Are "clean installs" worthwhile with OS X?

I'm using an 06/2009 MBP, and there have been a few little issues that bother me. Besides questionable Flash 10.1 performance in Firefox, iTunes and Safari have been prone to hangs and stutters if I'm doing any other light duty things while working with them, and I've noticed an odd little clicking issue with the trackpad where a click on something selects it as if I tabbed to that object, but it doesn't actually "select it", if that makes sense.

I have already:

1. Used Disk Utility to verify the disk, which came out okay;
2. Repaired permissions;
3. Used Onyx to do the usual housecleaning, including cache clearing.

At this point, I'm wondering if it might be worthwhile to run one last Time Machine backup, break out my Snow Leopard disk, erase this partition entirely, reinstall cleanly from Snow Leopard, and combo update to 10.6.4 -- and get all my usual stuff set up from there.

 

Hell I'd say do it. If you're still in school like myself, it's starting up soon too so you mind as well start fresh.

Flash performance is always poor regardless of browser. Try switching over to html5 ( YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.) if you do alot of youtubing.

 

I have been seeing this too. I cleared up a lot of disc space by getting rid of my windows partition, which seemed to temporarily repair the problem, but now it is back.

I notice a lot more problems in safari and itunes with hanging than I do with firefox and flash. I've heard that others have this problem as well. It seems to have become more common after one of the last few updates, so I am assuming it is some software issue that apple introduced.

 

If you have already done what you've done and there is no progress, i'd say its fine to resort to a clean install.

 

I did a clean install on my 2009 MBP last month and it became noticibly faster. The battery life also improved drastically.

Depending on your usage there's a lot of random junk that builds up in OS X that's almost impossible to remove without a clean install.

 

Yeah, computers are computers ... A clean install will definitely do something. I'm considering one myself ... Just need to get a new HDD first.

 

I've been debating if I should do a clean install, Now that I know OS X and I won't screw so much stuff up. But I just don't feel like dealing with setting everything up again.

 

When re-installing OS X, I remember seeing an option to restore your files from a Time Machine backup... haven't tried it yet though as I'm still on the original factory install.

 

I did it yesterday. Copying things over from my TM backups has been a little glitchy -- couldn't find anything when entering time machine, and then when I tried again a restart or two later, there it was -- and file permissions have gotten a little screwy in the moving over, but it's coming along. Some files seem to have been corrupted in the process... I've got a few PDFs that aren't opening anymore.

Sigh.

 

Oops, spoke too soon. It's there.

For anyone wondering what I'm talking about... with tap-to-click enabled, go to a multi-page thread and tap on "2" on the page listing at the bottom. When I do that, the "2" is selected, but not actually clicked. It feels kind of like drag lock is on (no, it's not).

So stupid.

 

Thats the option that lets you revert your whole image back to your last backup.

 

Which I did. I got tired of trying to half- restore things selectively, so I re-reinstalled Snow Leopard and used the migration option during first boot. Took awhile to move ~130 GB over -- yeah, I broke out the ethernet cable for that one, forget trying that over the air -- so I'm more or less back.

Turns out that the transfer isn't perfect -- Firefox extensions are broken, Mail.app isn't working properly (downloading OS X 10.6.4 combo to reinstall that), MS Office '08 went through first-boot routines, etc..

The same two PDFs that wouldn't open from my first restore attempt still aren't opening. I'm really hoping that there aren't other files hanging around that are corrupt and I don't know it.

And a PRAM reset seems to have fixed the trackpad issue... I hope.

 

If you use the TM backup then you might not do a clean install, because the backup will take all the junk with it.

TM is best used to restore lost files, like if your computer dies or is stolen. The restore system option is pretty buggy.

 

I did a clean install, well because I got an SSD before I got my MBP but I would've either way. Custom install to remove language files, printer drivers and x11 etc