[PHoynak]

I am having some issues with my Mac Mini that I think would be solved with a fresh install of Snow Leopard. How do I do an erase and install without losing anything... I do have a Time Machine backup and also have my 245 GB worth of iTunes files on an external drive. If I use migration assistant to do this will I have to reinstall all of my applications and or re-register them?

Thanks

[Doc HM]

If you erase and install, you will be asked to restore from your time machine backup when you restart the mac after the new installation.

You should then end up with your old data etc all back in place.

[Doc HM]

p.
but before you go ahead, check what time machine is actually backing up. Not unheard of for people to do this and then remember that they had excluded their apps folder or some other useful folder from their TM backups. If you are doing this then go to the TM prefs in system prefs and remove any restrictions on what you are backing up (apart from system files, since time machine isn't bootable. Then let TM do another backup to collect the files from these folders.

Then archive and install.

[Cold Warrior]

SL doesn't have an archive-install option, at least using that terminology.