Guys. I’m planning on buying a MacBook Pro 13” and fleeing to Bloomington, Indiana. But first I have to sell my iMac G5 to my friend for a couple-a-hundred buckaroos. So I want to do a reinstall of OS X and wipe the old thing clean of everything on it, except my friend wants me to keep a few programs that I have installed (like my really old version of Final Cut, stuff like that) as an extra bonus. So is there a cool and fun [easy] way to reinstall OS X, wipe the old thing clean, AND keep a few selected programs on it?

Hellp an ol geezer out!

I think you need gasoline…probably a voodoo doll and some sawdust.

And then wait for somebody who knows what to do to answer.

Do you have an external HD or somewhere you can copy the app files to?

I would suggest moving them to an externa HD as well, don’t think you would need to save the preferences, but you could copy the whole ~/Library folder if you want to make sure you won’t lose anything important like license settings. It is possible to wipe a HD, pray that the fresh install doesn’t overwrite the apps you want to save and then try to recover them, since a simple wipe only removes the references to the files, not the files themselves and the files gets overwritten in time. This is not a recommended way of doing it though, saving them over to an external HD is way better.

Copying to an external hd should work, but you may need to write down the serial number if you don’t have it handy otherwise.

(Note for future readers, since I assume you’ve already done this.) Also consider doing an archive and install to save any painstakingly-configured user prefs (especially for FCP) you might not want to lose in the process.

Good luck with your McIntosh computer!