Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning and thanks for listening to what I am sure will be a long post. A little background:
My computer recently started acting very strangely with near 5 min boot times, 1-2 min user switching, and sometimes it even stops responding when switching tabs within safari. I think it may have been corrupted when trying several times to install a program (iBank). I've tried all the troubleshooting tips from this forum and others, including resetting PRAM/smu, booting in safe mode (took longer than a normal boot), disconnecting cable/peripherals, etc. I'm down to reinstalling the OS. Here are a few questions.
1) When I purchased the computer in Nov 07, leopard was downloaded as a "free upgrade" with my purchase. My installation disks have Tiger on them...how do I go reinstalling Leopard without having to pay for it? Does Mac support have my info?
2) After the erase and install, how easy is it to get my itunes/iphoto libraries back to the computer? They are now backed up on an external "clone" of the HDD using "SuperDuper." Is it as simple as copy paste or import library? Do all the licenses come over with it?
I am used to reinstalling Windows OS but didn't think I would have to do this to the Mac. My wife, the computer engineer, has had multiple instances of reinstalling windows and then there was corruption with her "documents" that she wanted to bring over so she lost them all. Does Mac work the same or are the OS/registry files completely independent of the stored documents (ie: word, excel, iTunes, etc) on the hard drive.
As you can tell, I am a little skeptical...
thanks so much for your help.
Good morning and thanks for listening to what I am sure will be a long post. A little background:
My computer recently started acting very strangely with near 5 min boot times, 1-2 min user switching, and sometimes it even stops responding when switching tabs within safari. I think it may have been corrupted when trying several times to install a program (iBank). I've tried all the troubleshooting tips from this forum and others, including resetting PRAM/smu, booting in safe mode (took longer than a normal boot), disconnecting cable/peripherals, etc. I'm down to reinstalling the OS. Here are a few questions.
1) When I purchased the computer in Nov 07, leopard was downloaded as a "free upgrade" with my purchase. My installation disks have Tiger on them...how do I go reinstalling Leopard without having to pay for it? Does Mac support have my info?
2) After the erase and install, how easy is it to get my itunes/iphoto libraries back to the computer? They are now backed up on an external "clone" of the HDD using "SuperDuper." Is it as simple as copy paste or import library? Do all the licenses come over with it?
I am used to reinstalling Windows OS but didn't think I would have to do this to the Mac. My wife, the computer engineer, has had multiple instances of reinstalling windows and then there was corruption with her "documents" that she wanted to bring over so she lost them all. Does Mac work the same or are the OS/registry files completely independent of the stored documents (ie: word, excel, iTunes, etc) on the hard drive.
As you can tell, I am a little skeptical...
thanks so much for your help.