Help with ibook

[k4p84]

hi all

I need some help with a dual usb ibook.

A mate asked me to upgrade his ibook so i dropped in max ram and a new HDD.

That was my part dealt with. Alas he has been trying to install Os X on it to no avail. I do not know what disks he has, a few versions of OS X but whether they are retail or restore disks i could not tell you.

What i know is that upon boot, so i didnt damage any hardware :-) he gets a flashing folder with a '?' on.

He says he has tried 'Apple' + C and other key combos he has found on the web but got nowhere.

My question is, did I need to format the disk a specific way or slave / put it in an external to prep it.

If this had been Windows i would of had no issues but this was my first endeavour in to mac's so I am rather ignorant as to there ways.

So can anyone give me a hand?

He's coming over tonight to try anything suggested out, if not he is going to an Apple store to get charged a hell of a lot for the privileged of getting up and running again.

All help is greatly appreciated.

[jimborae]

Well if remember rightly the folder with the question mark means no os is found to boot from. He'll need a retail disc of OSX and it should boot from that and then he can do a fresh install of the OS. If it wont boot from disc try restarting and holding the option key which should give you all available bootable options.

[k4p84]

Is there an easy way to tell the difference between a retail disk and a sys restore disk ?

Plus wht is the Option key, sorry Apple novice here :-(

i was wondering about another option. I have the old HDD that i took out. If i pop that in a USB caddy can the ibook boot off that or better still can I clone that disk onto the new installed one.

They are not the same capacity, old is 15gb and the new is 150.

Cheers

Ed

[jimborae]

Option key - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_key

Don't know re retail & system restore but would have thought the retail cd says Retail on it somewhere although a restore disc may work, I've never used one. What wont work is an upgrade disc.

Puting the old drive in a caddy will only work if the caddy is firewire and then you can put the mac in target disk mode and boot off it. And then in disk utilities I think you may be able to clone the disk on to the blank one but I'm not to sure on that. There are loads of guides on the web though(Google Mac Clone disk utility). Here's the first one I cam up with, a bit basic but....http://www.index-site.com/clonedu.html