I need a process to remove my old system 10.5.5 from first partition of my drive--it apparently became corrupted (see backup info below), and my final resort was to reinstall a new system on the 2nd partition. In addition, I want to return to the user preferences, desktop, application aliases, mail, etc. that I had when the breakdown occurred. Is there a simple way to do this without reintroducing a 2nd system? Can/should I do it with migration or time machine?
Thanks for any advice and your time--
----------------------
(backstory
The machine refused to boot after a failed install/update of adobe products. For 4 days, I tried everything I could find online or knew about without success: boot, reboot, single user, zapped pram, reinstall earlier time machine, disk repair from install disk. I always got "disk appears to be OK" messages, but permissions would never be repaired without a freeze (followed by hard restart), and the reboot would go into a continuous loop of trying to restart (grey screen with fan, black screen, chime--repeat). As a last resort, I installed new system on the 2nd partition, and that seems to get the machine started, but now I need to access mail, etc. as it existed before. Thus my questions above.
Thanks for any advice and your time--
----------------------
(backstory
The machine refused to boot after a failed install/update of adobe products. For 4 days, I tried everything I could find online or knew about without success: boot, reboot, single user, zapped pram, reinstall earlier time machine, disk repair from install disk. I always got "disk appears to be OK" messages, but permissions would never be repaired without a freeze (followed by hard restart), and the reboot would go into a continuous loop of trying to restart (grey screen with fan, black screen, chime--repeat). As a last resort, I installed new system on the 2nd partition, and that seems to get the machine started, but now I need to access mail, etc. as it existed before. Thus my questions above.
