restoring macbook will it delete programs

It all depends on what you are planning. Based on wanting to "restore to factory settings" and "start fresh," I am assuming you want to reinstall everything right down to the OS. In that case, you will lose everything and have to reinstall all the applications you have added over the years and restore all your data from backups.

I am not familiar with Serato but I can tell you CS3 doesn't like to moved around. How would you be backing them up?

Are you using Leopard and TimeMachine? Are you having any additional issues besides a full disk and "memory maxed out?"

Additionally, before you even consider upgrading to Snow Leopard or anything else, you will need to free up some space on your hard drive or you will encounter some very serious problems very quickly. The operating system needs an absolute minimum of at least 10 - 15% of total hard drive space available and empty at all times in order to operate properly. So, if your hard drive is 120 GB, you need about 20 GB free. So, please move some music, videos, or other space hogging files off your hard drive as quickly as possible. After you have some breathing room, the remainder of your plans can be addressed.

Dude, not to harp but you're in a bad spot backup wise. You never know when you may need to reinstall software or restore data. You should ALWAYS have the ability to do both at any time.... especially when you are performing maintenance or upgrading the OS! You really should find your software discs before proceeding.

If you're ballsy or have no choice, given your situation I would do the following:

1. Weed out your junk! Uninstall all the extra software you have collected that you don't really need or use.

2. Don't wait, organize your data now. Trash everything you don't need. Backup everything you do.

3. Repeat steps 1. and 2. until you have room again on your startup drive for Snow Leopard.

4. Update all your installed software and make sure it is Snow Leopard compatible.

5. Boot to the OSX Disc and scan your drive for errors and repair permissions

6. Pray

7. Install Snow Leopard

If you really feel you've de-junked your disk all you can and you still can't find the needed room, you're gonna have to upgrade your internal drive to a more appropriate size. It's not really that much more complicated when using drive cloning software and an external drive.

That is probably because you just dragged and copied stuff? That method does not delete it from your hard drive. If you want to have iTunes recognize its library in a different location, follow these instructions:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

Remember:

Dragging files and folders from one HD to another is copying them not moving them.

If you CONTROL + click on a file or folder and select "Get Info," it will tell you how much space it is taking up.

CS3 is huge. It was originally reported there are minor bugs in Photoshop and Dreamweaver under Snow Leopard and that Photoshop gets slower and slower the longer you work in it. I don't know if they have updated it since, though.

See: http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/

For CS3 you should be able to go to the help menu, deativate - keep the serial number and then redownload thew CS3 DMG an activate again.

Thanks for posting that link; I'd been looking for it and couldn't remember what it was called...

In any case, from what I've read CS3 and Snow Leopard do not work together (and that list appears to confirm that).

Sorry, I know nothing about music production or recording, but other space hogging suspects would be movies, videos, pics, etc.

You can follow these instructions for iMovie and iPhoto:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iMovie/9.0/en/mov3ac6d42c.html

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iPhoto/9.0/en/pht6d607c42.html

By the way, when you answer someone's post here, it's easier if you use the reply button of that person's post (rather than replying to yourself) - that way we know who you wish to address it to.