Is it safe to simply reinstall Leopard?

[timmy2]

I'm a PC guy being asked to help a Mac-owning friend. Her G5 running Leopard is acting very squirrely: iTunes keeps forgetting its tunes and complaining about damaged libraries (even after a uninstalling the old and installing the newest version); Photoshop crashes when scrolling through a folder of pictures (I moved them to a different drive and that solved it, but...), and other odd behaviors. She messed up the configuration of TimeMachine a while back and says lots of stuff seemed to go wrong after that. She has 2 internal drives and I noticed that some of her apps, like Quicken, appear to be installed on the second drive. Data files appear to be strewn about everywhere.

Her fellow Mac friends said the system needs the OS re-installed. On a PC the best approach is to reformat the drive and do a clean install. Is this advisable on a Mac -- especially this one?

Thanks!

[nixgeek]

Regardless, make sure that this person's documents and other personal files are backed up.

Once that's done, you could just perform an "Erase and Install" and that would wipe the drive clean and install OS X. However, you would also have to make sure that the person isn't attached to any apps that she might not be able to reinstall due to lack of discs or whatnot. If this is an issue, the better option would be to perform an "Archive and Install." This will basically replace the System folder that's on there now with a fresh one, while leaving her documents and applications intact. There should be a folder entitled "Previous System" or something of that nature after the "Archive and Install" installation is finished.

Personally, I would perform the "Archive and Install" option first and see if things get better from there on. If not, then take it to the next level.

[timmy2]

I greatly appreciate your reply. I assume A&I is a menu option available when booting the Leopard DVD, and that it creates the Previous System folder. As I said, being a Windows beast, when a system seems very corrupted I favor a "bare metal reinstall".

Given the weird behaviors of iTunes and Photoshop, the fact that I saw Quicken and some other program folders on the 2nd hard drive, and her statements that "all kinds of things went wrong" and "files would no longer save" after she tried using TimeMachine considered all together sounds like fairly widespread corruption to me... IF it were a Windows PC. I don't know enough about Macs to have a sense for what an A&I install can accomplish.

Is it sensible to try the A&I to see if the symptoms all go away, and then resort to the E&I if some of them remain -- is that the conventional wisdom amongst Mac experts?

Thanks again!

[nixgeek]

Your assumption is correct. It will show up as an option, but only if you click on the "Customize" button that appears before the installation begins. I haven't installed Leopard yet on anything, so my information is based on Tiger and earlier. However, I'm sure the selections should be the same in Leopard.

I usually prefer a fresh installation as well, even on my Macs, but there comes a time when that's not an option even in the Windows world. I personally use that as a last resort option, since it might involve leaving the user without applications that they had once before. It's assumed that the user would have kept the installation discs for the apps, but this isn't always the case. Still, a fresh installation does rule out problems that might have been there before. Thankfully, A&I also does this without being extremely destructive.

Usually with applications on the Mac, the applications are self-contained (they're actually "executable folders" if you look closely), meaning they shouldn't be leaving traces of themselves in other places of the operating system (as Windows does with DLL files). This means that installing apps and deleting apps on the Mac is as simple as dragging the app icon to the Applications folder or to the Trash, respectively. You don't necessarily need to have applications residing in the Applications folder for them to work, either. One can easily drag an application icon over to one's home folder or another drive and it will work without a hitch.

The only time something might arise is if the application was put in there by an installer, specifically one that has a tendency to treat the Mac as if it were Windows by installing files in places other than the application bundle itself. This is a rare instance, but it does exist unfortunately.

I recommend doing an A&I and see if things get better on her Mac. If the problems still exist, then it might be time to start from scratch.

Incidentally, Time Machine might be another way to revert things back to when things were working, but she might lose any files created or apps installed after that particular snapshot, possibly even updates installed since then. I haven't played with Time Machine, but I assume these are things to consider.

[nixgeek]

One other thing to try as well before even doing the A&I is to repair permissions through Disk Utility. You can even do a repair on the drive when booted up from the installation disc by using the Disk Utility from there (you can't repair a system drive with Disk Utility if you're booted from it, BTW). To take it even further, you might want to run a tool called OnyX and run some of the maintenance script options included there.

Also, if she's got less than 10% free space on the hard drive, this might be the root of all her problems. Mac OS X usually likes to have no less than 10% free space on the hard drive available.