I deleted important aspects of OS and Apps. Help needed.

[jaggededge]

Hello everyone. I just recently installed Lion on my new MacBook pro. Prior to installing it, I tried making a copy of my system in case something went wrong. I cancelled the copying process before it was complete, and when I went to delete the copied items I most have deleted some of the originals.

My system password still works, but keychains are completely screwed up. I tried creating a new login file in the keychain but it won't let me, so I can't save any passwords.

Also, Text Edit and Preview can't open. The apps disc that came with my computer is of no help since it requires the older operating system.

If I install the original OS with it make duplicates of things? If I than use the app disc, will it only install what is missing or will I have duplicates of apps as well? Also, could installing the original OS and than installing Lion again slow down my computer or affect it in any other negative way?

Thank you for any advice you can give.

 

[Makosuke]

Just to confirm I'm understanding you, your computer didn't come with Snow Leopard, but an earlier OS?

Either way, what you probably want to do to minimize problems is get your Snow Leopard disc (be it original install disc or one you bought), and install a clean copy of the OS on either an external drive or another partition on an internal one (I'm assuming you already have another drive handy, since you were trying to make a clone of the OS--which is a good idea). Wipe the drive you're installing it on first, to make sure you don't have any leftover weirdness.

Once that's done, use Migration Assistant to import your user(s) from your messed-up OS install. You can also use it to migrate applications, but this might be a good time for a reinstall of whatever you actually use, just to make sure you don't accidentally migrate something broken.

Once that's done and you're confident that your re-installed Snow Leopard disk is working smoothly and has all your data, THEN download Lion, erase the messed-up main boot drive that you're using right now, and install a fresh copy of Lion on THAT, rather than upgrading either Lion install. Once installed, again use Migration Assistant to migrate data and apps from your secondary, fixed Snow Leopard OS install.

You should now have a fully functioning Lion install with all your data and apps, and very little chance of having brought something broken over with it.

You could, alternately, bypass the Snow Leopard reinstall completely if you already have Lion downloaded or your messed-up OS is working well enough to download it. In this case, you would want to erase the secondary OS partition, install Lion on that, and migrate from your messed-up Snow Leopard install (which hopefully isn't so messed-up that Migration Assistant can't work with it).

Once you're confident that Lion is running smoothly, you can erase your messed-up Snow Leopard installation on the main drive and use Carboy Copy Cloner to clone your Lion install to that.

 

[jaggededge]

Thank you for the help. Since my computer is still new, it didn't have much of value on the HD so I simply deleted the old Mac HD, installed 10.6 and am now downloading 10.7.

I didn't seem to have any other choice but to delete everything since the first time I simply installed 10.6 normally, and it wouldn't let me log in with my password. My computer is back to when I bought it, so I'm happy.