[SOLVED] 2008 iMac Won't Boot Up(Can't Install Snow Leopard)

[Anston06]

I am working on a 2008 iMac. When I tried to boot it up the bar took forever to go accross the screen. When it did finally become a full bar it did not boot up, it just stayed there. I shut it down and tried to start it up again. I waited and waited for it to boot up it just would not boot up.

So, I tried to boot up from the original Mac OS X Snow Leopard installation disc that came with it. It loaded and showed the recovery menu. I tried to run disk utility to check if there were problems with the hard drive. When it finished it said it appeared to be okay. I thought we should format the hard drive and do a clean install. I tried to copy some of the important files to a flash drive using terminal, but the flash drive could not mount. Then, I decided that we should just take the physical hard drive out. I connected the hard drive to another computer. I got the files off and formatted it to HFS. I booted the mac to the cd with the hdd in it.

I started the installation of snow leopard. Later, I came back to check on it, and it said Install Failed: "Could not copy the necessary files". I thought it was the cd so we bought a new Snow Leopard installation disc. I tried again with the new cd and it said the same thing after a while. I thought it could be the hard drive. So, I bought a new one. It still said "Install Failed". I thought it could be the optical drive. I wanted to make sure it was before buying anything else.

I noticed I had a Leopard installation cd with Apple Diagnostics on it. I booted from it and started a regular test. It finished with "No trouble Found". Then, I tried an extended test and it said, "Alert! Apple Hardware Test has detected an error: 4MOT/3/40000004 HDD-1408" I searched it up and sites said it is a hard drive fan error. A fan went out several years ago. That could be a problem, but I don't know. It had El Capitan then Mojave installed on it so I wonder if that could be an issue too.

Specs:
iMac 20-inch early 2008
2.4 ghz intel core 2 duo
4gb 800 mhz ddr2 SDRAM

Any help appriciated, thanks.

 

[RamBoy_69]

You can't download Snow Leopard because its outdated... but to get the latest version that your Mac can run... do this... Just shut down your Mac and turn it on. Immediately after you press the power button, press and hold Command+R until you see a window named "mac OS Utilities". There will be an option to reinstall Mac OS straight from the device itself. Although it is recommended to get a flash drive and back up all of your data just in case. I've done this many times before without a backup and it saved everything as it is clearly quoting to only "reinstall" mac OS.

 

[Anston06]

You can't download Snow Leopard because its outdated... but to get the latest version that your Mac can run... do this... Just shut down your Mac and turn it on. Immediately after you press the power button, press and hold Command+R until you see a window named "mac OS Utilities". There will be an option to reinstall Mac OS straight from the device itself. Although it is recommended to get a flash drive and back up all of your data just in case. I've done this many times before without a backup and it saved everything as it is clearly quoting to only "reinstall" mac OS.

It is not outdated. It used to run Snow Leopard. The computer came with the snow leopard cd. It can even run El Capitan just fine: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886. Command + R does not work. I have reformatted the hard drive. Maybe you mean the recovery mode on the cd. So, yes I have already tried reinstalling macOS. It said"Install Failed: could not copy the necessary files". I had to backup my files because I wanted to do a clean install.

Update: I have installed Leopard 10.5(Not to be confused with Snow Leopard 10.6). When I try to install snow leopard. It says, "Clean the disc and try again." It is a new Snow Leopard disc! I want to know if I can put el capitan on a flash drive and boot from it to install el capitan.

Update: When the computer restarted with the snow leopard disc in it, it installed snow leopard. I think you have to have leopard installed before you can install snow leopard. I am installing El Capitan now. It is the latest supported macOS version for this computer.