Hi Guys,

Just tried something different.

Tried a hard reboot with the Leopard installer disc. Held down the C key and the installer launched. Selected destination, clicked Install, skipped the DVD check as it did it the last time I tried it. Up came the Installing screen saying "Installing Mac OSX on the volume Macintosh HD" and below the moving blue and white bar it says "Time remaining: Calculating..."

After 3 minutes the blue and white moving pole changed to the progress bar, still says "Time Remaining: Calculating..." Intermittent clicking sounds. Also the sound of the DVD operating.

After another 3 minutes, with the blue on the progress bar having reach only about 1/20th of the way from left to right I get a box come up saying "You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button." in 4 languages. That's as far I seem to be able to get. I can hear the fan whirring but no other activity seems to be going on inside.

I reckon it must be an HD problem, no?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Andalu

Yes, you may be caorrect there. The clicking is usually caused by a harddrive error. If you have another computer you can take out that hdd and run a disc check. There are many utilities for checking discs out there.

Hope that helps.

Steve, it does help. But how would I connect my dismantled HD to another computer (I've got an HP Laptop) to do that check?

I'm going to Google to find a disc checking utility right now.

Thanks!

Andalu

dont dismatle the hdd itself just remove it from your pc.

hmmm if you have a laptop you might need a connector like this to check it.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...6&Sku=V13-1113

Dear Steve,

Thanks for this. I think I've got to the bottom of the problem. Yes, the HDD is dead. I installed OSX onto my Lacie external drive and then used that as my startup disc. I checked the disc utility and my Fujitsu HD in my PowerBook has a fatal error. I feared as much. I'm going to have it replaced. Fortunately, I backed up my data not so long ago and so I've lost nothing.

Thanks so much for your advice.

Andalu

Glad to hear you backed up your data. thats always a good idea.

Well hdd problems are an easy and relatively cheap fix, it could be worse.

Good luck