Back from the Brink

Dontcha just love computers?

It's weird how the simplest of changes can cascade into a rolling thunder of destruction and mayhem. Okay, nothing actually caught fire, but this has been a rough few days for the Hudgins' Mac.

Here's the story. The newest version of the Mac operating system - 10. 6 (named Snow Leopard) - was released last August or September. I didn't upgrade to it because 1) I'm cheap and 2) I didn't see a compelling need to do so. Snow Leopard was slated as a release with a lot of fixes under the hood and without a lot of fancy features. It was however, supposed to speed things up. Any hint of an idea where this is going???

So, a couple of weeks ago, I got the urge to start work on another iPhone application. Actually, it will eventually be an iPad application - for the new tablet computer that Apple is releasing. It's basically a giant iPhone-looking device but it has some new features and I thought it would be fun to write a program for it. Well, I went to download the software development kit for it and found out that I needed to upgrade to Snow Leopard in order to use it. What the heck, it's about time anyway right?

I ordered it from Amazon and it came in a few days. I went through the install process and got it all up and running and was amazed - at how slow everything was. Programs were taking forever to launch and then ran at a snail's pace once they were up. Oh crap! This is not good. I asked Mr. Google what the heck was up with this and was greeted by page after page of people having the same problem - terrible slow downs after upgrading. Hmm. I guess I should have done that search *before* I did the upgrade...

I limped along this way for a few days and ran into the next problem. I went to start Parallels - the program that lets me run Windows programs (Quicken) on the Mac. When it tried to start, it politely told me that the current version wouldn't run on Snow Leopard and I would have to upgrade it (Parallels) to the latest version. Argh! Okay, I bought that online and downloaded it and installed it. That program is a pretty big drain on the Mac anyway and now, with the machine limping along as it was, it was essentially unusable. Something had to be done.

I should point out that I had chosen to do an upgrade of Snow Leopard as opposed to a clean re-install. There are two schools of thought on this. Some people think that you should just wipe your disk clean and start fresh while others maintain that the upgrade process is good enough that you don't need to "clean house" beforehand. Of course, if you do the clean install, you've got to have good backups of all your stuff because a clean install means deleting everything on the disk. I actually have two methods of backing up the computer - I use Time Machine which takes hourly backups of the system and stores them on a different disk and I also have Mozy which backsup over the network to some big disk in the sky somewhere.

Despite all those precautions, there is always a fear that you've missed some critical file in your backup plan or something won't come back when you try to restore. Not to mention that a fresh install also implies that you reinstall all your applications (as opposed to recovering them from the backup) so you need to have all your registration codes for all those programs you bought. That's why I decided to do the upgrade instead of the clean install.

After trying every manner of voodoo to get my system even workable, I decided that I needed to wipe it out and start clean. I went through all my files and made sure I had backups of everything as best I could and then fired up the Disk Utility to wipe things out. I swear I stared at the "Do It!" button for about 5 minutes before casting my bits into oblivion.

Once the installation was complete, I cautiously fired up the browser to see if things were back to normal or hopefully, even faster. When programs launch on the Mac, they "bounce" in the Dock at the bottom of the screen as they load. Before the reinstall, my web browser was taking about 25 bounces before a window would appear and even then, it wasn't fully loaded. After the re-install, it launches in about 2 bounces. Oh yeah!

I've spent the better part of today getting things re-installed and working again. I've re-downloaded all kinds of programs, pulled activation keys out of old emails, and basically tweaked things back to the way they were before the big reset. The whole license key thing is fraught with opportunities for disaster. I thought I had one today when I tried to reinstall Parallels. When I bought the upgrade earlier, I just installed it over top of the old version and it went fine - besides from being slow.

When I reinstalled it today, it asked for my Activation key which I got when I bought the upgrade, but then it asked for the Activation key for the original version that I upgraded over. Oh cool! I think I bought that about two years ago. I have no idea what that code is! I looked through old emails, looked at the manual, found the original install disk - no Activation key. I called support and asked them if they had any record of my Activation key. Nope, they don't have it and can't generate one for me. Great! The guy on the phone did say that the key should be on the original CD. I double checked the CD again, this time looking at the back of the CD jacket, and viola! There was the key. I entered that in and was able to complete the installation. Wow - that was close!

There are probably other problems still lurking - like programs that I rarely use that I didn't re-install and will go to use one day, or files that I haven't restored from backup. We'll see.

It has been a long and arduous process but I'm so glad to have my speedy computer back, that I think it was worth it. I think...