[Ti] Problems installing Tiger on Powerbook G4

[Andre Truter]

Andre Truter wrote:
> I have an old Powerbook G4 (550 MHz, 512 MB Ram) which I bought second
> hand.  I had OS X 3.9 on it and worked fine, but the disk was full of
> applications that I never use and only 2.4 GB space left.  It has been
> through a few hands before I got it, so a lot of users have been created
> and deleted, apps installed, etc.
> I did not get any of the original software media with it, just the
> Powerbook as is.
> So I decided to buy Tiger for it and do a clean installation so I can
> have a fresh system and have the media.
>
> But, I am not able to install Tiger on it.  The installation will get to
> the part where it installs the BSD system and then it would tell me that
> the installation failed and I should try again.
> Sometimes it would get to a point (Normally during installing the BSD
> system and once a few steps further) and it would just hang there.  It
> says "Writing files: 11% Completed" and 7 minutes remaining, but nothing
> advance.  I can still use the mouse, open menu options and look at the
> log.  The last message now is "Extracting files"
>
> It has been sitting there for at least an hour.
>
> I swapped the hard drive with another one, but still the same problem.
>   
A bit more info.
I suspected the DVD reader to be faulty, so I took an external USB disk,
and copied the DVD image onto it.
Then I boot the PowerBook from the USB disk.
Installation starts up fine, but it gets stuck at virtually the same
place.  Now it gets to 12% of Installing the BSD Subsystem.

So, the DVD reader is not the problem.

Can it be the hard disk (both of them?) or maybe the DVD was mastered
incorrectly, so my image on the USB disk is also faulty.

Anything else it could be?

With the last number of attempts it has always stopped at the same
place.  It only once managed to get past the BSD Subsystem, but then it
got stuck at 11% of the next section.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Andre Truter