At what point in a restore do I use Migration Assistant?

[skybolt]

Long story, but apple tech said I should do an archive and install to correct a problem I have been having. I have first gen. macbook, so disks are probably Tiger (or whatever came before Leopard). If I do the archive, will it keep my updates to things like Snow Leopard, iLife 09 etc? Or will I need to use Migration Assistant to get info back from a SuperDuper backup on an external drive? Or will I need to update all software first?

As an alternative, I thought I might just go ahead and do a complete clean install. Same question, will Migration Assistant bring back updates from an external, or would I need to do the clean install, update to Snow Leopard, iLife, etc., and then use Migration Assistant to bring the rest back?

Thanks for help and advice!

[Richard1028]

What't the point of doing a clean install if you're just going to drag migration assistant into the process?

I would clone your drive as it is now then:

- boot from the SL DVD, reformat
- Install SL
- Install all apps from their sources
- "manually" drag your data files from the clone

For your data, you can even use your old TM backup after installing a fresh copy of SL. (There's an option to access other time machine drives in there somewhere and restore individual data files/folders)

After all the above should you still have your problem at least you know it's not due to some leftover pref file or something.