I'm considering doing a clean install of Lion because my university has requested it (long story, don't ask). anyways I'm curious if it would actually do my any good if I wound up restoring things from Time machine after. Is it better to use Migration Assistant? Do any of these options do any good or am I screwed? Thanks
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Is it really a clean install if you then use Time Machine
- Thread starter podsorcerer09
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it might be a long story but the reason you need the clean install might answer if that reason would be present if you did a time machine backup
To make is short, they're under the impression my computer has been infected by a botnet and have blacklisted my Mac address until I can show them I formatted and reinstalled lion.
Restoring from Time Machine is technically a clean install since you are restoring the OS cleanly and reformatting. However, from an IT standpoint you may just be putting the old problem back on the computer. It sounds like to me though that your IT department may not be Mac savvy.
Not Mac Savy at all. Any chance that using migration assistant would be a better option than time machine restore?
They do the same thing more or less. The best thing to do would be to wipe the system clean. Tell you school that you are all good and then do a Time Machine migration.
The only reason I hesitate on that is because this is the second time this has happened recently. If I don't transfer the system files do I stand a better chance against whatever the university thinks this is
They can tell you exactly what file it is. Ask them. Once you find out remove it. If they can't tell you what file it is, then its obvious they can;t say for sure that your machine is indeed infected. False positives happen on Enterprise AV all the time.
University IT people are complete idiots. Don't listen to them and they have no right of banning you based on an unproven assumption of you being infected by a "botnet". You can always remove a virus if that's the case, but they have to provide proof before you do anything. If they prove you have a virus, they can also tell you the name. Then just Google it and you'll know how to remove it, no need to clean install!
You're way out of line. They are not idiots they just don't know a lot about Macs. A lot of Universities, Utah, Penn State, Michigan, have all contributed greatly to OSX due to the need to support them. The University can and should ban anyone that triggers a warning, however, they should be more proactive in helping to eliminate or target it.
Honest question, do people really see performance improvements after 'clean installs'?
I know how windows can use it every once in a while but that's the nature of the OS. however I feel mac is pretty clean to begin with. Only thing a clean install would do for me would be get rid of old app preferences. I don't have anything run on start up. all apps running are accounted for. Nothing sketchy going on.
And this is from a 10.5 to 10.6 to 10.7 install progression.
I know how windows can use it every once in a while but that's the nature of the OS. however I feel mac is pretty clean to begin with. Only thing a clean install would do for me would be get rid of old app preferences. I don't have anything run on start up. all apps running are accounted for. Nothing sketchy going on.
And this is from a 10.5 to 10.6 to 10.7 install progression.
Hey guys, I ran a scan with Sophos and emailed them the results. Hopefully they'll either see that nothing is wrong or give me more information so I can work from there.