[muglo] Re: air port

on 15/4/03 11:30 PM, Jim Taylor at hawk@xxxxxxxx wrote:

> It's a tower. Came with 9.0.4.
> I would update but I never ever figured how to do an update. Next time I
> turned it on the dialogue box was gone. But it has been a little, shall we
> say, quirky lately. Fingers crossed. jim

What major software do you run? ClarisWorks, AppleWorks, Microsoft Office,
Photoshop, etc?

In your case, what I would recommend is that you do a clean install of your
system, it's is a relatively simple and painless procedure (in the grand
scheme of things... OS X is even easier but you don't sound like you want to
jump to OS X yet).

A few things to do first:

1. make a complete backup of your preferences file -- I'd use Apple's Disk
Copy utility. Open "Disk Copy" (Utilities folder), drag the Preferences
folder (System Folder:Preferences) onto it, and allow it to create a
read-only compressed image of your Preferences folder.

2. if you use Eudora for your e-mail, move the mail folder out of the System
Folder (it should never be in there in the first place IMNSHO, a Eudora
design flaw).

3. if you use Netscape for your e-mail it has the same design flaw as
Eudora. Its mailbox(es) is/are stored in the Preferences folder. If you did
#1 you backed it up already so you do not need to do anything special.

4. Make sure you have the installer disks and serial numbers for your major
softwares on-hand, just in case you are asked to revalidate an app, or
reinstall a particular component (e.g. AppleWorks, Microsoft Office, etc.).
If you use Microsoft products (any Office app, Explorer, Outlook Express)
you'll find that they are pretty immune from the ravages of clean installs
(any extensions, fonts, etc. installed by MS apps are also stored in the
application's folder itself -- the app will automatically re-install
whatever it needs).

5. perhaps make a back-up of crucial documents (resumes, wills, letters,
on-going projects). It is good to do this on a regular basis anyway, so you
may as well do that now (beg/borrow/buy a CD-RW and burn a CD... if you
don't already have a CD-RW drive in your tower, you can pick up a fast one,
supported by OS 9.1's disk burning software for ~$70 CDN (check
www.xlr8yourmac.net for compatibility info on a particular model) or for
$100 get a combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive (you can play DVDs as well then)).

6. Make sure you record your ISP information. i.e. dialup number, login,
password, DNS information (or, if you're on high speed, record your router,
mask, IP, DNS information).

The easiest way is to open up TCP/IP and take a picture of the window that's
open -- turn on caps lock, then press command-shift-4 at the same time and a
cross-hair will appear. Then click on the window you'd like to take a
picture of. The image will be stored on the main level of the hard drive as
"Picture #".



Now, you're definitely ready to do a clean install (I skip all but steps 1,
5 and 6 but I would recommend you do 2-4 as well):

1. Insert OS 9 installer CD.

2. Restart your computer with extensions off (hold shift-key down); or
select the CD as the startup disk in the Startup Disk control panel, and
restart.

3. Open up the OS 9 installer.

4. Select "Options". Select the "Clean Install" option. What Clean Install
does is renames your current System Folder to "Previous System Folder" (or
something like that), and creates a *new* folder called System Folder into
which it install a fresh OS.

You may want to do a custom install and remove features you don't need (like
the airport software, speech recognition, etc).

Once you're done the install, restart your computer, set up the internet and
run your applications to make sure they work.

If you run into problems, you can revert to your previous system folder
(unless you delete it ;).



The third stage is to upgrade your system software.

If you are running 9.0.4, download (or borrow a CD with) the 9.1 update.
That is perhaps the most important update you can do for your machine
(please note: 9.1 changes the folder "Applications" to "Applications (Mac OS
9)"). 9.1 provides support for Apple's CD burning software, newer versions
of iTunes, etc.

Eric.


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