Archive and Install in Snow Leopard?

there is no archive and install in snow leopard. there is just one install which is close to the old archive and install. it reinstalls SL over the current system and only archives a few things that the system thinks are incompatible. it's better and more reliable than the old archive and install.

Before I post a new question I thought I would ask you this, I recently had to do an archive and install Leopard then reinstalled Apps and SnowLeopard. When You go to Library to previous systems and I tried to drag and drop the contents of the previous systems files to where they were to go not all would let me. I received the you don't have permission to move some of the contents of this folder. Do I have to go in and change permissions on all of these individually to get the info back? This just seems odd.

Do not attempt to reinstall systems files from previous OS versions into Snow Leopard systems! They are not compatible.

I'm not sure that not having an "Archive and Install" option in 10.6 is better. It certainly does dumb down the choices, ironically just like Windows. In fact it's worse since now I'm stuck running sucky 10.6.3 with its lock up and drop out prone mouse and keyboard on my MBP with no straightforward way to go backwards.

I wanted to Archive & Install 10.6 to get a mostly clean copy of the system and then apply the combo patch to see if it makes things better but my only option is to erase and reinstall everything. Ironically, just like Windows. Or I get to restore the entire disk from TimeMachine and apply application and file changes since 10.6.3 came out. That ought to take me into next week...

To say I'm underwhelmed with Apple since 10.6 is an understatement.

Jay Berringer wrote:
I wanted to Archive & Install 10.6 to get a mostly clean copy of the system and then apply the combo patch to see if it makes things better but my only option is to erase and reinstall everything.

Nope. Just run the 10.6 installer again. That installs 10.6 again, replacing whatever version is currently installed. No need for an Archive & Install or that antiquated & mostly useless Previous Systems folder.

Thought using the installer won't overlay newer files from subsequent updates? Read that somewhere here abouts.

I don't care about the "Previous Systems" folder and just want a clean System folder. Then I can apply the 10.6.3 combo update and see if this problem with the hanging mouse and keyboard on my MBP goes away. If not I can repeat and go back to 10.6.2 until Apple gets its head and butt together.

The locking problem appears to involve AppleUSBMultitouch.kext, which in 10.6.3 went from version 204.9 to 204.12.1.

You seem a little confused about all this. You said you wanted to Archive & Install 10.6 to get a "mostly clean copy" of the system. That's exactly what just running the Snow Leopard installer again will do. An Archive & Install option would do that too, but (assuming it worked like the old one) it would also create a "Previous Systems" folder, move the old system to it, & deactivate it. There is no way to reactivate this archived previous system once deactivated, if that is what you were thinking -- it is just a way to preserve items that you might need to add back to the newly installed one later on, like third party extensions or a user folder if you opted not to preserve users during the A&I.

Note that you do not need to erase anything first unless you want to clean out everything, including user preferences, system settings, & anything else that might be causing the problem. This would be true even if an Archive & Install option was provided, since it doesn't clean out those things either.