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From: Mark Conrad on 18 Jul 2010 18:59

Is there any way to remotely install Snow Leopard on a
new unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro that has a defective
DVD drive circuit ?

The DVD chip inside this Mac blew up after two months,
now I am waiting for Apple to ship me the empty box
that I will use to ship the MacBook to their repair center.

I want to kill time by attempting a remote install,
to bypass the defective DVD chip in the MacBook.

.... and to prove to myself that a bad DVD circuit will not
completely incapacitate a recent unibody MacBook.

I have already tried to use an external DVD drive, but
apparently some DVD chip inside the Mac itself is fried,
because the external DVD drive just stalls, refusing to
boot up on the SL disk.

I tried installing SL via Target Disk Mode, it took about
an hour, got right up to the screen that sez:

"Whoopie, you are finished, you handsome dog you! "

"Now you can 'restart' and enjoy the fruits of your labor"


I tried every conceivable way of restarting, but no luck,
every time I restarted, it would throw the registration
information on the wrong computer, namely the 15-inch
MacBook that I was using to control the Target Disk Mode
install process.


Just out of curiosity, does the "Server" edition of Snow Leopard
allow the _full_ installation of Snow Leopard into a Mac that
has broken DVD circuitry ?


All this is probably a lost cause, or a problem that only
a Mac "Super Geek" would be able to solve.



Oh yeah, I tried one other approach, just for laughs.

I went into my local Best Buy store, rounded up a herd
of their "Geek Squad" guys. Once they say the nature of
the problem, they all scattered, never to be seen again.

That left one forlorn gal in a uniform that did not look
exactly like a Best Buy uniform.

I sez, "You work for Best Buy ? "
She sez, "No"
I sez, "Oh"
She offers, "I work for Apple".

Anyhow, I bought an external DVD drive from another
store employee there, on speculation.

I then rounded up the Apple employee, and we all played
with the external DVD drive, but because some DVD chip
_inside_ my Macbook Pro was fried, it would not allow
the external DVD drive to work.

Bummer.

Mark-


Mark-
From: nospam on 18 Jul 2010 19:09
In article <180720101559510121%aeiou(a)mostly.invalid>, Mark Conrad
<aeiou(a)mostly.invalid> wrote:

> Is there any way to remotely install Snow Leopard on a
> new unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro that has a defective
> DVD drive circuit ?

plug in an external dvd drive.

> The DVD chip inside this Mac blew up after two months,
> now I am waiting for Apple to ship me the empty box
> that I will use to ship the MacBook to their repair center.
>
> I want to kill time by attempting a remote install,
> to bypass the defective DVD chip in the MacBook.
>
> ... and to prove to myself that a bad DVD circuit will not
> completely incapacitate a recent unibody MacBook.

what the hell for? the box will show up in a day and you'll have it
back a day or two after you send it in. find something more productive
to do.

> I have already tried to use an external DVD drive, but
> apparently some DVD chip inside the Mac itself is fried,
> because the external DVD drive just stalls, refusing to
> boot up on the SL disk.

then it's obviously more than just the 'dvd drive circuit.'
From: David Empson on 18 Jul 2010 20:01
Mark Conrad <aeiou(a)mostly.invalid> wrote:

> Is there any way to remotely install Snow Leopard on a
> new unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro that has a defective
> DVD drive circuit ?

Yes.

I'll use the term "destination Mac" here to refer to the one on which
you want to install Snow Leopard (with the faulty DVD drive).

First point: if it really is a "new" 17 inch MacBook Pro, as in a mid
2010 model, then you need to use the DVD supplied with that computer,
not a retail Snow Leopard DVD, as the latter is too old. (With some
methods you could use the retail Snow Leopard DVD as long as the system
was updated to 10.6.4 before trying to boot the destination Mac from the
installed system.)

(a) Plug in an external DVD drive (USB or Firewire), boot the
destination Mac from the Snow Leopard install DVD in that drive.

(b) Start up the destination Mac in target mode, connect another Mac via
Firewire, start up the other Mac from the Snow Leopard DVD and install
to the internal drive of the destination Mac.

If you are using the grey install disc supplied with the destination
Mac, this method will only work if the other Mac is the same or a
"similar enough" model (e.g. 15" MacBook Pro of the same series; older
MacBook Pros may or may not work depending on how strictly Apple is
checking the model identifier).

If you are using a retail Snow Leopard DVD, you would have to install it
and then install the 10.6.4 update from the other Mac, before booting
the destination Mac from its own hard drive.

(c) Start up the other Mac in target mode, put the Snow Leopard DVD into
its optical drive, connect the two Macs via Firewire, and hold down the
Option key on the destination Mac when starting it up. This will allow
booting from the optical drive in the other Mac.

This only works if the other Mac is reasonably recent (approximately
late 2003 or newer).

(d) If the other Mac is running Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later, with at least
the "DVD/CD Sharing and Migration Update" installed, you can set up the
other Mac to share its optical drive over the network, and boot the
destination Mac from that drive. (Never tried this method; it may be
limited to recent "destination" models which support DVD/CD Sharing for
network boot.)

> The DVD chip inside this Mac blew up after two months,
> now I am waiting for Apple to ship me the empty box
> that I will use to ship the MacBook to their repair center.
>
> I want to kill time by attempting a remote install,
> to bypass the defective DVD chip in the MacBook.
>
> ... and to prove to myself that a bad DVD circuit will not
> completely incapacitate a recent unibody MacBook.
>
> I have already tried to use an external DVD drive, but
> apparently some DVD chip inside the Mac itself is fried,
> because the external DVD drive just stalls, refusing to
> boot up on the SL disk.

In that case the problem isn't where you think it is, or your external
DVD drive has a separate problem.

> I tried installing SL via Target Disk Mode

Using method (b) above? With which Snow Leopard DVD?

> it took about an hour, got right up to the screen that sez:
>
> "Whoopie, you are finished, you handsome dog you! "
>
> "Now you can 'restart' and enjoy the fruits of your labor"
>
>
> I tried every conceivable way of restarting, but no luck,
> every time I restarted, it would throw the registration
> information on the wrong computer, namely the 15-inch
> MacBook that I was using to control the Target Disk Mode
> install process.

The 15" MacBook Pro would have been set to boot from the internal drive
of the 17" MacBook Pro as a side effect of installing Snow Leopard from
that computer. To disconnect everything cleanly, at the point of
completion when the installer wants to restart, you click the restart
button and hold down the Option key (all on the 15" MacBook Pro).

This will bring up the startup disk selector on the 15" MacBook Pro, at
which point you can safely unplug the Firewire cable, then select the
15" MacBook Pro's internal hard drive to boot. You should use System
Preference > Startup Disk and ensure that the computer's internal drive
is reselected as its normal startup volume.

After unplugging the Firewire cable, you can shut down the 17" MacBook
Pro, then start it up again. It should boot into Snow Leopard.

If not, then either you did something wrong, or you have used the wrong
DVD version (see above) and you need to go through the extra step of
installing the 10.6.4 update on the 17" MacBook Pro before it will boot
from the installed system.

> Just out of curiosity, does the "Server" edition of Snow Leopard
> allow the _full_ installation of Snow Leopard into a Mac that
> has broken DVD circuitry ?

Yes. In addition to all of the above methods, it has a special remote
install mechanism which is managed via Server Admin running on another
computer.

> All this is probably a lost cause, or a problem that only
> a Mac "Super Geek" would be able to solve.
>
>
>
> Oh yeah, I tried one other approach, just for laughs.
>
> I went into my local Best Buy store, rounded up a herd
> of their "Geek Squad" guys. Once they say the nature of
> the problem, they all scattered, never to be seen again.
>
> That left one forlorn gal in a uniform that did not look
> exactly like a Best Buy uniform.
>
> I sez, "You work for Best Buy ? "
> She sez, "No"
> I sez, "Oh"
> She offers, "I work for Apple".
>
> Anyhow, I bought an external DVD drive from another
> store employee there, on speculation.
>
> I then rounded up the Apple employee, and we all played
> with the external DVD drive, but because some DVD chip
> _inside_ my Macbook Pro was fried, it would not allow
> the external DVD drive to work.

There is no such thing as a "DVD chip". If your internal optical drive
is not working, the fault is either within that optical drive or its
connection to the motherboard (which is SATA). Anything further up the
chain would prevent your hard drive from working and probably exhibit a
range of other faulty components.

An external optical drive will be connected via either USB or Firewire,
which doesn't go anywhere near the SATA connection to the internal
optical drive.

If the external optical drive won't boot, the most likely explanation is
that drive doesn't work properly for booting a Mac.

I have a homebrew external USB/Firewire DVD writer consisting of a "Hot
Buttered" enclosure and a parallel ATA Pioneer mechanism (about a
DVR-112D, I think), and it is able to boot compatible Macs via either
USB or Firewire.
--
David Empson
dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz
From: Mark Conrad on 19 Jul 2010 01:39

Thanks David, for the wealth of information.

Here is some more info' I found:

For the 15-inch "controlling" Mac,
it is an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz

The date of manufacture is about July or August of 2007,
gleaned from its S/N W873100****



"7" for the last digit of the year 2007

"31" for the 31st week of that year

The 15-inch Mac is running OS X 10.6.4



For the bad 17-inch unibody MacBook Pro,
I do not know much about it, other than I bought it
directly from the Apple Store in May, 2010, for the
modest price of $4,300

Ran great for two months, when I decided to replace
the 32-bit version of Windows-7 "Ultimate" on its 100 GB
Windows partition with a 64-bit version of Windows-7,
which would leave me with 400 GB for my OS X partition.

Windows install "choked" and stalled about 5 minutes out,
so I thought I had a bad Windows 64-bit DVD install disc.

Grabbed a totally different Windows 64-bit DVD install disc,
same "choking" occurred 5 minutes out.

Whoa, figured the DVD drive inside the 17-inch Mac was
starting to go bad.

Shortly thereafter, _nothing_ would even start to boot up
on the DVD drive, such as the 32-bit install DVDs that had been
running fine for two months, or the TechTool Pro disk.

That is when I made the mistake of going to Best Buy under the
illusion that external DVD drives would work on either Macs or
Windows hardware - - - Big Mistake. There was nothing in
the literature for that external DVD drive that even hinted that
it might work with a Mac.

Neither I nor the Apple gal at Best Buy spotted that fact, namely
that particular drive was meant for Windows computers only.

The regular Best Buy sales personnel of course said it would work
with a Mac - - - buyer beware of sales personnel in general.


David, I will try some of your suggestions, looks like they have
promise, assuming something is not radically wrong with parts
inside the 17-inch MacBook Pro.

FWIW, shortly before the new Mac blew up, I did a thorough
15 minute test of its 8 GBs of RAM, plus a scan of its 512 GB
internal drive, plus a "SMART" test on the same drive, and all
3 tests passed without any indication that the Mac was on the
verge of blowing up.

Thanks again, I will report back with the results in a few days.

Will shop around trying to find an external DVD drive that is
_designed_ to work with a late model Mac, this time I will phone
Apple technical support, asking them to suggest a model, bearing
in mind that I can't properly load any drivers that the DVD drive
might require - - - so unless the external DVD drive already has
its driver in Apple firmware, nothing might work.

Mark-



I managed to lose the original grey DVDs that came with
my brand new 17-inch MacBook Pro, which does not help.
From: nospam on 19 Jul 2010 01:59
In article <180720102239555196%aeiou(a)mostly.invalid>, Mark Conrad
<aeiou(a)mostly.invalid> wrote:

> That is when I made the mistake of going to Best Buy under the
> illusion that external DVD drives would work on either Macs or
> Windows hardware - - - Big Mistake. There was nothing in
> the literature for that external DVD drive that even hinted that
> it might work with a Mac.

*all* of them do, assuming it has firewire or usb.
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