Reinstall Snow Leopard

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iMac 20 (late 2006), 2.16 GHz, Snow Leopard, 3 GB RAM, 250 GB HD
I've been getting the spinning beach ball, and after trying everything else I took my iMac 20 (late 2006 bought 5/2007) to the Genius Bar. My Apple Care warranty expired 2 months ago but consultation is free so the tech tested my computer and said everything tested out fine. He said he's never seen Snow Leopard run on such an "old" computer which is ridiculous because it met the requirements and it has been running fine since 10/2009 until about 10 days ago. He suggested that I pop in the SL disc and install it without erasing the drive. I followed his advice and it took 14 hours for the reinstall. And to make matters worse the problem has not been corrected. In fact it's even worse. Now (since my HD tests out okay) I plan to erase the drive and reinstall SL and back up from Time Machine (unless someone has a better suggestion) but I am wondering if migrating from Time Machine, since it installs the most recent backup, will just install the original problems.

And if I do a clean install what will happen to my keychain stuff and my password?

Of course if it takes 14 hours for the clean install I guess I'm in big trouble.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
 
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If it's taking 14 hours to reinstall the OS I have a feeling is the hard drive or some other hardware problem especially since you said it was running fine 10 days ago. Unless you installed something suspicious my guess is that hard drive might be failing despite what the tests say.

If it's something wrong with the OS then a fresh clean install should solve the problem. If it doesn't then that would lead me to believe it's a hardware problem. If you have a bootable clone of your OS then try booting from that and see if you are still getting the spinning beach ball.
 
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I was going to say that as well--try getting a 2nd hdd (as long as you can backup your files)?
 
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No, I don't have a bootable clone. I just have Time Machine.

It took 14 hours to install it over a system which started with Tiger, was upgraded to Leopard and then Snow Leopard. Neither Leopard nor Snow Leopard were clean installs.

The weird thing is that I tested it with Tech Tool Deluxe (the diagnostic tool --with repair capabilities-that came with Apple Care, and the first test showed a failure in Volume Structure and Directory Scan. In subsequent tests everything passed.

I'm not that thrilled about installing a new hard drive myself although I've done it on many PCs. This is my first Mac.
 
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It took 14 hours to install it over a system which started with Tiger, was upgraded to Leopard and then Snow Leopard. Neither Leopard nor Snow Leopard were clean installs.
After reading that I am now thinking that your problem might from the upgrading OS. I prefer clean installs when getting a new OS. There have been other users reporting problems with spinning beach balls and other problems when doing an upgrade rather than a clean install. Some people don't have any problems but others do.

Time Machine does backup pretty much everything but if you restore from TM then it might bring back the problems you currently have if it's OS related. If you have a second hard drive then you should just manually transfer all your personal data like music, word processing files, pictures, etc but nothing from the OS. You then make note of all your applications and then reinstall them when you do a fresh install. You will have to also write down all your passwords if don't have them memorized because they will be deleted also on a fresh install.

A clean install will let you know whether your problem is hardware or software related. If it's hardware related then fix the hardware and then restore from TM but if it's software related and a clean install solves your problem then you will have to manually add everything back so that you don't bring back the problem you currently have.

With a second external hard drive you can also first try making a bootable clone with Carbon Copy Cloner and then boot from that and see if it's your internal hard drive that is the problem. If the problem persists then try the clean install.
 
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I do have my documents backed up onto an 8 GB flash drive. Movies and photos are the only other things I care about at this point. I can always reinstall iLife and Office. But then again I might try to back up from Time Machine and if the problem persists I guess I could always reformat, reinstall and start from scratch. That's what i would do if I were getting a new computer.

I think I made a bootable disk but it has Tiger on it and it's on a rather unreliable WD external firewire drive that I retired. I might just take the easy route to begin with.

The other thing is my VM. I have Fusion and I have Windows XP installed. When I was using Parallels it crashed so often that when I went to install it on Fusion the product number wasn't accepted and I had to call Microsoft for a new one. If I start from scratch I am going to have to do that again. I don't know if they will give me another one.
 
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The other thing is my VM. I have Fusion and I have Windows XP installed. When I was using Parallels it crashed so often that when I went to install it on Fusion the product number wasn't accepted and I had to call Microsoft for a new one. If I start from scratch I am going to have to do that again. I don't know if they will give me another one.
There was an application that could clone your Windows partition but I don't remember what it was called and I never used it myself so I don't know how reliable it was.

I think the reason why you needed a new Windows product number was because you switched from Parallels to Fusion and Windows thought they were two different machines. You may not need a new product key if you use Fusion again and use the same settings. Although it may come down to you needing to call Microsoft again. That's just one of the pains of using Windows.

If it's a full retail copy of Windows and not a system builder's then Microsoft is suppose to allow you to transfer ownership from one computer to another so if it comes down to it they would deactivate your current copy and transfer the ownership to your new VM Windows partition.
 
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Actually it's not really a partition. The VM is actually an application. The reason I needed a new number was that I'd used the original more than three times. It was on the same machine and it was because it crashed. I bought the copy of XP specifically for my Mac.

I think I'll start with Plan A and migrate from Time Machine.

Now that I think of it I have another copy of XP that is no longer being used. That computer is long gone.
 
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Actually it's not really a partition.
Sorry I just assumed you used a Boot Camp partition but you are right if it's just a VM then it's not a partition.

Now that I think of it I have another copy of XP that is no longer being used. That computer is long gone.
If you are talking about the copy of XP that came with a computer then those are not transferable as far as I know. It's only the retail copy that you buy separately at stores that can be transferred from one computer to the next.
 
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The copies of XP that I have were purchased retail. I had a 2001 PC that came with Windows ME (the worst OS ever) and I bought XP and upgraded, I bought another copy for the Mac. I do have a couple of XP CDs that came with computers and I wouldn't be able to use those. When I called Microsoft for a new number there was no problem. What happened was that I entered the original numbers and I received a message to call MS and a phone number. It was pretty easy.
 

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