Quick question about Lion re-install and Time Machine

[karansaraf]

A friend of mine just asked me for some help regarding their MBP. The OS is getting "slow" (is originally a SL system that was updated (not clean installed) to Lion when it came out).

I said an option was just to backup to Time Machine, clean install to Lion and then drag over the necessary documents/photos/files etc from the TM backup once the install had been completed.

One thing I was unsure about was whether you can restore applications and system settings manually? Or do you have to just completely restore Lion to do that? And then the benefit of clean install is lost isn't it, since you're effectively just restoring the old system as it was?

 

[NorthDakota91]

One thing I was unsure about was whether you can restore applications and system settings manually?

If you know exactly where the application .plist files are (usually in ~/Library/) then yes you can do it quite easily. Not very sure about system prefs (but IMHO it would take 10 minutes to set up Lion in "system preferences")

And then the benefit of clean install is lost isn't it, since you're effectively just restoring the old system as it was?

I'd say yes (obviously if you restore all the apps and stuff you had before clean install)