Restoring to fresh install without loosing installed programs.

[cromestant]

Hello, over the years I've installed many things on my mac, some which are just apps that I don't want to loose (lost serial numbers for instance...)
and others I do want to loose but mostly those are just under the hood things, like macports and others like it (a few versions of python etc...)

what I'm wondering is is there a way to reinstall the OS and then use time machine backups to just import the apps and docs, without it importing all the crud from previous installs (like old printer drivers etc...)

thanks in advance
Charles.

 

[briantology]

Not that I'm aware of.
Migration Assistant seems to be an all-or-none sort of proposition. You should be able to re-install apps from a Time Machine backup though, you just might have to copy over a bunch of behind-the-scenes plist and other app files to the right place.