04-23-2006, 11:22 AM

I want to clean my hard drive up on the iMacG5 (do a clean erase and install) of Tiger again. I have a 233GB hard drive in this but it's slowing down because it's memory is almost used up, only a few gigs left. The only things I really care about on here is the music I paid for from iTunes (Hundreds of songs) and pictures. I have the pictures backed up (no problem) My question is, If I erase everything on internal hard drive will the protected music work after I copy it back from my Lacie (externalhard drive), with a new OS starting over?I hope that wasn't to confusing.

04-23-2006, 12:32 PM

Yes, it will, but you'll have to "authorize" the songs via iTunes.

You'll import the songs back into iTunes from your external hard drive, but whenever you go to play them there will a pop-up dialog saying "This computer is not authorized...blah blah". Type in your iTunes account info, and it will "release" them, so that you can play them again.

04-23-2006, 12:39 PM

Ok great, thanks one more question. When I got this G5 I installed Panther onto it, then Tiger came out and I added that. Will I have to start with Panther to get everything on here thats here or will just Tiger be fine? I think Panther came with a few things that Tiger didn't.

04-23-2006, 01:41 PM

If you have 10.4 installed, then the Tiger disk will have everything you have now. No need to first install Panther.

04-26-2006, 11:41 AM

This may be too late to be of help, but the iTunes store account thing will only allow 5 computers to ever become authorized per account (even if it is the same physical computer with 5 different reinstalls), so iTunes has a "deauthorize computer" feature that you need to run right before erasing your old OS. By "deauthorizing the computer", it will add 1 back to your authorization number in your online store account so that after you reinstall everything and have to authorize again you wont have used 2 of your 5 for the same machine. If you failed to do this and have already reinstalled before doing so, you now lost one authorization for nothing.

04-26-2006, 12:04 PM

Originally Posted by rcltrh

This may be too late to be of help, but the iTunes store account thing will only allow 5 computers to ever become authorized per account (even if it is the same physical computer with 5 different reinstalls), so iTunes has a "deauthorize computer" feature that you need to run right before erasing your old OS. By "deauthorizing the computer", it will add 1 back to your authorization number in your online store account so that after you reinstall everything and have to authorize again you wont have used 2 of your 5 for the same machine. If you failed to do this and have already reinstalled before doing so, you now lost one authorization for nothing.

That does not seem to make sense because the authorization uses the cereal number of the computer ( I think) so if you have 5 or more reinstalls I can not see that making a difference? Do you have something from Apple or the music store saying that in wriing or a link anything?

04-26-2006, 12:11 PM

...and just so you know, burning those songs to a CD and ripping them again will strip them of their "protected" status...

04-26-2006, 12:40 PM

I'm not sure what you mean "ripping them again" but I think that is illegal, no?

04-26-2006, 12:45 PM

Not that I know of...

I mean burn the songs to a CD. Re-import them onto your computer with iTunes. They're now unlocked.

04-26-2006, 12:49 PM

I see, ok thanks