iMac G4 upgrades - freezing during Tiger installation

[dalekusa]

I recently got a care package from OWC with some upgrades for my iMac G4 700 MHz. I got two 512 MB sticks of ram (one DIMM and one SO-DIMM) and one of their SSD upgrade kits (120GB). After installing all that, I installed Mac OS 9.2.2 just fine. But, when I went to install OS X Tiger using a DVD I burned with an image of the Macintosh Garden, it always keeps freezing in the middle of installation. The picture just stops, I can’t move my mouse or put in any keyboard commands, and the drive just stops, making noises. The fan is still going, and it’s still receiving power, but it’s like the computer just stops in place. I’ve tried removing the SO-DIMM and burning a new DVD, but at some point, it always happens. About the only thing I haven’t tried is putting the original DIMM back in. Is there anything else that could be wrong?

 

[dalekusa]

Update - I tried erasing the leftover files from the failed installs, but it froze again as it was counting the files in the trash. I got to thinking, what about the internal DIMM? I put the original 128MB DIMM back on the logic board, and sure enough, it completed the trash emptying, and installing OS X worked! I guess I’m contacting OWC for an exchange tomorrow.

 

[greystash]

I'm glad you found the problem. OSX installations must utilise a lot of memory because I've had this happen many times and the problem has always been faulty RAM.