Problems installing Mac OS X Leopard with ClearDock installed

This past weekend I had the opportunity to install Leopard on my Mac Mini G4 at home. As I didn’t research any Leopard gotchas, I just popped the installation DVD into the drive and proceeded with the installation. After a little over an hour, the upgrade looked like it completed fine.

I excitedly clicked the reboot button in anticipation of trying out the new OS. Unfortunately, when the machine booted up again, I was presented with a blue screen. The mouse cursor was fully functional but no login screen was present. After much trial and error and research on the Internet, I realized that the culprit was ClearDock. The workaround to the ‘blue screen of death’ is available in the Apple Discussion Forums.

As I did not have many files on my Mac Mini, I simply backed up all my files on to my firewire drive and proceeded to do a fresh install of Leopard. Alternatively, one could boot into OS X in safe mode and uninstall ClearDock manually.

Other than this gotcha, I’ve been reasonably impressed with Leopard. So far, I really like the Spaces, tabbed browsing in Safari 3, and the much faster Spotlight. I’m not completely sold on the redesigned dock but I suspect it may grow on me in time.