Question regarding reinstall of 10.5 on Powerbook

[JEBB]

Somehow the system on a G4 Powerbook here has gotten screwed up and won't boot from the internal drive. I've tried running all the utilities I have including repairing permissions, Cocktail, DiskWarrior and TechTool but to no avail. When I try to boot it from the internal drive I get a white screen. If I boot the computer from the Disk Warrior CD I can see the internal hard drive and even take move data to and from it so I don't believe the hard drive has a physical problem. I can also attach an external HD and see its data as well.
My question is: Can I take the 10.5 install CD and reinstall the system without having the hard drive reinitialized, retaining all the data and programs outside of the system file?
Thanks.

[Jimmypoo]

archive and install if it will let you.

[decay]

Jimmypoo wrote:
archive and install if it will let you.

^
|
this.

[Buzz]

There's an app for that...

[JEBB]

Any other suggestions?

Upon restart it stops during the spinning wheel part of the startup process.

[Winston]

I just did an archive and install of OS 10.4 on my PowerBook. It will save the old system in a folder called "Previous Systems". In my case it kept all my AirPort logins, but lost all my printers. It also lost a couple of the system plugins like Perian and Flip4Mac. Otherwise the system came back exactly as it was before.

That said, you should always have a backup of your personal files (User folder) before you do anything major to your drive.

There are two basic types of reinitializing a drive. The easy one just erases the directory. The more detailed one does a sector by sector check of the drive. Disk Warrior is primarily a directory repair program. TechTool can do this too, but I think can also check the drive for damaged sectors (I have not used either for a couple of years, so may be out of date on features).

From what you've said it sounds like an archive and install will be the fix you need.


Good luck.

- Winston