Erasing and re-installing Leopard before upgrading

Follow these instructions step by step to prepare a Mac for sale:

Step One - Back up your data:

A. If you have any Virtual PCs shut them down. They cannot be in their "fast saved" state. They must be shut down from inside Windows.

B. Clone to an external drive using using Carbon Copy Cloner.

1. Open Carbon Copy Cloner.

2. Select the Source volume from the Select a source drop down menu on the left side.

3. Select the Destination volume from the Select a destination drop down menu on the right

side.

4. Click on the Clone button. If you are prompted about creating a clone of the Recovery HD be

sure to opt for that.

Destination means a freshly erased external backup drive. Source means the internal

startup drive.

Step Two - Prepare the machine for the new buyer:

1. De-authorize the computer in iTunes! De-authorize both iTunes and Audible accounts.

2, Remove any Open Firmware passwords or Firmware passwords.

3. Turn the brightness full up and volume nearly so.

4. Turn off File Vault, if enabled.

5. Disable iCloud, if enabled: See What to do with iCloud before selling your computer.

Step Three - Install a fresh OS:

A. Snow Leopard and earlier versions of OS X

1. Insert the original OS X install CD/DVD that came with your computer.

2. Restart the computer while holding down the C key to boot from the CD/DVD.

3. Select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu; repartition and reformat the internal hard drive.

Optionally, click on the Security button and set the Zero Data option to one-pass.

4. Install OS X.

5. Upon completion DO NOT restart the computer.

6. Shutdown the computer.

B. Lion and Mountain Lion (if pre-installed on the computer at purchase*)

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because

it is three times faster than wireless.

1. Restart the computer while holding down the COMMAND and R keys until the Mac OS X

Utilities window appears.

2. Select Disk Utility from the Mac OS X Utilities window and click on the Continue button.

3. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the left side list. Click

on the Erase tab in the DU main window.

4. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on the Security button

and set the Zero Data option to one-pass.

5. Click on the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.

6. Quit DU and return to the Mac OS X Utilities window.

7. Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Install button.

8. Upon completion shutdown the computer.

*If your computer came with Lion or Mountain Lion pre-installed then you are entitled to transfer your license once. If you purchased Lion or Mountain Lion from the App Store then you cannot transfer your license to another party. In the case of the latter you should install the original version of OS X that came with your computer. You need to repartition the hard drive as well as reformat it; this will assure that the Recovery HD partition is removed. See Step Three above. You may verify these requirements by reviewing your OS X Software License.

The appropriate procedure in your case will revert the computer to its state new from the factory provided you have the original discs that came with the computer.

If you are certain that you have an operable, fully up-to-date TimeMachine backup, erase your hard drive, install from your CD and when asked if you want to migrate from an older system, point it to your TimeMachine volume. I don't see anything you've listed in your user folder that doesn't belong there, including the macromedia folder that Flash puts there. If you don't want Flash at all, then don't install it, but don't complain when you can't view videos on many web pages.

Socorro-Mac -> I've basically done what you did in efforts to resolve some other issues. I made a time machine backup, wiped my entire drive clean (fully formatted) and re-installed 10.6 from the DVD.

I then copied applications and the specific folders that I wanted, by hand, from the time machine backup drom an external drive. This does have some issues, but you shoul dbe able to circumvent them.

- When it comes to the adress book, you coiuld probably export an Adress Book Archive, storing your contacts in a separate file that you can, most likely, read back after re-install. Hence, no involvement of time-machine. This is available in most Apple Apps, you can export you mail account and your iCal calander as well.

- Your iTunes library, all or most of your imported iTunes media resides in the folder:

~/Music/iTunes Media/

In this folder you find Books, Movies, Music ....

You should be able to copy this folder to an external drive, then put it back on the new system, fire up iTunes and import the entire folder. This action will take a while, depending on the size of your library.

Applicaitons are tricky, both with timemachine and "by hand". If you "clone" or "restore" from backup, all is well. But if you put apps back by hand, from a copy or time machine backup, some files and licences might be lost, things that are not stored in the App package itself, that resides on other places in you harddrive. For instance, Microsoft Office Backup Manager does not reside in the Apps folder and will not work after a manual "copy-paste" action.

Do some research on the individual apps backup capabilities and how to restore their content from a backup.

Hope this helps.

// Gus

gusgrave wrote:

Socorro-Mac -> I've basically done what you did in efforts to resolve some other issues. I made a time machine backup, wiped my entire drive clean (fully formatted) and re-installed 10.6 from the DVD.

I then copied applications and the specific folders that I wanted, by hand, from the time machine backup drom an external drive. This does have some issues, but you shoul dbe able to circumvent them.

It's precisely because of these issues that I recommend using Migration Assistant instead of a manual copy. I understand that there is a small chance of restoring corruption to the user account, but having dealt with dozens of users on this, they are almost universally better off than trying to manually recover everything needed. That's what Migration Assistant is designed to do. A few years back I tried to Finder copy one user to this iMac and it took me weeks to get all the permissions straightened out. I won't ever make that mistake again.

Applicaitons are tricky, both with timemachine and "by hand". If you "clone" or "restore" from backup, all is well. But if you put apps back by hand, from a copy or time machine backup, some files and licences might be lost, things that are not stored in the App package itself, that resides on other places in you harddrive. For instance, Microsoft Office Backup Manager does not reside in the Apps folder and will not work after a manual "copy-paste" action.

If you suspect application corruption, then it is always best to restore those from original source rather than use Migration, Time Machine or Finder copy. That will put everything where it belongs except for preferences and licenses which, for the most part, will be restored as part of migrating the user accounts.

Socorro-Mac wrote:

Hi MadMac0

Q1) What if I had erase sth I shouldn't have ? -> Won't that be in the Time machine too?

sth?

Q2) There's a Terminal command we use to see if we're being controled by an outside party like a server; I did found it. Also. There's a command to get back to the machine with remote access to mine. I found it in the Terminal too, but couldn't access. In both cases I was asked a password. None that I have (mine, the Administrator Acc and the Root) worked. So, if I get back from a "clony copy or from Time Machine, will it be there again or will it be necessary a physical access to my machine?

Interesting, please post those commands when you get time. There are some tips in How to know if Mac OS X machine is being remotely viewed? which include some Terminal commands as well as other ideas.

It greatly depends on what was being used to access your machine. The easiest is to use the capabilities built in to OS X of Screen Sharing or Remote Management. Since these use a "VNC" server the remote party can use almost any VNC client to access you computer, but only if you give it permission. You should look in System Preferences->Sharing to see if either of these are checked. In fact, I would be suspicious of any boxes that are checked unless you understand why they are. If you migrate your user account to the new machine, these settings will be copied to it.

Another way your machine can be controlled is using the built in Unix structure of SSH. I am aware of a small vulnerability in this respect and at some point I applied a patch which is supposed to help, but I've forgotten the details.

Lastly, somebody could have installed a third party application capable of providing remote management if they had physical access to your machine. It is possible for malware to do the same thing through a Trojan backdoor, but there is no evidence that this is currently taking place in the wild. MacScan from SecureMac is good at finding these, but it also is known for producing false alarms, so if you use it be sure you aren't deleting something important. If you elect to migrate third party apps, then something like this could be copied to the new machine.

Everything you mention are signs of permission problems, which is precisely why I strongly recommended Migration. I struggled for months to get the user account on my wife's iMac straightened out because I tried to Finder copy everything over the network. That was about seven years ago and I can't even start to remember all I had to do.

Sorry.

Socorro-Mac wrote:

I don't know what you mean all the prblems. it's just one: iTunes.

You mentioned these "things" which could be caused by permission issues:

Bizarre things 1 day later:

1) I had a hard time to access my apple community and couldn't access menu bar options like "your stuff" .

2) I kept being asked by Little snitch to give internet access to Apple communities, in a specific port.

3) After reseting Safari, the cookies were still there.

Socorro-Mac wrote:

Hi Mad Mac !

I went to my old system TM back-up. I opened it manually with Finder > Application and transfered the iTunes.app to the Re-installed system.

Why would you do something like that rather than use the iTunesX installer? The app is only a small part of what is needed and I'm sure each part is matched to all the others. I couldn't even fit all the things you need to restore on this snapshot

There is a "CoreFP1.framework" in the same place as "CoreFP.framework"

Socorro-Mac wrote:

Hi Mad Mac !

In the package contect of the "iTunes.app" of TMbackup, there were things which worried me like: a framework for ipod without which my ITunes does NOT work. I do NOT even have an iPod. Never have.

iTunes is used to manage iPods (as well as iTouch/iPad/iPhones) so it needs to have this framework to be able to deal with them for users that have them. The one I see is called "iPodUpdater.framework" which will examine one's iPod, check for updates, download the update and upload it to the iPod.

There's an iTunes ASUHelper executable I couldn't find a function for + another iTunes executable (both in the 'Mac OS' folder). And another ASUSHelper in the iTunes 'Resources' folder.

Not sure what "iTunesASUHelper" does, but both it and "iTunes" are supposed to be there. Where do you see another "iTunes" executable other than in the MacOS folder?

I do not have an "ASUSHelper" in iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/ or anywhere else that I looked. Only the "iTunesASUHelper" in the MacOS folder.