Some Leopard DVDs faulty; problems reading good discs on MacBook Pros
Discs may be bad, or your MacBook Pro may not be able to read them.
We've now received several reports of faulty Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) installation DVDs. Symptoms of defective media include:
- Failed verification of disc contents
- Failed installation (the process stalls or quits partway through)
- An error message indicating "There is a problem with the installation disc."
Apple will generally provide replacement of faulty media without hassle.
Interestingly, there are also reports of certain Mac models having problems reading Leopard media that work properly in other Macs. A thread at Apple's Discussion boards, has reports from several MacBook Pro owners indicating problems mounting or performing installation from the Leopard DVD. The thread contains accounts of users actually holding their units upside down in order to get the DVD to mount.
Other users are resorting to putting the problematic Macs in FireWire target disk mode and installing Leopard from a Mac that can read the DVD,
MacFixIt reader Sue writes:
"I worked around it by putting the DVD into my old PPC powerbook (where it mounts fine) and then putting it into firewire disk mode and connecting it up to my MacBook Pro. At that point the install DVD was available to the MacBook Pro and I was able to use it to install."
Other readers have found success re-burning the Leopard DVD with Toast or Apple's own Disk Utility (this requires a dual-layer DVD burner):
MacFixIt reader Mel Martin writes:
"First, the Leopard DVD (family pack) installed fine on my Dual G5, but my MacBook Pro kept spitting it out. [...] Took it to Apple store, they tried another Leopard disk, but no go. Took the disk home and used Toast to burn a copy on a fresh, blank dual layer DVD, and the copy worked just fine. Hard to believe, but problem solved. Apple must have a rat of bad disks out there."
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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