Leopard "re-install" clean install?

[zirngast99]

Hi,

sorry for the stupid title, but I can't figure out how my problem translates correctly into english...

So what's my issue:
I have a MBP which initially came with 10.4 and I upgraded than to 10.5. Just put the DVD in and let the machine do everything by itself more or less. Eventually I tried to get Win XP via Bootcamp on it, though it didn't work out the right way and some mysterious problem occured. Now I'm stuck with a boot camp partition which doesn't work.

So after I learned from the hotline that myway of updating the OS was not necessarily the best (fastest) option to do, I decided to do a clean install anytime soon - today

On Windows I knew how to do this, but on my mac... Several questions come to my mind:

How to do this? Is it just enough to usw the migration manager for backing up my data.
What about my iLife and iWork that shipped with 10.4? How does it know that I have a licence? I just have the original 10.4 DVD.

Will all my settings be lost? iPhoto, Office,...

Is it a good thing to do at all or am I just nuts?

I really appreciat your help or links to pages where I find help.

Patrick

 

[jayhawk11]

I'm assuming you have the upgrade copy of Leopard that checks for Tiger first?

Are you trying to keep all your music, photos...stuff like that? Or did you already move that to a separate drive?

 

[zirngast99]

Hi,

I bought a regular copy of Leopard, so it should not check for Tiger.

Would be nice if I could keep all my photo, picture library as they are. They are on my internal hard drive.

Thanks.

 

[IJ Reilly]

First of all, there's really no such thing as a "clean install" of OSX. This is a term we hear a lot, but it's made-up and meaningless. You have three options. The first is "Archive and Install" which replaces only the System files and leaves everything else intact. The second is "Erase and Install" which wipes out your hard drive and starts from scratch. The third (and by far, most sensible) option is to find out what if anything is actually wrong and fix it. If you want to try the sensible thing, you'll get lots of help.

 

[Niiro13]

I'm assuming you have the upgrade copy of Leopard that checks for Tiger first?

I've never heard of a Mac OS X upgrade version...for any of the cats.