Why Mac OS X Won't Install And Why I Can't Get Rid Of It!

By Tristan Moore

During the past month since OS X was released, many people have discovered just how hard it is to un-install Apple's new operating system. Users who had installed the OS X public beta or other developer releases and still had them on their HDs got a nasty surprise when they ran the Mac OS X 10.0 installer. OS X will try to install on top of the older version, and often it reports that the install failed, suggesting you try again. Other times it will install, and then when you restart, it boots up, and nothing will work. All the icons on the dock look like generic folder icons, and, even the system preferences control panel won't launch. Repeated re-installs don't work, and often as a last resort many users reformat their HD which does fix the problem, but isn't necessary.

After a very frustrating attempt to install OS X on an iMac DV which previously had Mac OS X 4K56 installed, I decided to find out just what was causing all the problems.

It was time to find some tools of war. Remembering the days when I used to use Apple's old and outdated ResEdit utility to modify the applications on my Mac Plus, I decided to use it to do some poking around on the iMac's HD. You don't have to use ResEdit, but it's easy to find, and I already had it. FileBuddy, or any utility that shows you invisible files and allows you to make them visible will work.

Using the Get File/Folder Info command in ResEdit I started looking around at the root level of the HD. I had already deleted all the files associated with OS X that I could see, and OS X should have been gone, or should it? OS X is based on BSD UNIX, and UNIX has quite a few root level directories which it requires to operate. After installing OS X you don't see any of these. Thinking that Apple had somehow managed to get rid of the standard UNIX file system while preserving its functionally was just too much to hope for. ResEdit shows all the invisible files on your HD, and it was very obvious that Apple, instead of leaving the complicated UNIX directory of OS X out in open to scare novice users, had opted to just make it all invisible. This is all very nice until something goes wrong and you want to get all those files of your hard drive. There are almost 15,000 files contained in the invisible folders OS X creates. That's 15,000 items that your Mac needs to run, and Apple doesn't want you to see them, or be able to delete them. Thank God For ResEdit.

Once you find the invisible files and folders all you have to do is remove them, and OS X will probably install.

To completely remove OS X, first delete the following list of visible folders off your HD taking care to save any preferences, documents or other items from the Users folder that you don't want to lose. The OS X documents folder lives in the Users folder, along with everything that was/is on your OS X desktop, so copy the files you want to save to another folder, or just rename the users folder "Old Users" or something like that so OS X won't recognize it during the install.

Visible Folders:

• Applications
• Library
• System
• User

Once these items are gone, open up your OS 9.1 System Folder, and remove the following visible files. These are not large, but they are part of OS X.

Visible Files:

• Classic
• Classic Support
• Classic Support UI
• ProxyApp

Using ResEdit's Get File/Folder Info command make the following files/folders visible by un-checking the invisible check box in their info window.

Invisible Files:

• .DS_Store
• .Hidden
• ect
• cores
• mach
• mach.sym
• mach_kernal

Invisible Folders:

• var
• HFS+ Private Data
• dev
• .vol
• .Trashes
• Network
• private
• sbin
• TheVolumeSettingsFolder
• TheFindByContentFolder
• usr
• Volumes

Once you can see everything in the Finder drag all the offending items to the trash and empty it. You are now rid of OS X, or the old version of OS X that you had installed, and you should be able to proceed with a normal install, or clean reinstall, whichever the case may be.

Some of we adventurous people managed to obtain pre-release versions of the 10.0.1 update, and installed them hoping for new and amazing things in OS X. Unfortunately the results were disappointing, and when the real 10.0.1 was released we were told by the software update panel that our software was already up to date. This was incorrect, and there is a way to install the real 10.0.1 update, but it involves using the command line to trick Software Update into thinking 10.0.1 isn't installed yet.

Many thanks to Patrick9 for coming up with the solution, and posting it on our message boards. Patrick, I don't know your real name, but if your reading this, I'm sure you know who you are.

Launch the Terminal Application Type su at the prompt, and enter your root password when asked to. If the root account on your machine is not enabled use NetInfo Manager to enable it.

Then type, or paste the following command at the prompt.

mv /Library/Receipts/10.0.1Update.pkg/

You should now be able to download and install the 10.0.1 update using Software Update without any problems.

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