Lion partial re-install

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Level 1

10 points

Lion partial re-install

Apparently I have lost all audio .plist files, thereby I have absolutely no audio from the built-in speakers. For some reason Lion isn't regenerating the files and the MIDI Utility does nothing but crash.

I am going to do a clean install when I get home. I've been shuffling this same setup through 2 Macs and who knows how many OSX versions since 2005 and I'm sure there are all kinds of weird things. Now, I would have to do a backup in my TimeMachine HDD when I'm home, but the problem is I feel like recovering from that backup would also bring back all corrupted files and system prefs I don't necesarily want back.

Is there any way to only recover certain things? For example I can re-install 99% of my software, but could I bring back my account settings for Outlook, etc; or would I just have to reset everything by hand?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), Core 2 Duo

Posted on May 31, 2012 6:50 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jun 1, 2012 4:03 PM in response to Inaki

After installing OSX on an empty volume, you can use Setup Assistant to transfer apps, user accounts and data from your backups.

You can omit some broad categories of things, but you can't "pick and choose" individual items. See Using Setup Assistant on Lion for the gory details.

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