiger and re-run Disk Utility/DiskWarrior to make sure everything is recorded properly in the directory structure. Then, and this is important on older/slower Macs, run Coriolis-Systems' iDefrag from your Tiger volume to defragment the files on your Leopard startup volume. This will assure all your Leopard volume files are contiguous at a specific location on the hard drive (will speed reading/opening files since it doesn't have to pull in pieces from all over the hard drive), and it will also rearrange the location of those contiguous files so that those needed more frequently by the OS are closer to the spindle on the hard drive (this will reduce the time needed to access files that are used more often). This process is called optimization. iDefrag is a great tool for tuning up your hard drive, once you're sure that the directory structure is pristine.
If you use DiskWarrior and iDefrag regularly (while booted from a Tiger volume) on your Leopard volume, you'll be assuring you're getting the best performance you can from your hardware.
Note: DiskWarrior and iDefrag should NOT be run from a Leopard volume. While they will work on a Leopard volume just fine when run from Tiger, they need to be upgraded to run natively in Leopard.
Do you always need a previous install ? I want to install Leopard on a new internal drive, do I really need to go trough all this external-HD-with-an-earlier-OS mumbo-jumbo ?
So when you buy Leopard, it is essentially an upgrade (even if it contains the full OS on the DVD) ? ...
No, you don't always have to do that if you buy the Leopard Install disc for $130, but I did the $9.99 Leopard Upgrade, so it was an Upgrade disc, which meant I needed to have a previous OS to install it.
It might simply be that that system doesn't like that brand of disks, happened to me with Tiger backups.
I would try to get the disk in then shutting down then try booting with the Option key held down and selecting the start up drive (your install disk).
or
Just as your system's booting, pop your disk in and immediately hold down the Option key. You have to be very fast to try this.
These may not work, but worth a try.
Tony
Jake,
It might simply be that that system doesn't like that brand of disks, happened to me with Tiger backups.
I would try to get the disk in then shutting down then try booting with the Option key held down and selecting the start up drive (your install disk).
or
Just as your system's booting, pop your disk in and immediately hold down the Option key. You have to be very fast to try this.
These may not work, but worth a try.
Tony
Thanks, I will give it a try tomorrow.