Gah! I told a friend I'd reformat her powerbook for her. Hey, she didn't have her original disks (long story), and I had mine, and her computer was close enough to mine, I should be able to use my Apple Software Restore disk to reinstall an earlier version of OSX, and then upgrade it (with all the upgrade disks I've carefully made backups of). Right? RIGHT?@?@&(^%*&!!!

Wrong.

After my ex copies all his user data of her laptop (another long story), I go to execute my super-simple plan. But lo... my Restore disk DOESN'T work on her machine. I can't, for love or money, get a working OS X system installed on her machine.

My 10.3 disks are upgrades, so they require an *earlier* version of the software be installed. My 10.2 installation is on the aforementioned unhelpful Restore disk. My 10.0 install disk won't boot her machine.

Congratulations Apple, you've done a damn good job of foiling our nefarious lil' piracy ring here. Now, would you mind telling me how someone who lost their original PowerBook disks is supposed to reformat their @#$%^&* machine without buying a whole new OS installer, you assholes?

Anyone else out there got any bright ideas?

Oh, bless. My brand-new $200 external FireWire hard drive appears to have saved the day, along with a brilliant piece of opensource software called Carbon Copy Cloner. All OS X users: Bow down and say a prayer to Mike Bombich, now!

del.icio.us.orati stuff: mivox, osx, apple, powerbook, piracy, applesoftwarerestore, carboncopycloner, geek