[X Newbies] Trouble Wth trying to Update OS8.1

[Florin Alexander Neumann]

On Wednesday, Sep 24, 2003, at 16:25 Canada/Eastern, TDavis8810 at aol.com 
wrote:

> I have a Pwr.Mac-6500 -300
> Mhz processor and 6GB HD. And full complement of installed Ram.  I' am 
> using
> OS 8.1 and want to upgrade to OS 8.6 ___ I have OS 8.5 but no update 
> from OS
> 8.1 to OS 8.5 .... It seems to me that I can only update by installing 
> OS 8.5
> from scratch and that means erasing my HD [...]

That is not necessary. You do not need to reformat or reinitialize the 
drive prior to installing 8.5, unless you want to use the new file 
system (HFS+). You do, however, need to do a clean install of 8.5, 
because problems have been reported when 8.5 was installed over 8.1. 
When you do a clean install, your old System Folder will be disabled 
and renamed Previous System Folder. Subsequently, you will need to 
re-install manually extensions, control panels, fonts, etc., you added 
to your system. In most cases, just dragging them over from the 
previous system folder should do the job.

However, you should always do a complete backup before installing the 
new operating system -- you never know what may go wrong. You may also 
wish to check the following tips prior to installing 8.5.

<http://www.macnn.com/MacTips/archive/tip39.shtml>
<http://www.computerbits.com/archive/1998/1200/mac9812.html>

Best of luck, f