Reinstalling OSX

[gtp405]

Hey everyone.

I've recently been having a lot of trouble with OSX. It's so slow it's almost completely unusable. I've had this install for a couple years now and I figured I would just reformat the computer. This all happened after installing Firefox 4, Little Snitch, and Adobe CS5.5. I have no idea if any of that has anything to do with it but something major changed after that. (The CS5.5 is a trial from Adobe, no piracy here, going to expire soon.)

Anyways, I was wondering, if I just reinstall OSX without reformatting, what will I lose? I have a time machine backup so I'm not too concerned. I'm really not in the mood to reformat and set everything up again, so if I could do a new install and not lose anything that would be amazing. I'm assuming it just rewrites the system files right? Documents and apps would be safe correct?

Thanks!!

 

[Hellhammer]

If you perform an upgrade install, only system files will change whereas all your personal files will remain the same.

 

[AFPoster]

If you're system is running slow and you just installed those things the question is do you have a good amount of ram (for CS5.5 I recommend 8gb's, 4 at minimum but you'll see some slow speed) and is your hard drive full or close to being full.

If you reinstall OS X you'll just overwrite the data that's already there, you won't lose anything. If you reformat and install you start fresh and clean and since you have Time Machine that's probably the best option to bring your "speed" back to life.

 

[gtp405]

If you're system is running slow and you just installed those things the question is do you have a good amount of ram (for CS5.5 I recommend 8gb's, 4 at minimum but you'll see some slow speed) and is your hard drive full or close to being full.

If you reinstall OS X you'll just overwrite the data that's already there, you won't lose anything. If you reformat and install you start fresh and clean and since you have Time Machine that's probably the best option to bring your "speed" back to life.

No I probably don't have enough RAM for Adobe. I only have 2 gigs. The problem is, the computer is dog slow even with nothing running, the computer struggles to launch photo booth. Surfing the internet is a chore now. I hate to say it but it behaves much the same as Windows 7 has for me. Ick. I'm no Windows hater but the OSX I'm used to is blazing fast. MUCH faster than W7.

I thought maybe Adobe was running some crap in the background but I can't find anything. The only other thing I thought of is maybe I set little snitch to block something and now it's constantly trying to connect to something and can't, so it keeps trying, therefore slowing everything to a creeping halt. Problem is, when I check activity monitor nothing looks bad. I have low RAM and CPU usage.

 

[gtp405]

Oh, and I have 50 of 250 gigs free. I'm assuming that's good.

 

[MisterMe]

Oh, and I have 50 of 250 gigs free. I'm assuming that's good.

Reinstalling or reformatting your hard drive is a Windows solution to Windows problems. At 20% free hard drive capacity, you are still good, but you are also approaching the recommended minimum. Before mucking with your system, I recommend that you run File System Check (fsck -fy) from the command line in Single User Mode.

Restart your computer while pressing [cmd]+[s]. After your computer boots into the fullscreen text-based interface, follow the instructions on the screen.