New iMac, as yet not registered, fails to allow updates with something like
"this volume is not ..."

Update was acquired from another machine downloading to a USB Thumb Drive
and moving it to the Mac.

As we have yet to get an online connection, the registration is still pending.

I suspect that registration is a prerequisite to allowing updates to be applied
or Apple->Software Updates .. to work at all.

Your opinions?

tia; Jeff

Yep, you most likely have the problem by the throat.

If it is, it's changed recently, since when I last installed OS X 10.3 and 10.4, I didn't register, and didn't have any problems updating them.

It may be that that update needs to do something online, but as far as a Mac needing to be 'registered' to allow updates to be installed, I'm with Mict and have never heard of such a thing, nor do I believe it because it has never been brought up during any fanboy arguments I see on digg.

This is my thought too, but this is the first time helping someone with an unregistered system.

The iMac has no internal modem and the user only has AOL as an ISP which
at the moment, fails to find the external UCB modem. We have a purported
fix, but it's as yet untested.

Last resort will be to get a Juno account and just dial-in w/o AOL.

As soon as possible, the user intends to go to DSL

The error message with a big red exclamation mark on the HD icon is totally bogus

The "error"/condition has nothing to do with the HD volume, but should have
read (imo)

You are attempting to apply an unpdate out of sequence; please apply the appropriate prerequisites

Boy, what a redharring!

Solution was to move the machine somwhere with HS Internet and perform Software Updates in the normal manner.