I’m in quite a dilemma. I have an older version of Final Cut Express (version 3.5) that I’m trying to install on my Power Mac G5 running Mac OS 10.5.5. But the installer won’t let me install the program. Everything is grayed out in the installation window.

You can create an external hard drive that has Mac OS 10.4 Tiger on it and boot from that drive when necessary.

Only Final Cut Express 3.5.1 (and later) is compatible with Leopard, so you either need to purchase and install Final Cut Express 4 or update your existing version of Final Cut Express from 3.5 to 3.5.1.

However, updating to version 3.5.1 places you in a Catch-22 dilemma: The installer for Final Cut Express 3.5 won’t let you install on a Leopard volume, and you can’t update from version 3.5 to 3.5.1 without installing it first!

There are at least two ways we can think of that you can work around this problem: The first way is to install Pacifist ($20, www.charlessoft.com), which will let you extract the files from your Final Cut Express installation DVD and install them in their appropriate locations. Or, if you have a Mac OS 10.4 Tiger installation DVD, you can always install Tiger onto an external hard drive. Then, boot from that external drive and install Final Cut Express 3.5 into the Applications folder on your internal Leopard hard drive.

Whichever method you use, run Software Update (Apple Menu > Software Update) after you install Final Cut Express in order to update it to 3.5.1. To switch back to booting from your internal Leopard hard drive, go into System Preferences > Startup Disk and select your internal hard drive.