Today I’m doing my first ever reinstall of Mac OS X. Why? Too many Leopard lock-up problems and crashes. I never had any problems with Tiger and Leopard worked good for the first month. Since then, nothing but problems. Unfortunately I keep running into the following error screen:

The first part of the error message seems self-explanatory: “The installer could not validate the contents of the ‘Essentials’ package.” It’s the second part that disturbs me: “Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.” So I’m suppose to call Apple and say? Hey, I need some help validating my package, my Essentials Package, you know.

Seems a little crazy.

To all the Mac gurus out there, what does this mean? Shouldn’t this ‘Essentials package’ already be stored on the Leopard disc? I cleaned the Leopard DVD and am trying again. I’m going to Google this as well. Got to be something simple like a dirty disc …

Update 12:18pm PST: Looks like RAM issues might be the culprit here.

Friday May 30, 2008 8:08am PST: Later yesterday I got the Leopard install working. I didn’t replace RAM, I just kept trying/retrying the installation. The 4th or 5th time (I didn’t keep count) it worked. The first thing I did was conduct all the updates and it is working good again.

Probably the coolest part of the OS reinstallation was being able to use a Time Machine backup to get back to a reasonably recent snapshot of what was on the system. Nice, I didn’t lose any applications, files or network settings. Time Machine is a lot like System Restore on Windows and runs on an external USB or Firewire drive. Very handy.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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