What is this mythical beast called a "clean install," and what does it do that a regular install does not?
A "clean install" erases one's boot drive and installs the OS from scratch, instead of upgrading on top of the previous OS.
What it does is it gives a "want-to-be-know-it-all" a term with which he can try to sound like he knows more than the next person. Some "want-to-be-know-it-alls" will answer a question about a problem with an OS upgrade problem by giving the excuse, "well, if you didn't do a clean install, you were just asking for trouble."
I second-guess myself looking for better ways to do things, quite often. But I'm still not convinced that a clean install is better than an upgrade and I won't participate in a debate about it.
I've been hearing a lot of complaints against SL performance and stability. I slapped my MacPro with Snow Leopard since day one and its been solid as a rock. I haven't seen any application crashes yet even in 64-bit kernel mode. Safari works as expected, 7 tabs consuming 530MB out of my 18GB.
A friend of mine had a positive experience with his Unibody Macbook and said RAW images loads much faster. But his co-worker with the same model had a bad time with it saying its unstable and applications crash most of the time.
My theory is that the upgrade breaks application components, preferences overload, residual caches and component version incompatibilities(SL is a code rewrite) causes the systems engine running in thick sludge of rotten binary bits.
To test that theory, I recently bought a MacMini back in June(came with 10.5.6) then upgraded it to Snow Leopard. And I already had all my apps installed. Upon using it, it was so slow and sluggish. iTunes icon had to jump 13 times compared to 4 times in 10.5.8. So I wiped it with Clean Install, lo and behold it was just as fast Leopard. Some cases even a tad faster like Quicktime X played 1080p movies smoothly and iTunes icon jumped 3 times.
It's funny, Schillers own PR campaign against windows was because users were going to have to do a fresh reinstall.... Go figure.
Reinstalling SL takes about 40 mins and preserves all users, documents and applications as well as most application settings.
Reinstall windows and your down for a weekend working from backups, re-installs, and then resetting everything up. Backups work great but they usually bring back the problems you were having that caused the reinstall of the OS.
I've migrated my (Mac Users - meaning ME and my user accounts on my system) more than 20 times since Panther from MANY MANY machines. I've never lost a thing. I've been in IT and do more training every year (taking in) than most in the industry and I still can't get a Windows migration as perfect as Apple does and they do it in less than 2hrs.
Some applications in Windows you CAN'T install once you've upgraded the OS to current Updates without installing the App updates. Problem is you can't install the App until SOME updates have been run and the APP updates will not run on a bare bone install. Talk about a Catch 22. OS X has similar issues (Looking at you Filemaker) but these are vastly easier to fix, call the software company and speak to an American who is not only willing to help but will do it at NO COST (I'm looking at you SAP, Intuit, Microsoft, Dell, HP, ACER... )
It needs to get better and it will get better. It's still a very new OS. It still has a lot of problems. 10.5 was also pretty bad for a few months. 10.6 will without doubt be the most stable and impressive Apple OS ever.
I recently bought a MacMini back in June(came with 10.5.6) then upgraded it to Snow Leopard. And I already had all my apps installed. Upon using it, it was so slow and sluggish. iTunes icon had to jump 13 times compared to 4 times in 10.5.8. So I wiped it with Clean Install, lo and behold it was just as fast Leopard.
Your experience parallels mine. I have a medium amount of experience administering about a dozen Macs in a small office. When it comes to changing cats, it's often easier to troubleshoot if you start fresh. I've honed this process down to the point where I don't dread it anymore. But it seems to be a fact that a lot of problems can be solved simply by starting fresh.
Also, running lean and clean makes a difference as well. The more you change the way the Mac was designed to work, the more likely you will encounter surprises when upgrading.
I also agree that Apple manages this process very well. I just spent hours screwing around with a PC trying to get it to print to a newly installed printer. Not even an OS upgrade. Just a printer. Fail.
Reinstalling SL takes about 40 mins and preserves all users, documents and applications as well as most application settings.
Reinstall windows and your down for a weekend working from backups, re-installs, and then resetting everything up. Backups work great but they usually bring back the problems you were having that caused the reinstall of the OS.
No, your documents and applications are not preserved when you do a clean install on a Mac. Upgrading over Leopard will do that, I have MBP that I did that with and it works OK, but there is still beach balls in Finder and Safari that in some cases are frustrating to say the least. I've got an iMac that I did a clean install and I have the same issues so I don't think clean installs are going to fix much if anything.
The thing is, I did use the guest account since I found it pretty useful when I have visitors. I actually have turned it off for now, but surely you can acknowledge that the existence of a bug that could lose you all your data is a pretty big one. If Microsoft had a bug like this, everyone on this board would be up in arms!
In those situations I would just create a user account (normal user), and avoid the guest account until it's resolved.
The only difference is that the account won't auto-wipe when your done with it, but it can always be deleted if you feel the need.
I've run it both ways. I initially did a clean install with SL when it first came out, but later found it it had hosed my VMWare Fusion audio, so I had to revert. I then did a 'clean' install of leopard when I fell back.
I later got tired of waiting for a fix and created a new smaller partition for a clean install of leopard and upgraded my larger leopard partition to SL. A dual-boot setup with SL and Leopard running on the same hard drive.
I haven't experienced any problems on any of these. I'm actually curious if I can use the same 'apps' folder for both installs rather than re-installing everything on the old leopard partition.
In any case, no problems or crashes using either setup.
I can definitely see where a clean install would be the best case scenario. No conflicting legacy software. It would filter that sort of thing out when you re-install.
On a side note, does everyone just back up everything? I tend to keep an app archive folder that I can quickly re-install everything from, and just back up user data. That way I don't end up restoring old software.
I assume that's the isolated memory model. It uses much more memory then you might consider 'normal'. That's to prevent the entire browser from crashing due to a bad 'tab'. It keeps each tab isolated to it's own memory space (no shared memory).
A "clean install" erases one's boot drive and installs the OS from scratch, instead of upgrading on top of the previous OS.
Sorry, it was a smartass rhetorical question. "Clean install" is not one of the available options. Other than a standard upgrade, you've got "Archive and Install" and "Erase and Install." (The latter especially is both dangerous and a waste of time, but I don't blame you for not wanting to debate the merits.) I bring it up for another reason, which is that I hear the advice for doing a "clean install" constantly and I pity the poor novice who tries to follow it.
Migrating from 10.4 to 10.5 was smooth like butter....
Nothing crash as often as I am today with 10.6....
Fresh install might be a solution, but never had to do a clean install from 10.3 to 10.4 and then to 10.5....
So, now? I have to? Systems hangs most of them time under 10.6.... and I always have Activity Monitor open to monitor what's going on, and most of the time, it's either because Free memory goes to less than 100MB...
BTW, I have 4GB RAM DDR3 from Factory on my current Unibody MBP
There are several times programs showing red with not responding and this happened once in a while in 10.5, but it's happening several times per day under 10.6
Right now at this moment I have only 6 tabs under Safari, and the memory is taking close to 600MB (Real Memory) and under 62MB from Flash Player (Safari Plug-in)....
And in the past running 10.5, I hardly ever had to restart my MBP.... now with 10.6 I am force to do so several times per week, because the system does not response...
Especially after coming back from sleep mode or hibernation mode (secure sleep mode)...
Try shutting off Time Machine, if you are using it, and see if that helps.
You notice improvement and enhancement.... So far Leopard is the best, and Snow Leopard sucks...
Crash all the time, and make everything else crash...
And has become like Microsoft Windows, whopping tons of memory for nothing....
Worst OS by far....
Leopard is the best....
Snow Leopard is the worst OS upgrade by Apple by far. A 483 update. Why not just call it the next OS release 10.7. Warning to those who haven't upgraded. I suggest waiting for a real OS, not this junk. I lost access to my apache server, and it's costing me job offers. Why not break it up so we can get some of the more immediate "Windows" like PATCHES. Thanks for the heartache.
Snow Leopard is the worst OS upgrade by Apple by far. A 483 update. Why not just call it the next OS release 10.7. Warning to those who haven't upgraded. I suggest waiting for a real OS, not this junk. I lost access to my apache server, and it's costing me job offers. Why not break it up so we can get some of the more immediate "Windows" like PATCHES. Thanks for the heartache.
You do realize you can simply downgrade? No one forces you to upgrade. If it's causing you that much grief, simply downgrade until they resolve whatever issues your having.
I just created a second partition so that I could keep up to date on both. Makes it easy to tell when they address whatever issues I'm having.
What is all of this complaining about? I personally find Snow Leopard to be the best bang for $29 I've ever spent.
I'm not sure what everbodies problems are, some even sound like hardware, but I've found SL to be very fast and reliable. Fast being the important element.
One thing I can reccomend to everyone is to update their software especially third party apps.
Comments
What is this mythical beast called a "clean install," and what does it do that a regular install does not?
A "clean install" erases one's boot drive and installs the OS from scratch, instead of upgrading on top of the previous OS.
What it does is it gives a "want-to-be-know-it-all" a term with which he can try to sound like he knows more than the next person. Some "want-to-be-know-it-alls" will answer a question about a problem with an OS upgrade problem by giving the excuse, "well, if you didn't do a clean install, you were just asking for trouble."
I second-guess myself looking for better ways to do things, quite often. But I'm still not convinced that a clean install is better than an upgrade and I won't participate in a debate about it.
Are you running it on a Psystar machine?
Gearhunter you win this forum... your comment really made me chuckle.
A friend of mine had a positive experience with his Unibody Macbook and said RAW images loads much faster. But his co-worker with the same model had a bad time with it saying its unstable and applications crash most of the time.
My theory is that the upgrade breaks application components, preferences overload, residual caches and component version incompatibilities(SL is a code rewrite) causes the systems engine running in thick sludge of rotten binary bits.
To test that theory, I recently bought a MacMini back in June(came with 10.5.6) then upgraded it to Snow Leopard. And I already had all my apps installed. Upon using it, it was so slow and sluggish. iTunes icon had to jump 13 times compared to 4 times in 10.5.8. So I wiped it with Clean Install, lo and behold it was just as fast Leopard. Some cases even a tad faster like Quicktime X played 1080p movies smoothly and iTunes icon jumped 3 times.
My suggestion is to do a clean install.
That's just plain wrong. Snow Leopard is the best Mac OS so far.
It's funny, Schillers own PR campaign against windows was because users were going to have to do a fresh reinstall.... Go figure.
Reinstalling SL takes about 40 mins and preserves all users, documents and applications as well as most application settings.
Reinstall windows and your down for a weekend working from backups, re-installs, and then resetting everything up. Backups work great but they usually bring back the problems you were having that caused the reinstall of the OS.
I've migrated my (Mac Users - meaning ME and my user accounts on my system) more than 20 times since Panther from MANY MANY machines. I've never lost a thing. I've been in IT and do more training every year (taking in) than most in the industry and I still can't get a Windows migration as perfect as Apple does and they do it in less than 2hrs.
Some applications in Windows you CAN'T install once you've upgraded the OS to current Updates without installing the App updates. Problem is you can't install the App until SOME updates have been run and the APP updates will not run on a bare bone install. Talk about a Catch 22. OS X has similar issues (Looking at you Filemaker) but these are vastly easier to fix, call the software company and speak to an American who is not only willing to help but will do it at NO COST (I'm looking at you SAP, Intuit, Microsoft, Dell, HP, ACER... )
It needs to get better and it will get better. It's still a very new OS. It still has a lot of problems. 10.5 was also pretty bad for a few months. 10.6 will without doubt be the most stable and impressive Apple OS ever.
I recently bought a MacMini back in June(came with 10.5.6) then upgraded it to Snow Leopard. And I already had all my apps installed. Upon using it, it was so slow and sluggish. iTunes icon had to jump 13 times compared to 4 times in 10.5.8. So I wiped it with Clean Install, lo and behold it was just as fast Leopard.
Your experience parallels mine. I have a medium amount of experience administering about a dozen Macs in a small office. When it comes to changing cats, it's often easier to troubleshoot if you start fresh. I've honed this process down to the point where I don't dread it anymore. But it seems to be a fact that a lot of problems can be solved simply by starting fresh.
Also, running lean and clean makes a difference as well. The more you change the way the Mac was designed to work, the more likely you will encounter surprises when upgrading.
I also agree that Apple manages this process very well. I just spent hours screwing around with a PC trying to get it to print to a newly installed printer. Not even an OS upgrade. Just a printer. Fail.
Reinstalling SL takes about 40 mins and preserves all users, documents and applications as well as most application settings.
Reinstall windows and your down for a weekend working from backups, re-installs, and then resetting everything up. Backups work great but they usually bring back the problems you were having that caused the reinstall of the OS.
No, your documents and applications are not preserved when you do a clean install on a Mac. Upgrading over Leopard will do that, I have MBP that I did that with and it works OK, but there is still beach balls in Finder and Safari that in some cases are frustrating to say the least. I've got an iMac that I did a clean install and I have the same issues so I don't think clean installs are going to fix much if anything.
The thing is, I did use the guest account since I found it pretty useful when I have visitors. I actually have turned it off for now, but surely you can acknowledge that the existence of a bug that could lose you all your data is a pretty big one. If Microsoft had a bug like this, everyone on this board would be up in arms!
In those situations I would just create a user account (normal user), and avoid the guest account until it's resolved.
The only difference is that the account won't auto-wipe when your done with it, but it can always be deleted if you feel the need.
I later got tired of waiting for a fix and created a new smaller partition for a clean install of leopard and upgraded my larger leopard partition to SL. A dual-boot setup with SL and Leopard running on the same hard drive.
I haven't experienced any problems on any of these. I'm actually curious if I can use the same 'apps' folder for both installs rather than re-installing everything on the old leopard partition.
In any case, no problems or crashes using either setup.
I can definitely see where a clean install would be the best case scenario. No conflicting legacy software. It would filter that sort of thing out when you re-install.
On a side note, does everyone just back up everything? I tend to keep an app archive folder that I can quickly re-install everything from, and just back up user data. That way I don't end up restoring old software.
480MB? Holy frak!
I assume that's the isolated memory model. It uses much more memory then you might consider 'normal'. That's to prevent the entire browser from crashing due to a bad 'tab'. It keeps each tab isolated to it's own memory space (no shared memory).
In those situations I would just create a user account (normal user), and avoid the guest account until it's resolved.
The only difference is that the account won't auto-wipe when your done with it, but it can always be deleted if you feel the need.
That's a good idea! That said, I've no visitors between now and the next update, so I'll hopefully just be able to turn on the guest account again.
A "clean install" erases one's boot drive and installs the OS from scratch, instead of upgrading on top of the previous OS.
Sorry, it was a smartass rhetorical question. "Clean install" is not one of the available options. Other than a standard upgrade, you've got "Archive and Install" and "Erase and Install." (The latter especially is both dangerous and a waste of time, but I don't blame you for not wanting to debate the merits.) I bring it up for another reason, which is that I hear the advice for doing a "clean install" constantly and I pity the poor novice who tries to follow it.
I won't go as far as you, but I have to say I'm not really impressed either by it's stability and performance. Clean install too.
it's $30 and it's about paving the way to 64bit
just some perspective
Migrating from 10.4 to 10.5 was smooth like butter....
Nothing crash as often as I am today with 10.6....
Fresh install might be a solution, but never had to do a clean install from 10.3 to 10.4 and then to 10.5....
So, now? I have to? Systems hangs most of them time under 10.6.... and I always have Activity Monitor open to monitor what's going on, and most of the time, it's either because Free memory goes to less than 100MB...
BTW, I have 4GB RAM DDR3 from Factory on my current Unibody MBP
There are several times programs showing red with not responding and this happened once in a while in 10.5, but it's happening several times per day under 10.6
Right now at this moment I have only 6 tabs under Safari, and the memory is taking close to 600MB (Real Memory) and under 62MB from Flash Player (Safari Plug-in)....
And in the past running 10.5, I hardly ever had to restart my MBP.... now with 10.6 I am force to do so several times per week, because the system does not response...
Especially after coming back from sleep mode or hibernation mode (secure sleep mode)...
Try shutting off Time Machine, if you are using it, and see if that helps.
It's funny, Schillers own PR campaign against windows was because users were going to have to do a fresh reinstall.... Go figure.
Is that you Yoda?
From the first Mac OS X....
You notice improvement and enhancement.... So far Leopard is the best, and Snow Leopard sucks...
Crash all the time, and make everything else crash...
And has become like Microsoft Windows, whopping tons of memory for nothing....
Worst OS by far....
Leopard is the best....
Snow Leopard is the worst OS upgrade by Apple by far. A 483 update. Why not just call it the next OS release 10.7. Warning to those who haven't upgraded. I suggest waiting for a real OS, not this junk. I lost access to my apache server, and it's costing me job offers. Why not break it up so we can get some of the more immediate "Windows" like PATCHES. Thanks for the heartache.
Snow Leopard is the worst OS upgrade by Apple by far. A 483 update. Why not just call it the next OS release 10.7. Warning to those who haven't upgraded. I suggest waiting for a real OS, not this junk. I lost access to my apache server, and it's costing me job offers. Why not break it up so we can get some of the more immediate "Windows" like PATCHES. Thanks for the heartache.
You do realize you can simply downgrade? No one forces you to upgrade. If it's causing you that much grief, simply downgrade until they resolve whatever issues your having.
I just created a second partition so that I could keep up to date on both. Makes it easy to tell when they address whatever issues I'm having.
What is all of this complaining about? I personally find Snow Leopard to be the best bang for $29 I've ever spent.
I'm not sure what everbodies problems are, some even sound like hardware, but I've found SL to be very fast and reliable. Fast being the important element.
One thing I can reccomend to everyone is to update their software especially third party apps.