Macbook Pro - restore to original condition, keeping applications...possible?

[salodaniel]

Hi everyone,
First post over here.
I'm selling my 17" Macbook pro because I'm upgrading to iMac/iPad combo.
I need to restore the laptop before i pass it on to its new owner, but I agreed to sell it with some software that is already installed and i was trying to avoid going to the process of having to re-install all the software.
Is there a way to restore without erasing applications/programs?
I have the original 10.4 tiger discs for the restore but it is currently on 10.5 leopard for which i also have the upgrade disc in hand. I don't care if i have to restore from tiger and then do the upgrade to leopard, but i do want to try skipping re-install of the rest of the software...
Any bright ideas out there?
Let me know and thanks in advance

 

[alexh123drum]

You could maybe try making and restoring from a time machine backup, but when you restore, in the options only select applications?
Just from the top of my head from when I did a clean install I think that option was available but not 100% sure.

 

[brand]

If you are agreeing to give him the software couldn't he just reinstall the software with discs?

 

[salodaniel]

I wish I had timemachine backups.
I backed up everything manually. Is there still a way to select the applications you want to keep when doing the restore to factory settings?

 

[salodaniel]

of course he could. This is the whole purpose of my post...trying to see if there is a way around it. The person I'm selling to is not very tech literate so I agreed to help and she requested to have the programs installed previous to shipping. I'm still sending the discs.

 

[paintballswimgu]

Thats realitively easy to do. Assuming you have copies of the programs on your imac as well. If you do, all you have to do is connect your mbp to your imac via firewire, or ethernet. You can then use disc migration to get the apps from one computer to the other. You can also just make your new computer act like a server doing this as well.

 

[Mark Booth]

If you don't format and zero the hard drive before selling it, then the person buying it can quite possibly access a crap load of your personal information. Telephone numbers, passwords, credit card numbers, purchases, E-mails, etc...etc. Just deleting those things doesn't remove them entirely. Disk recovery software can restore lots of personal info.

There's no way in heck I'd ever sell a personal computing device without first zeroing the hard drive. Then I'd reinstall the basic system install from the DVD supplied with the computer. I'd let the new owner reinstall the additional software from the discs that I'm giving him when I sell him the software with the computer.

Mark