Chosen Solution
So this is my fault, I admit it. But here are the details. A friend gave me a 2007 iMac that had Tiger installed on the hard drive, but the school didn’t wipe the drives and reinstall the OS, so I was stuck at a login screen. I was frustrated and got the idea to use the Snow Leopard install DVD that came with my MacBook Pro. While I couldn’t install that OS, I was able to use it to partition the hard drive three times (one for OS X when I can buy a copy, one for a Linux distro to use until then, and one small one for rEFInd later). All of these partitions were blank Mac OS Journaled partitions. So I have three blank partitions with no operating system installed. When I tried to get out of the installer to restart, it asked me to select a startup disk. I selected the startup DVD (I thought this would boot up the installer from the DVD), and restarted. What I thought must have been wrong, because now all I get is a white screen. I’m either thinking I’m not waiting long enough for it to start, or it’s stuck in a boot loop, and my Snow Leopard install DVD is stuck in the machine, as trying to eject it doesn’t work. Holding Option on startup doesn’t work either. Please tell me I didn’t brick this machine. I honestly don’t know when I’d have the time to open it up and replace anything. Does anyone have any ideas?
That gray install disk is machine specific. To install 10.6.3 on your machine, go to eBay and Buy a Retail Version of Snow leopard.
