Hi Severin, App cleaners can only go so far. If they are two aggressive they may disable software other than than being uninstalled and if they are too conservative they do little more than you could do by dragging the app and the preferences to the garbage can. I was in exactly the same situation as you with years of built up data and applications that I had not so much as launched in years. So I decided to do a clean install of Lion and rebuild the system manually rather than using an automated tool. It took a week or two of effort but the process went much more smoothly than I expected. I used the opportunity to do a massive reorganisation and clean up of my data, and managed to clear up hundreds of gigabytes. Once finished I felt satisfaction similar to what one does after a spring clean of the workshop or house. :-)
In case you want to do something similar here is the path I took. 1) I had already upgraded and was running OS X Lion 10.7. 2) I closed down Mail app a left it closed so as to have a fixed point. 3) I made sure the Time Capsule was completely up to date and then turned off Time Machine in preferences. 4) I made a clone to an external hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner and marked it "precious". I resolved not to so much look at that drive unless things went wrong. 5) I freed up and reformatted my most convenient external drive (an iomega USB powered 320GB -- you may need larger for an iMac, I have a MacBook Pro) and did another clone. This was going to be my working copy from which I would take data and applications as needed. 6) I rebooted to the iomega drive, reformatted the MacBook Pro's internal drive and did the pristine install of OS X Lion on the MacBook Pro. The main areas of effort where a) email b) my iTunes collection c) keychain for private keys I installed apps afresh as needed. If I had the original source media I did the install from there -- this is where the Mac App Store showed its value. For a very few apps I copied the app bundle from the iomega external drive. Then the process of porting the data started. I designed a new directory tree structure and copied across data that I was sure I would want. I colour coded the directories of data that I had copied across using the Label feature that shows up when one right clicks a directory. The rest of the data I copied on an as needed basis. And so it went. The external drive was in constant use during the first week or two, but it has been sitting idle for many months now. The one area that gave me any trouble was keychain, but you may not encounter that issue if you have no private keys that need copying across. If you want specific info on how to port email or iTunes, let me know. Cheers, Carlo On 21/02/2012, at 17:10 , Severin Crisp wrote: > I am running Lion 10.7.3 on a 21" iMac and apart from a couple of minor > annoying but not life threatening ongoing glitches everything is perfect. > However, I am aware that everything on my iMac is the result of ongoing > update installs and runs of Migration Assistant dating back to 10.3 Tiger on > my G5 at least, may be further. Recently I have taking to using Clean My Mac > on a regular basis and always when I uninstall software. However, this is > only recent and prior to that my uninstall technique was lax and incomplete > unless there was an actual uninstaller. Inspection of Preference files and > the like reveals many obsolete and irrelevant items which I remove when they > come to light by chance or by intention. I am sure however that there is > much unseen junk and debris that is not easily spotted and that is causing my > minor problems. I have done the usual run through all my StartUp items and > eliminated them as possible problems. > For my own satisfaction I would like to clean up but see no easy way other > than a fresh install of Lion, followed by all my documents and then all > applications, settings for internet and Mail from zero. Migration Assistant > is great but does allow the user to be very selective, it is more or less an > all or nothing for Applications, Documents, Settings etc, which of course is > sensible. > Is there any easy way to avoid just doing the whole thing from baseline up? > The thought appals me - I am acutely aware that I do not have that many > hears to go and I would like to bequeath a sanitised iMac! Maybe there are > other software "cleaners" out there though I have always treated such items > with extreme caution. > Advise me! > Severin Crisp > > ________________________________________________________ > Assoc Professor R Severin Crisp, FIP, CPhys, FAIP > 15 Thomas St, Mount Clarence, Albany, 6330, Western Australia. > Phone (08) 9842 1950 (Int'l +61 8 9842 1950) > email mailto:[email protected] > ________________________________________________________ > > > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- > Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> > Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> > Settings & Unsubscribe - > <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
