Osx Tiger Fresh Install Issues

[Toby Goodbar]

hi,
i have recently finally acquired an install dvd for tiger. i havent needed one for the 3 years i owned my mac which speaks alot! ANYway, there is one problem. about 4+ months ago i started noticing little quirky behavior with my g4 powermac nothing major. jus temp. slow downs then more recently whenever i played video i couldn't get through a full length movie w/out freeze and reboot at least 3 times. eventually it died due to power supply failure so i chalked it up to that.

i bought another g4 powermac this time dual 800 quicksilver running dual screens and used my old HD as the target drive. ran alot smoother. but now after a few weeks it slows to a crawl sometimes and comes out after an hour or two. i'm not sure why. force quitting apps doesn't seem to help and takes about 5 minutes apiece.

my most major problem (i think) is that whenever i repaired permissions "./private" always needed repairing, even when disk utility was run back to back. that was on both machines. the second things is that when i first recieved the first powermac, its name was "macmac" i didn't realize you couldn't just rename the user folder, until AFTER i had changed it to "toby", and then did some reading because the computer name still wouldn't change. apparently it has bad effects but since i didn't experience any, i left everything alone even till today with the name discrepency. but i still want to match it up to a name of my choosing.

SO, i want to install tiger but i have no idea what will happen. my questions are these:
-will i have to re-register, and re-install all my apps?
-will i lose data on that HD, bookmarks etc?
-i assume i will lose saved preferences?
-will i losed the preference planes themselves? (like ATI radeon card, shapeshifter, xbox contoller interface etc.)
-will i be able to change the computer/user name to match during the install?
-will it correct the permissions for "./private", since no matter how many times i run disk utility back to back, it repairs it over and over.

-what im thinking is to reinstall tiger so that it will fix any corrupted files, glitches, scripts whatever, and i can resolver the computer/user name thing. am i right in thinking this will do it?
if you read the whole post you will see i have never even popped an OSX disc in before so i have no idea what to expect or look for.

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

I'd try an archive and install and see if that helps. You will lose your saved preferences but your programs and user should still be intact plus it creates a backup of the old system so if you need to grab anything you can. This should fix your issues if not you may need to erase and install in which case you will lose everything.

As far as your computer and user name being different goes, you can change the computer name inside the Sharing preferences in System Preferences. You should be able to do that before the installation of Tiger. Hope this helps. Good luck!

 

[disconap]

Archive/install should work just fine. Or if you have a second bootable drive, you can do the install there and migrate the account over.

As for your drive, it may be a mechanical issue, but I would try TechTool Pro or DiskWarrior before giving up.

 

[Toby Goodbar]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

I'd try an archive and install and see if that helps. You will lose your saved preferences but your programs and user should still be intact plus it creates a backup of the old system so if you need to grab anything you can. This should fix your issues if not you may need to erase and install in which case you will lose everything.

As far as your computer and user name being different goes, you can change the computer name inside the Sharing preferences in System Preferences. You should be able to do that before the installation of Tiger. Hope this helps. Good luck!

can i safely change the home folder name?

Archive/install should work just fine. Or if you have a second bootable drive, you can do the install there and migrate the account over.

As for your drive, it may be a mechanical issue, but I would try TechTool Pro or DiskWarrior before giving up.

i do have a second drive with a fresh install on it. its an HD connected via ide cable. your saying i could set it as the target drive and then migrate my account over, without taking along anything that could cause bugs? and be able to edit home folder/computer/user name?

not to sound stupid but are archive and install two different possible options that appear when i go to do the install?

 

[ihabime]

During install your home folder will always have the short name of your user. It is possible to change this in finder, but Apple highly advises against it and the consequences can be annoying. From your post it seems like you might be confusing the name of your home directory with the name of your computer. The computer name can be changed at any time in system preference->sharing, the text box at the top. After changing it there, hit the edit button and change that text box too, just in case.

The permissions on ./Private not changing aren't a big issue, OSX will often leave some permissions set that way. Even though everyone recommends it as a first step in trouble shooting, some fairly intelligent people think it's mostly voodoo, (second link goes to a google cache, daring fireball was refusing to load for me). You could try running disk repair on it just to be sure.

 

[Toby Goodbar]

During install your home folder will always have the short name of your user. It is possible to change this in finder, but Apple highly advises against it and the consequences can be annoying. From your post it seems like you might be confusing the name of your home directory with the name of your computer. The computer name can be changed at any time in system preference->sharing, the text box at the top. After changing it there, hit the edit button and change that text box too, just in case.

The permissions on ./Private not changing aren't a big issue, OSX will often leave some permissions set that way. Even though everyone recommends it as a first step in trouble shooting, some fairly intelligent people think it's mostly voodoo, (second link goes to a google cache, daring fireball was refusing to load for me). You could try running disk repair on it just to be sure.

yea you right i was confusing the names. my computer name is toby my home folder(?)/short name is macmac. the computer came like that. i want to change "macmac" to "toby" or just something else... after checking your links i take it i could open a new account on my system with the desired names then copy everything from "macmac" folder (house icon) to the new account. then delete the old one. that about right?

 

[Toby Goodbar]

ok people, looks like i'm starting to really need help here.

my mac started freezing up again so i just reset it since i knew what was coming. i tried to reboot 3 times before it would boot properly instead of getting the "no smoking" symbol replacing the apple symbol.

should i be leaning towards system errors or mechanical failure? i have an extra HD lying around should i be running to format it and load OSX and run migration assistant?

if youre reading this, then i means ive already posted and have started disk utility's "verify disk"....

ill check back...