Reinstalling Tiger after purchase

[Wally]

My PB is slowing down and acting odd. Firefox and word are unexpectedly quited along with AIM. What i am wondering is does the DVD that came with the computer contain ilife as well and tiger? i bought this comp in august.. im willing to reinstall tiger but i dont wanna lose ilife.

also how long with this clean install take?

Alex

 

[fartheststar]

All new macs come with an OS and iLife. So yes you'll have it. Sometimes it's as a separate disc, sometimes not.

20 minutes - 30 minutes (or less) to do a clean install, another 10-15 for iLife.

Be sure to back up everything before you do this or you'll lose all your personal files. Use an iPod as a disk or burned DVD's / CD's if you can't.

 

[mrichmon]

My PB is slowing down and acting odd. Firefox and word are unexpectedly quited along with AIM. What i am wondering is does the DVD that came with the computer contain ilife as well and tiger? i bought this comp in august.. im willing to reinstall tiger but i dont wanna lose ilife.

also how long with this clean install take?

Alex

The install DVD(s) generally contain all the software you mac shipped with. Installing the additional applications such as IE, Quicken Demo, iLife, etc. is not done as part of the OS X install but there is an installer to run after you have installed OS X for the additional applications.

 

[Wally]

If in do this reinstall, will i be able to choose everything being installed... such as quicken, and trial MS, and the langauges? How about partitioning ? What is the best was to partion a mac?


Alex

 

[mrichmon]

If in do this reinstall, will i be able to choose everything being installed... such as quicken, and trial MS, and the langauges? How about partitioning ? What is the best was to partion a mac?
Alex

First you would install OS X from the install disks that came with your mac. During this install you can partition your drives as you like and select from the OS X install options. Personally I usually eliminate support for various langauges that I don't need and do not install any printer drivers. These choices save me a few hundred megabytes.

After you have OS X installed then one of the disks that came with your mac will have an installer for the "additional applications" your mac came with. On macs sold in the last 4 years or so this additional applications installer allows you to select which additional pieces of software to install.

In terms of partitioning, the best way depends on how you use your mac and why you want to partition the drive. A search on google will turn up detailed explainations on partitioning and why you would want to. Apple ships their machines with OS X installed on a single partition that is the size of the hard drive and for most users this is a suitable partitioning scheme.

Personally, I partition my drives into two partitions: system and data. The system partition is generally about 15 GB and is only used for the OS X installation, Classic, Developer Tools and the few applications that I use which can only be installed on the boot volume. On my data volume I have a Users directory which contains all the user home directories (moved from the system disk), a small number of data folders that contain a deep organization tree, and a handful of folders prefixed with "_" in which I store programs, eg. "_Applications", "_Games", "_Utilities", "_Languages". The "_" prefix ensures that these program folders are sorted to the top of the data volume folder when viewed in the Finder.

 

[FFTT]

A Clean Install or Partitioning a drive Erases the drives, so anything important better be on CD or another backup drive.

Otherwise you can do an archive and install, but that does add quite a bit to your storage.

You might want to try re-installing your 10.4.2 update before you go to all this trouble.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Reinstalling OSX is almost never necessary. Many things to try before you resort to such a desperate measure. Please tell what you have tried already to fix these issues. If you haven't done anything, then by no means should you be even thinking about reinstalling the OS.

 

[Wally]

why is it a desperate measure? i do it all the time with windows machines?

Alex

 

[WildCowboy]

why is it a desperate measure? i do it all the time with windows machines?

Funniest post I've read in a while...

 

[Wally]

hahha ok i get the point.. i just wanna know why it is a desperate measure? seems easy enough to me.. plus why not have control over your install instead of someone in asia?

Alex

 

[solvs]

I always re-install from scratch when I get a new system. But since you've been using yours for awhile, it may be overkill. There are other things you can do first. If it's not a big deal, and you don't have ANYTHING to back up (or you are careful to put everything on there first, and test it), go ahead. You can do a custom job and install what you do and do not want. If it's a restore DVD (or set of CDs/DVDs), it'll all be on there. If it's just the OS, iLife will be separate.

 

[IJ Reilly]

hahha ok i get the point.. i just wanna know why it is a desperate measure? seems easy enough to me.. plus why not have control over your install instead of someone in asia?

Alex

I guess you were serious about the Windows remark. Maybe this is the source of the question.

Because reinstalling OSX is totally unnecessary and won't fix any problem that you are likely to have. I don't know what you mean by "control."

In fact if you get in the bad habit of reinstalling OSX every time you have a vague, generalized problem (without even trying anything else first!) then you will certainly be wasting a substantial amount of time -- and eventually, you will lose something you didn't want to lose. All risk, no reward.

 

[Wally]

i havent really used mine for much... i dont need to back anything up really except my music library which i can just send over to my external 160 gb harddrive.. it shouldnt take to long..

 

[IJ Reilly]

i havent really used mine for much... i dont need to back anything up really except my music library which i can just send over to my external 160 gb harddrive.. it shouldnt take to long..

However long it takes is too long. It's 100% wasted time and effort.

 

[minimax]

However long it takes is too long. It's 100% wasted time and effort.

Perhaps for experts but if you have a certain issue and don't know how to solve it it can be the fastest and most efficient solution.

 

[yenko]

why is it a desperate measure? i do it all the time with windows machines?

Alex

Yeah....but this is a............Mac.

You have other problems!
The reinstall will fix it but you should try to determine what's causing the problem rather than resorting to a "reinstall".

Maybe therapy.

Did you perform any hardware mods, i.e. RAM??

Software, especially FREE software installs?

Did you run your maintenance scripts, repair permissions, et al??

 

[abc123]

ilife will be there on the install disks as everyone has already mentioned.
did the powerbook come with tiger or did you buy it after?

when i did a fresh install of tiger recently i discovered that some of the applications i wanted (i think iphoto) were not on the included in the installer for all the other ilife stuff but were hidden on the panther install.

i used http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/12743 to extract the specific applications and solved my issues.

(sorry if that was confusing, i'm not sure that i used the right terminology to describe things)

 

[IJ Reilly]

Perhaps for experts but if you have a certain issue and don't know how to solve it it can be the fastest and most efficient solution.

No, not hardly! I never "get under the hood" of OSX, and I never use the terminal to do funny Unix stuff. My favorite diagnostic tool is simple, and free: AppleJack.

Trust me, you do not need to reinstall unless your hard drive has taken a dump!