[SOLVED] Argh, why can't I erase and install?

[SwampWitch]

I gave my daughter my old MacBook a year ago, it's one of the early ones from 2006 that came with 512 MB of memory, and I was running Leopard on it. One day Safari started crashing, then other applications, so I told her to quickly put her work on the USB drive (she had only dozen or so documents). The screen was doing a slight flickering (don't know if that's important, but it had been doing that for a while).

I've been trying to reinstall Leopard and it doesn't work! Last night (6th try) it had only 2 minutes to go when the installation failed. Below is what I'm doing, if anybody has suggestions, I would appreciate the help!

There is no system or completely corrupt system on it now, cannot start up at all without the system disks, just shows the question-mark folder.

started up MacBook with system disk in, holding down C key
went to disk utilities and tried to repair permissions (failed)
used disk utilities to erase (tried the first 2 erase options during different attempts)
tried to install different ways, using different options, including just the system (no languages or printer drivers, etc.)
failed every time, the error log is very long

Is there something else I can try, hopefully it doesn't have to go to the shop. Thanks in advance!

 

[Walrus666]

Re: Argh, why can't I erase and install?

Hi SwampWitch,
Have you tried cleaning the installation disc?

 

[SwampWitch]

Re: Argh, why can't I erase and install?

No, I haven't, I'll try that and report back... might be a day or two. Thanks, Walrus!

 

[SwampWitch]

Re: Argh, why can't I erase and install?

Walrus, you are amazing, it worked first try! The disk looked okay but I gently washed it anyway. 12-year-old is SO happy, she's getting an iPod Touch for Christmas and has lots of pictures to download from her DSi and cell!

And I'm so happy it doesn't have to go to the shop, and she doesn't have to use my MacBook for her itunes library. Thank you!

 

[Walrus666]

Cool! Happy Feast of the Son of Isis!