I'm posting about my saga with this machine here because the macbook subreddit started deleting all my help posts for some reason. I hope to get better results here.
SO... To start, this mac was originally running linux. Why? Because i made a mistake when trying to install macos the first time by using leopard instead of Snow Leopard (OS X). So i just used it with linux happily for about 5 months. Then, yesterday, i decided that and older mac device would be good to get me used to mac os since i've been growing tired of windows. so, i created a bootable usb drive of Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6, and it actually booted! except, during installation no disk drives were showing up. Simple fix, just using disk utility to format the drive to the correct partition. Great! OH NO! It's stuck on "creating account" (first image) Turns out the 2x4gb RAM i was using was bad, so i swapped the original 2x1gb sticks in and its on the desktop! And that leads us to today. Where no matter what, trying to execute a software update ALWAYS GETS stuck at like 50-80%. Doing anything is literally impossible, since clicking on things after about 20 seconds of the machine being on, the spinny wheel of death appears and it just sits there. I even left it on overnight to no avail. The only thing wrong with this machine is the bluetooth doesnt work, but that shouldnt be affecting much. I've tried 2 hard drives, an SSD, tried putting in 8GB ram, which surprisingly works exactly the same as 2gb (so the 4gb i had was just bad?) I've tried ISO's, DMG's, and it still refuses to install Mac OS. i KNOW this machine works, it works great and preforms alright, MacOS must be getting confused about something. It especially sucks because all i need Snow Leopard for is to upgrade to High Sierra (this devices maximum supported version) It's not like i'm daily driving OS X, as this is not a primary machine, i have a gaming PC and other laptops i use more often, i just wanna have a mac device because i quite like the OS and build quality of their machines. Sorry for the long post, i just want some help from someone who is more knowledgable than me in terms of mac. If you have any ideas, just let me know and i'll reply with the results.
SO... To start, this mac was originally running linux. Why? Because i made a mistake when trying to install macos the first time by using leopard instead of Snow Leopard (OS X). So i just used it with linux happily for about 5 months. Then, yesterday, i decided that and older mac device would be good to get me used to mac os since i've been growing tired of windows. so, i created a bootable usb drive of Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6, and it actually booted! except, during installation no disk drives were showing up. Simple fix, just using disk utility to format the drive to the correct partition. Great! OH NO! It's stuck on "creating account" (first image) Turns out the 2x4gb RAM i was using was bad, so i swapped the original 2x1gb sticks in and its on the desktop! And that leads us to today. Where no matter what, trying to execute a software update ALWAYS GETS stuck at like 50-80%. Doing anything is literally impossible, since clicking on things after about 20 seconds of the machine being on, the spinny wheel of death appears and it just sits there. I even left it on overnight to no avail. The only thing wrong with this machine is the bluetooth doesnt work, but that shouldnt be affecting much. I've tried 2 hard drives, an SSD, tried putting in 8GB ram, which surprisingly works exactly the same as 2gb (so the 4gb i had was just bad?) I've tried ISO's, DMG's, and it still refuses to install Mac OS. i KNOW this machine works, it works great and preforms alright, MacOS must be getting confused about something. It especially sucks because all i need Snow Leopard for is to upgrade to High Sierra (this devices maximum supported version) It's not like i'm daily driving OS X, as this is not a primary machine, i have a gaming PC and other laptops i use more often, i just wanna have a mac device because i quite like the OS and build quality of their machines. Sorry for the long post, i just want some help from someone who is more knowledgable than me in terms of mac. If you have any ideas, just let me know and i'll reply with the results.