repairing a child-damaged leopard with snow leopard?

[fireplace]

this is probably a problem unique to me!

I have a 20" imac 2.4 alu. it came with tiger but I upgraded to leopard when it came out but i have totally lost the upgrade disks (yes, i know, very poor show but we have just had the builders in and i think it went in a crate to the tip by mistake).

I then let my 4-year-old onto my imac..........oops!

i created a user account for him with locks etc. but one day about 3 months ago I still managed to hear a 'dadeeeee' from the computer desk and the mac was in the middle of a major shutdown. To his credit, he had worked out how to get into iphoto and watch video clips all on his own and been doing so for at least 6 months previously.

after 20 mins it rebooted but without his user account.

ever since it takes 10 mins from shutdown to get to the user login and then another 5 to actually login. switch user now takes 10 mins. but at least on one user sleep/wake is as quick as usual.

still awake?

i am pinning my hopes on an upgrade to SL fixing this. Any wizards out there know if i am on the right track or peeing into the wind? applecare has long expired

ta.

 

[bpd115]

Clean install and just recreate the accounts.

You could try migrating just your user account over.

 

[jackiecanev2]

Wirelessly posted (BB 8900: BlackBerry8900/4.6.1.250 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/301)

+1 on the clean install. It is def an OS/software issue and not a hardware issue. No need to fret about not having applecare.

 

[fireplace]

i only have the tiger install disks, my wife uses the imac too (typing this on my macbook) i don't want to lose her stuff which is time-machined. i fear that a reinstall of tiger and attempted upgrade to SL will go tits-up.

mac helpline only suggested buying a new copy of leopard

 

[bpd115]

If her stuff is time machined, then you won't lose a thing. You don't have to install tiger to go to snow leopard.

The Snow Leopard disk will let you wipe the drive using disk utility, from there you install snow leopard to the now blank drive.

After the Snow Leopard install completes, it will ask you if you want to restore accounts from a time machine backup, another mac on your network, etc.

Pick the Time Machine backup, choose what you want to restore and you're done.