[gregory85]

Is there any way of resetting a G4 back a couple of days to fix a mistake i made??

I've recently aquired a Mac off a friend, who i think partiotioned the memory (if thats correct). It shows 3 different hard drives on the desktop, but a pop up keeps telling me the startup disk is nearly full.

Now i've found what 1 of the 3 drives is the startup disk (the memory saying 27.3mb), and i've tried moving some of the data into the other drives (which are both displaying over 5gb of memory each) which has resulted in a lot of the programs installed not running atall.

Any help would be much appreciated if there is a way of turning the clock back or removing the partitons please share some info!

thanks

[Big Mac]

He partitioned the space on the hard drive. With Leopard's disk utility (or Tiger's command line disk utility) you can resize partitions, but otherwise you'll have to erase and reinstall.

[gregory85]

thanks for the info,
one more thing in terms of uninstalling software is it a case of simply deleting the files off the desktop or is there an uninstall wizard? i have looked but can't see anything just wondered if it was hidden?

[Big Mac]

Correct, no uninstaller is needed.

[peeb]

It sounds like your friend had a fairly personalized settup - I'd be tempted to do an archive and install to clean this up.

[gregory85]

OK, so how would i do the above? i'm just getting used to the Mac interface so any pointers would be much appreciated

[bowwowman]

What machine, what OS, did your friend give you the install disks for whatever OS is on the machine now, and is that the OS you want to have/keep on there ????? ...............

If you have the install disk, insert it into the optical drive, let it mount on the desktop, then click "Install OS X.xxx....whatever. the machine will restart & boot up from the disk. Follow the prompts until you get to the one that asks you what type of install you want:

A) Erase & install: just what it says, the entire HD is erased, including your existing data/apps/files, and a brand new copy of the OS will be installed.

B) Archive & install: all your data, home folder and files will be archived, but all of the core OS components are reinstalled.

Once rebooted into the new OS and running it for a few days to be certain it is working properly, then look for a folder called "previous system" and drag all of your data & files over to the new OS, and trash anything you dont want to keep as well as the actual "previous system" folder itself. Do NOT do 1 massive "drag & drop" for everything, but instead move things over 1 at a time & reboot to be sure each item/app/file is working properly before adding the next. Been there, done that, never again

Depending on the OS version, some of the choices names may vary a bit, but just read the fine print.
Some older applications may or may not work with DND, you might have to reinstall them from the original CD's or download them again if thats how they got there originally.......

ps..... if you were expecting something like Windblow's "restore point", it did not exist within OS X until 10.5 came out in Oct.... it's called "Time Machine"

And BTW, do not EVER let your startup drive get that full again. You should always have at least 15% free space for OS X to use as virtual memory. If not, then it starts behaving really, really strange, and just don't wanna go there

[peeb]

JUst a small point, time machine does not give all the functionality of restore point, which can be really helpful if you totally hose things on a windows machine. Of course, I've never actually totally hosed things on a Mac...