Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Liquidity X · 11:22 PM

After reading all these threads about probems on os x panther after upgrades, and myself having about 3 perfect installs on wipe installs I was wondering if ti is really best to wipe install instead of upgrade?. So how goes yer panther experience? Based on the OS UPGRADE please vote bellow, this is the OS alone, so screw ups like broken 3rd party stuff (apps and hardware) doesn't count. just ease of install, no problems with apple software, speed increase, previous bugs in 10.2 fixed, etc. Thanx guys

::maroma:: · Oct 27, 2003, 11:36 PM

I did a wipe/install. Working like a champ. Not a single problem as of yet.

cmoney · Oct 27, 2003, 11:41 PM

Actually, my hard drive crashed the day before Panther's release so I overnighted a new drive from outpost.com and installed Panther on the new drive.

xi_hyperon · Oct 27, 2003, 11:43 PM

Did a wipe/install on my Powerbook and an archive/install on my Dual G4. Both are working just fine.

Cincinnatus · Oct 27, 2003, 11:49 PM

My installation just went ~flawlessly. I used Retrospect to backup my User data, and then selected the Upgrade option. First thing that I did during the installation was run DiskUtility, just to ensure that there weren't any malingering problems. That test having passed, I proceeded with the installation process, selecting Customize. I selected all of the printer drivers and deselected the iApps (as I already had the most up-to-date versions installed), and went ahead with the upgrade. All told, I'd say that it took about 45 min, from beginning to the end of installing XCode.

As far as speed goes - its hard to say. I'm on a G5, so any imperfections in 10.2.8 were rather muted. I now wish even more fervently that I could use a Mac at work, however, as the user experience just seems to keep getting better.

So, overall, this is probably the smoothest upgrade (from version 1.0 of the Finder, to 10.3). All of my apps work (Adobe PS, Illus., InDes, Macromedia MX suite, Toast 5.2.1, MS Office). All of my Classic apps work too, which is a plus.

If I could add, the only issues that I have are the expected ones: Norton Utilities 8, iChatAV doesn't recognize my Logitech 4000 via iChatUSB. Oh, and the build of fink provided qt3 libs was linked against the X11 beta - and I now have to recompile the qt package, but thats pretty far afield.

Hmm....yup, NWN, Q3 and UT2003 all run. I can't jude speed, though, as I am recompiling those pesky qt3 libs. I can post some benchmarks tomorrow - if I've time enough.

Maybe I just got lucky, or maybe my irrational need to be patched to the latest rev on everything paid off - its hard to tell

On a side note, AppleWorks takes about 3 sec to launch - fastest app I have, I think. If only Apple would update its page layout capabilities. Oh well... Actually, WMP seems to launch about as fast as QT player - first time for that in, well, forever.

The only feature that I'm not taking advantage of is File Vault. Encrypting 16GB to hide stuff from no-one (save my girlfriend) seems like a bit of a waste at the moment.

/Cincinnatus

Cory Bauer · Oct 28, 2003, 12:14 AM

I did a wipe/install on my home iMac, just because it need a good cleaning anyhow. On three of our six Macs at the office, we did simple upgrades over the existing systems and have had no problems. Those systems actually appear to have more of a performance boost than my iMac at home, but my iMac is the slowest machine of the bunch. There's nothing wrong with a simple upgrade over your existing system, unless your current system is flakey already.

neutrino23 · Oct 28, 2003, 02:11 AM

I did archive and install on three systems with only on minor and temporary problem.

iMac Graphite 600 - no problem
Pismo 500 - no problem
Quicksilver 867 - now OK
When I first tried to install on this machine it failed at the disk checking stage. It said there was an error and that I should try again. I'm not sure if the problem was with the HD or with the CD. The CD was quite noisy, much more so than any other CD I use. The second time through it worked fine.

By the way, I tried mounting a FW drive on Panther and it ran OK. The drive was not connected during install or restart.

threestain · Oct 28, 2003, 05:18 AM

did an upgrade on my Tibook, due to sheer lazness rather than anything else. Works well, though I haven't had time to fully put it through its paces yet.

Wet Jimmy · Oct 28, 2003, 05:33 AM

Wipe and Install here, and Panther works flawlessly. I can't imagine why anyone would install a new OS any way other than a format/re-install - and those that DON'T do it this way have no right to complain if things don't work correctly, I figure.

typoon · Oct 28, 2003, 06:10 AM

did a cleaning here as well. reformatted and re-installed. No problems here now. I found out one of my CD's was causing Kernel Panics. It only happened when I had that disk in the drive. Otherwise it's stable as I'd expect OS X to be.

rjenkinson · Oct 28, 2003, 06:22 AM

re-partitioned my drive with my 10.1 installer since panther's disk utility wouldn't let me create a small partition... then on with the install.

-r.

fmalloy · Oct 28, 2003, 12:12 PM

Originally posted by Wet Jimmy:
Wipe and Install here, and Panther works flawlessly. I can't imagine why anyone would install a new OS any way other than a format/re-install - and those that DON'T do it this way have no right to complain if things don't work correctly, I figure.

Um, why can't Apple design an installer that would properly replace files in such a way that an upgrade would work properly?

Don't you think that doing a full backup and erasing your drive is a little harsh when all you want to do is update your OS? When I worked at a major mainframe company, our biggest customer demanded the capability to update the OS without interrupting the running of the system. Think about that.

Should I have to rip out the seats and remove the tires and entire contents of my car to replace the engine?

redwood · Oct 28, 2003, 12:50 PM

Okay, I did the Archive/Install thing, and overall things are okay, but not perfect. On another machine we did an Archive/Intsall without the preserve settings and things are much better.

So what problems have I had:

1) Mail.app preferences. This is the biggie. The preferences between mail for jaguar and mail for panther are pretty significant and so is the preferences file, preserving that caused all types of havoc with my mail. Had to delete the preferences and re-do all my settings to get it back to normal. Not a single problem since then.

2) File-Vault. You can't exactly turn on file vault when you have 15 gigs of ripped CDs in your home directory on a powerbook unless you have a massive drive. On a Wipe/Clean install, you can turn on filevault _First_ then deal with restoring your backups, music, etc, it's just much cleaner.

3) Terminal app. Another preferences issue, but the app has been totally flaky with the old preferences. Another wipe and reset fixed this as well.

So those are the biggies for me since friday night. I have a sneaking suspicion that more gotchas are lurking for me in the form of bad preferences files and other things like that.

If I had to do it again, I'm not sure if I would change it. I actually kind of like getting to know the differences between the two OSes, but if I was more strapped for time, or if I had to recommend to a newbie, I would say, Wipe/Install.

elmer · Oct 28, 2003, 01:05 PM

Did the Upgrade install. Things are good. I managed to hang Photoshop Elements 2 for some reason and was unable to Force Quit. FileVault changed the ownership on all my files to root, so I'm not using that anymore. Dvorak keyboard mapping doesn't apply to the H and Q shortcuts in Cmd-Tab switching. Other than that, no problems. I was impressed that my Bluetooth mouse worked during the install.

kcmac · Oct 28, 2003, 01:12 PM

Upgrade install on 2 machines. 12" PB and an iMac 400 DVSE. All is good. Panther is a very good experience.

Wet Jimmy · Oct 28, 2003, 04:32 PM

Originally posted by fmalloy:
Um, why can't Apple design an installer that would properly replace files in such a way that an upgrade would work properly?

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you in PRINCIPLE - I just don't trust an OS "Upgrade". Too many factors for things to go wrong, and too many possible hiccups. In a perfect world it would be a transparent, seamless upgrade - but this ISN'T a perfect world and Panther isn't a perfect OS.

Perform an upgrade if you're that trusting, but for hassle free, stable computing, I think a format/reinstall is the best way to go. If you don't do that, don't complain when you riun into bugs.

jon_hh_68 · Oct 28, 2003, 05:23 PM

I was running 10.2.8 with Developer Tools installed, which was my boot volume. I also had another partition with 10.2.6 installed as my backup volume.

I first repaired permissions on my boot volume, restarted into my backup volume, used Disk Utility to repair the boot volume, restarted into my boot volume, and repaired permissions again.

Then, I did the default upgrade installation, just not installing the foreign language support.

Finally, I repaired permissions again on the upgraded volume.

Of course, I backed everything up first.

I have had zero problems and Panther runs great. I think if you have a good installation of Jaguar and do all this maintanance work prior to upgrading, things will work.

Boondoggle · Oct 28, 2003, 05:51 PM

the poll is inadequate. i did 2 wipe installs, and one archive install. All three worked fine, with 3 exceptions so far:

1: the wipe installs are a major hassle

2: on the archive install, bash was not set as the default shell in the terminal

3: on the archive install, I lost the ability to fax with Page Sender, and after re-installing page sender, could not add a printer without the printer utility crashing. Still can't fax w/Page Sender.

bd

SupahCoolX · Oct 28, 2003, 07:37 PM

I did an Archive/Install, and had some little troubles with syncing my Palm. I just reinstalled iSync and the Palm conduit, and am now good to go.

Terri · Oct 28, 2003, 07:49 PM

I just did an upgrade.

Everything is running great.

Mail kept on going into training mode for about the first hour, but that was the only problem.

I can not believe how much faster my 17" Powerbook is, simply amazing.

RooneyX · Oct 28, 2003, 08:07 PM

Upgrade, good. Those who wipe the disc, etc are just excuse makers. They tell you to do that when you're installation is screwed but it's not because of the upgrade, it's just digital corruption which can happy on any install.

With an upgrade you don't have to install all your apps again either. Oh, man. I hate reinstalling apps and drivers.

pinkjelly · Oct 30, 2003, 08:01 PM

i just did an upgrade install on my 12"PB and it's running fine. (i was too lazy to do a clean install

)

fhoubi · Oct 31, 2003, 06:40 AM

Upgrade/install (again) from 10.3, which was an unsuccesful upgrade/install from 10.2, which was an upgrade/install from 10.1 on my iBook 700 combo... No problems whatsoever, in the end. It is fast now.

My combodrive paniced when reading the 2nd install cd the first time, refusing to spin (I have this issue with dvd's once in a while but never with a cd before, go figure) and leaving the installer in the dust with a now non-bootable OS (blue screen, no login window) when I tried so.

Booting from the first cd, upgrade/install to 10.3 again went fine now the second time. Costed me more than 2 hours and almost a heart-attack.

Macpilot · Oct 31, 2003, 09:45 AM

Originally posted by Wet Jimmy:
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you in PRINCIPLE - I just don't trust an OS "Upgrade". Too many factors for things to go wrong, and too many possible hiccups. In a perfect world it would be a transparent, seamless upgrade - but this ISN'T a perfect world and Panther isn't a perfect OS.

Perform an upgrade if you're that trusting, but for hassle free, stable computing, I think a format/reinstall is the best way to go. If you don't do that, don't complain when you riun into bugs.

I agree 100%.

typoon · Oct 31, 2003, 10:34 AM

I did a reformat and re-install. I did an upgrade and had issues with it. one of my programs didn't let me enter the serial number even though I had the newest versiona and a legal/valid serial number. Also had minor other issues as well. After I did the reformat and re-install everything is good now.

pbjudge · Dec 18, 2003, 02:09 AM

Did a wipe/install on my iBook 600 and could not use classic at all. Said there was no funtional OS9 in the system folder. Tried reinstalling twice. Never worked.

Is it possible that you cannot do a wipe/install with the discounted Upgrade Panther discs that I got when I bought a PB?

I did an upgrade/install on my PB and later on the problematic iBook and both seem fine now. No problems so far....

- PJ