[MB007]

Hi Guys..

I need some help for my father with his mac...

he has an "old" (guess 5 years old) g4 powerbook 30 GB HD and he has a lot of conflicts on his computer..

he likes to stay up to date with the OS upgrades but from what i can see does he has parts of different versions cluttered up on his hd...

and i guess that the problem begins there...

so what i was thinking off...

save all data on his firewire external hd of 60 gb and than "format" his disk and install the new tiger on there...

but now does he (my father) has a few questions about that:

1: is this possible?? reformatting a Mac ??

2: what with all "old" programs that used to run under "classic mode" ?? will they still run under the newest Tiger??
he is running some ProAcc bookkeeping system and he doesn't want to do without it... according to him does he now has to load first OS 9.2.2 before that proggie want to run??

3: he also has licensed versions of photoshop/ pagemaker and a lot of other proggies and he wants to know if they all will run on this Tiger??

4: He also has his questions about a lot of proggies that seem to do the same thing on his computer.. examples virex and norton ?? diskwarrior and norton utitlities?? do we need to keep all of them or can we just keep the original once who come with the OS?? or is it better to install norton for example??
he also has 4 different browsers on his mac and they all have their strange things happening.. with IE he can visit most sites but on some of them he just hangs.... with firefox he can access his banks site... with netscape he can access his banksites without any problem but most other sites are a mess with it ..

5: any idea where bookmarks and email adresses and things like that are hiding on amac so we can copy them to the external data disk??
are there special proggies to do this??

so if you guys could help us out by answering these questions than i might begin to try to get his machine up to date...
and working in normal condition...

greetz
MB007

[d.fine]

1: yes
2: yes, there is a Classic mode in Tiger, and lets you start a Classic environment to run programs that require it
3: Don't know about the progs
4: -

If you do Archive and Install it will keep all your data, and install a fresh copy of Tiger, making a 'Previous System' folder where the previous OS will be. It will also migrate all your settings, like users, mail settings, safari...
It is still recommended to make a backup to the external HD. You can use Carbon Copy Cloner to do this. It allows you to make a bootable backup on the external HD, so you can boot your Mac from it should something go wrong. It will also have all your data and settings/preferences.
With an external backup you can do a 'Clean Install' from the CD/DVD, that will erase the drive and install a fresh copy of TIger. You can then import settings, mail and other from the external HD.
This has been my experience so far, and it has worked for me, but wait for more reply's from people with more expience. Good luck...

[MB007]

thanks already for this answer..

my father also asked me if it was possible to merge two user accounts...
for the moment the powerbook has 2 usernames which are basicly the same and my father would like to get them together in one single username...

thanks in advance
MB007