Should I reinstall my snowleopard discs??

[thesaint33]

Would it be a good or bad idea to try to reinstall my snowleopard operating system? I have been having problems with downloading programs, even firefox, I can't download! Will i lose my files? apps? and other stuff? how big a deal is it to reinstall so my mac will run better? I have everything backed up too... I just dont want to lose most of my files, pictures programs like CS5 and stuff.

 

[orvn]

If it's only Firefox that's the problem try to create a new Firefox profile and see how it functions.

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Managing-profiles#w_starting-the-profile-manager

An entire reinstall would require that you don't use Time Machine so that you don't copy the problem applications.. so you'd need to compartmentalize and individually back up all of your data to an external source (which will take a while). Don't forget to copy some of the preferences and stuff in your library folder if you have specific stuff that can't possibly be the problem.

 

[Sonhascome]

Yea, reinstalling the hard drive would be a nightmare. definitely go with the firefox reinstall first.

 

[old-wiz]

I had troubles with Firefox once and resolved it by creating a new profile. Mozilla provides instructions as noted by previous poster's link.

Once I created new profile I just re-imported bookmarks and all was well.