On reinstalling OS X Leopard

Finally got the scanner working again

The short version goes something like: worth it in the end, but shouldn’uh hadtuh…

Longer version

Reinstalling Leopard using Erase and Install fixed every problem I listed a few weeks ago with the exception of vhosts which I had to recreate because of an architectural change in Leopard:

Airport connects on wake.

Mail.app syncs on wake.

VPN is working again.

Video artefacts have gone.

Safari has chilled out.

Command + Tab switching works.

My business is fast.

What I did:

Cloned startup disk using SuperDuper! and confirmed it was bootable.

Launched the installer, restarted and chose Erase and Install.

Created a new admin account.

Selectively copied user data for some (mostly-Apple) apps† and additional fonts using Adam Rosen’s guidelines.

Reinstalled additional applications from scratch‡ intentionally leaving the cruft behind.

Cloned the new startup disk, tested it and scheduled nightly backups.

Added the printer.

Added the scanner.

Blogged about it.

Would I recommend you do it if you have mad problems resulting from a regular upgrade? Yes. Should you have to? Nope. It’s just the price you pay for love-needing the Apple.

† Address Book, iCal, iTunes, Mail and Safari. I also had to boot back into my old system to export data from Address Book and Transmit.

‡ Coda, MAMP, MarsEdit, NetNewsWire, Photoshop, Quicksilver, TextWrangler, Tinkertool, Transmit and something nasty from Cisco related to VPN.

Related posts:

Shit got ill in the Leopard upgrade

NetNewsWire and me

SuperDo