huge re-install question

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Ynought

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So you might have seen my earlier thread about having to reinstall my operating system. I've finally managed to get leopard up and running. I stored all my old files on an external hard drive. I'm now wondering what I need to do to get my old preferences. The two things I mainly concerned with are:

1) Keychain access: Is there a way to restore my keychain to or to copy the keychain folders over so that I have passwords that I've forgotten (of course I forgot them, isn't that what keychain is for?)

B) Pop mail with Mail: I'm afraid that my mailboxes will not be the same as before. I also have a feeling that Mail will download *all* my Gmail emails and mark them as unread. Is there anything I can do to restore my Mail account?

I sincerely appreciate *any* help what so ever and welcome any recommendations for other apps from those that have run into my predicament. Hopefully this weekend killing ordeal will be over soon and I'll be able to enjoy leopard.

Thanks in advance.
 
When I installed Leopard, last friday, I did a clean format and new install.
Then I just fired up "Migration Assistant" and set it to import only my User account and my Network settings.
Things went very smoothly all my mail was brought in, my network all came up, and as I reinstall each software app, all of the apps previous settings seem to still be in order.
Over-all I couldn't be happier.
And as a bonus Leopard seems to have wings on my PBP.

jb.
 
I ran into the blue screen upgrade problem and ended up doing a glean install after backing everything up to an external drive. Since the external drive isn't a "bootable device" Migration Assistant won't work. However, you can easily copy back your settings and preferences once the OS is installed. There are a few things that don't exactly work perfectly, but most things transfer over without any trouble. All of my mail and numerous accounts, as well as mail preferences, worked perfectly. All my Adobe application registrations were hosed, as were about half of the Adobe preferences. Unfortunately, Adobe stuff has been like that forever. So, no surprise there. Keychains moved and remembered passwords, Desktop and Finder prefs remained unharmed. The only thing you need to be really careful of is Application Enhancer or APE. If you don't know what it is, you probably don't have it. If you do have it, don't transfer it or its related files back to the machine. Other than that, it should all be fine. Just make sure you have your home directory and any preferences that live at the system level backed up and you should be good to go.

j
 
Sounds good. So it sounds like I'll be coping Library files from the external HD to my Mac. Any other files?

BTW, thanks a ton for the response.
 
I copied my entire home directory. Then, when I was copying it back from the hard drive to my laptop, I copied everything except the Library directory, and then brought in the Library items one group at a time (as I still didn't know which file(s) were causing the startup issues). In some cases, you won't be able to bring in an entire subdirectory (like Fonts), as it will tell you that Fonts is in use by the system. In those cases, you'll have to copy the contents in to the corresponding subdirectory. It can be a little tedious, but the results are worth it in terms of still having all your stuff AND having it all work.

j
 
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