Upgrade to Snow Leopard but no stacks

Winter84 · 10-18-2009, 12:06 PM

I have just upgraded my 15" 2007 MBP from the latest version of Tiger to Snow Leopard using the DVD in the Mac Box Set. Everything seemed to go smoothly, but the stacks have not appeared in the dock, which still has the Mac OS X icon from Tiger beside the Trash.

Any ideas how to fix this?

Winter84 · 10-18-2009, 01:41 PM

Actually, it is worse. I have now found that Quick Look is also missing - both from context menus and from Finder.

hayne · 10-18-2009, 01:43 PM

Do you have any 3rd-party Quick Look plugins installed? I seem to recall someone who had problems with Quick Look plugins wen moving to Snow Leopard.

Winter84 · 10-18-2009, 02:34 PM

I had an expired copy of the Tiger version of PathFinder. I have removed it (following the full instructions on the producer's site), but unfortunately that does not help.

Hal Itosis · 10-18-2009, 03:36 PM

As a member of the 'clean install crowd' i realize i'm in the minority, but the Tiger-to-Leopard transition was probably the most drastic "upgrade" in Mac OSX history (e.g., net info to directory services, to mention one example). In view of the fact that Snow Leopard was targeted primarily at current Leopard users... i sorta doubt a whole lot of beta testing went into the upgrade process from Tiger, let alone account for all the possible 3rd-party enhancements folks out there leave lying around when doing a system upgrade.

Guess i'm saying my 'solution' to your situation would be to recommend doing a clean install. [more work now, less "surprises" later.]

-HI-

mituw16 · 10-18-2009, 04:13 PM

i dont suppose you have a backup of your system when tiger was installed do you?

cuase i actually ran into the exact same problem on a computer i was repairing, the fix for me was to

- erase the computer and restore back to tiger from a .dmg the user made of their computer
- once their, take and old external hard drive i had laying around and make a bootable clone of the system running tiger to it.
- put snow leopard dvd in the computer and erase the macbooks internal hard drive to do a clean install of snow leopard
- use migration assistant to transfer user account and applications

there might be an easier way around this, but it worked for me...... although this is all assuming you have a backup of your system when it ran tiger, other than that about all i could think of is to do an archive and install

Winter84 · 10-18-2009, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis


	Guess i'm saying my 'solution' to your situation would be to recommend doing a clean install. [more work now, less "surprises" later.]

I fear you may be right. Maybe it would be worth just redoing the upgrade as a first alternative.

mituw16 · 10-18-2009, 04:18 PM

well if you are going to do a clean install, you should at least save all the information you can... although i would still recommend you try an archive and install before you do a clean install

Winter84 · 10-18-2009, 04:29 PM

As it happens I do have a (tested) bootable clone of the system with Tiger, having followed the advice at daringfireball.net (and having hoped that the advice from Cult of Mac was too pessimistic).

I may still try redoing the upgrade first, but that would also require reverting to Tiger, so it might not take much less time.

I love spending weekends on computer maintenance!

Hal Itosis · 10-18-2009, 04:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winter84


	I may still try redoing the upgrade first, but that would also require reverting to Tiger, so it might not take much less time.

You will likely find that "reverting to Tiger" is more laborious than expected, precisely due to the aforementioned net info to directory services migration process. [i.e., the Tiger installer has no clue about how Leopard has rearranged the user accounts database.]

mituw16 · 10-18-2009, 04:59 PM

i would have to disagree.... restoring to a tiger from a disk image he made of his system while it ran tiger is actually quite easy. and if he does that then he would basically be starting from square 1 again. but thats just my 2 cents

Winter84 · 10-18-2009, 06:10 PM

As I understand it my choices are:

1) Erase the hard disk, restore the Tiger image from the external drive (several hours but runs by itself), and try the upgrade to Snow Leopard again, or

2) Erase the hard disk, clean install Snow Leopard from the Mac Box Set DVD, and then use Migration Assistant to restore stuff from the Tiger clone on the external drive, which sounds laborious, but which ought to work.

Is that about it?

Hal Itosis · 10-18-2009, 06:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mituw16


	i would have to disagree.... restoring to a tiger from a disk image he made of his system while it ran tiger is actually quite easy. and if he does that then he would basically be starting from square 1 again. but thats just my 2 cents

Perhaps there is more than one way to interpret the phrase "reverting to Tiger".
If "reverting" means (in this case) erasing/re-cloning, then obviously . . .

Winter84 · 10-18-2009, 06:24 PM

Thank you very much for all your advice. I will have another go as soon as I have the time for this.

mituw16 · 10-18-2009, 06:24 PM

here are is a list of step by step instructions for what you should do,
1. be absolutely sure you have a .dmg clone of your system when it had tiger installed!!!
2. copy anything important you have on your computer right now to an external hard drive or flash drive or something
3. boot from the snow leopard dvd and do an erase and install (follow set up notes below)
4. once you are at the desktop of a freshly installed snow leopard plug in the external hard drive where you have the .dmg of your system as it had tiger instaleld
5. mount the tiger .dmg to your desktop
6. launch migration assistant - (located in applications -> utilities)
7. select the option from another mac and then select what you want to transfer from your old system.....
8. let is do its thing, it may take a while, be patient!

new snow leopard install set up notes
things to note when creating the new snow leopard
- on initital setup name your account "transfer" or something other than the user name of your tiger system. migration assistant cant transfer a user account of the same name as the existing account

hope that helps, sorry if i made my previous posts unclear

Winter84 · 10-19-2009, 04:33 AM

Thank you for the instructions, mituw16. They look very clear.

The only difference is that my clone is in the form of a bootable clone on an external drive, not as a .dmg image. I assume that this just means that I don't need your step 5. I just have to attach the external drive and have Migration Assistant transfer from the other drive.

mituw16 · 10-19-2009, 09:10 AM

yes, if your backup is a bootable backup then just skip step 5 and proceed with migration assistant.

Las_Vegas · 10-19-2009, 06:27 PM

Skip steps 4, 5 and 6. Instead select "Upgrade from another disk" in the Intro window. This will run Migration Assistant for you and transfer all of your Apps, Accounts and Settings.

ginge89 · 10-27-2009, 06:05 AM

Hi all,

i have actually encountered the exact same issue when upgrading from Tiger to Snow Leopard last night and wanted to find out whether you had had any more luck following the instructions above. Something else i noticed after the upgrade is that my iTunes could only see about 10% of my music and that only half my contacts were visible in address book.

I havent had time to check all the music folders to see if they are still there hiwever i did notice there hadnt been a significant increase in free space on the HD which would correspond to the loss of music so hopefully its all still there.

Any more info on the progress made would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Ben

Winter84 · 11-08-2009, 06:49 PM

I have finally had the chance to try out the helpful suggestions above.

Thinking that the problem was probably this Path Finder app (the version I had was specifically for Tiger, had expired, and was not recognised by the Snow Leopard upgrade as incompatible - being an 'alternative Finder' I figured it might be getting in the way), and wanting to avoid the Migration Assistant, if possible, I tried various alternatives:

1) Erase and reinstall Tiger, clone back the data from my bootable backup drive, completely delete Path Finder (including preferences, caches, etc. and recommended by the developer), upgrade to Snow Leopard - same result as before.

2) Erase and install Snow Leopard with migration of the data from the backup drive in the install process, as Las Vegas suggested - still no help - but the migration migrated Path Finder from the backup drive.

3) Completely delete Path Finder from the backup drive (booting from that drive - back in Tiger). Then: Erase and install Snow Leopard followed by migration of the data using Migration Assistant under a new account, as suggested by mituw16 (except step 5, of course).

This time the new account looks fine, but the problems still remain for the old migrated accounts. So it must be something in the setup of the old accounts. The visible differences are: at the right of the dock (it is on the bottom of the screen), in place of the Apps, Documents and Downloads icons is the old Mac OS X '@ spring' icon; and the Finder windows have the Tiger-style toolbar, which lacks the Quick Look icon and has the remaining items (except search) at the left of the toolbar. (I have screen images, but the files are too large to post at present.)

If these are the only differences, I could of course live with them - the links to the three folders in the dock could be constructed, though they wouldn't be identical to what Snow Leopard creates. But my real concern is that there might be other, more serious, differences that I haven't yet found.

My guess is that there is some setting or group of settings that is being migrated when it shouldn't be. Does that sound right, and does anyone have an idea what the settings might be? I have the feeling that it might be a couple of files that just need deleting so that Snow Leopard can recreate them the way it likes them. I haven't found anything in System Preferences or Finder preferences that looks as though it could help. Any thoughts would be gratefully received.

10-18-2009, 12:06 PM	#1
Winter84 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 12	Upgrade to Snow Leopard but no stacks I have just upgraded my 15" 2007 MBP from the latest version of Tiger to Snow Leopard using the DVD in the Mac Box Set. Everything seemed to go smoothly, but the stacks have not appeared in the dock, which still has the Mac OS X icon from Tiger beside the Trash. Any ideas how to fix this?

10-18-2009, 01:43 PM	#3
hayne Site Admin Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 31,941	Do you have any 3rd-party Quick Look plugins installed? I seem to recall someone who had problems with Quick Look plugins wen moving to Snow Leopard. __________________ hayne.net/macosx.html

10-18-2009, 04:13 PM	#6
mituw16 Triple-A Player Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: ATL Posts: 194	i dont suppose you have a backup of your system when tiger was installed do you? cuase i actually ran into the exact same problem on a computer i was repairing, the fix for me was to - erase the computer and restore back to tiger from a .dmg the user made of their computer - once their, take and old external hard drive i had laying around and make a bootable clone of the system running tiger to it. - put snow leopard dvd in the computer and erase the macbooks internal hard drive to do a clean install of snow leopard - use migration assistant to transfer user account and applications there might be an easier way around this, but it worked for me...... although this is all assuming you have a backup of your system when it ran tiger, other than that about all i could think of is to do an archive and install __________________ Macbook Pro- 2.33 ghz Macbook Air- 1.6 ghz iPhone 3g- 16 gb

10-18-2009, 04:18 PM	#8
mituw16 Triple-A Player Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: ATL Posts: 194	well if you are going to do a clean install, you should at least save all the information you can... although i would still recommend you try an archive and install before you do a clean install __________________ Macbook Pro- 2.33 ghz Macbook Air- 1.6 ghz iPhone 3g- 16 gb

10-18-2009, 04:59 PM	#11
mituw16 Triple-A Player Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: ATL Posts: 194	i would have to disagree.... restoring to a tiger from a disk image he made of his system while it ran tiger is actually quite easy. and if he does that then he would basically be starting from square 1 again. but thats just my 2 cents __________________ Macbook Pro- 2.33 ghz Macbook Air- 1.6 ghz iPhone 3g- 16 gb

10-18-2009, 01:41 PM	#2
Winter84 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 12	Actually, it is worse. I have now found that Quick Look is also missing - both from context menus and from Finder.

10-18-2009, 02:34 PM	#4
Winter84 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 12	I had an expired copy of the Tiger version of PathFinder. I have removed it (following the full instructions on the producer's site), but unfortunately that does not help.

10-18-2009, 03:36 PM	#5
Hal Itosis Hall of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 3,315	As a member of the 'clean install crowd' i realize i'm in the minority, but the Tiger-to-Leopard transition was probably the most drastic "upgrade" in Mac OSX history (e.g., net info to directory services, to mention one example). In view of the fact that Snow Leopard was targeted primarily at current Leopard users... i sorta doubt a whole lot of beta testing went into the upgrade process from Tiger, let alone account for all the possible 3rd-party enhancements folks out there leave lying around when doing a system upgrade. Guess i'm saying my 'solution' to your situation would be to recommend doing a clean install. [more work now, less "surprises" later.] -HI-

10-18-2009, 04:29 PM	#9
Winter84 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 12	As it happens I do have a (tested) bootable clone of the system with Tiger, having followed the advice at daringfireball.net (and having hoped that the advice from Cult of Mac was too pessimistic). I may still try redoing the upgrade first, but that would also require reverting to Tiger, so it might not take much less time. I love spending weekends on computer maintenance!

10-18-2009, 06:10 PM	#12
Winter84 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 12	As I understand it my choices are: 1) Erase the hard disk, restore the Tiger image from the external drive (several hours but runs by itself), and try the upgrade to Snow Leopard again, or 2) Erase the hard disk, clean install Snow Leopard from the Mac Box Set DVD, and then use Migration Assistant to restore stuff from the Tiger clone on the external drive, which sounds laborious, but which ought to work. Is that about it?

10-18-2009, 06:24 PM	#14
Winter84 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 12	Thank you very much for all your advice. I will have another go as soon as I have the time for this.

10-19-2009, 04:33 AM	#16
Winter84 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 12	Thank you for the instructions, mituw16. They look very clear. The only difference is that my clone is in the form of a bootable clone on an external drive, not as a .dmg image. I assume that this just means that I don't need your step 5. I just have to attach the external drive and have Migration Assistant transfer from the other drive.

10-19-2009, 09:10 AM	#17
mituw16 Triple-A Player Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: ATL Posts: 194	yes, if your backup is a bootable backup then just skip step 5 and proceed with migration assistant. __________________ Macbook Pro- 2.33 ghz Macbook Air- 1.6 ghz iPhone 3g- 16 gb

10-19-2009, 06:27 PM	#18
Las_Vegas League Commissioner Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Las Vegas Posts: 5,875	Skip steps 4, 5 and 6. Instead select "Upgrade from another disk" in the Intro window. This will run Migration Assistant for you and transfer all of your Apps, Accounts and Settings. __________________ Las_Vegas -- Ts'i mahnu uterna ot twan ot geifur hingts uto. -- Sometimes I wonder… Why is that Frisbee getting Larger? …and then it hits me. -- Disposable thumbs make me specialer than most animals…

10-27-2009, 06:05 AM	#19
ginge89 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 1	Hi all, i have actually encountered the exact same issue when upgrading from Tiger to Snow Leopard last night and wanted to find out whether you had had any more luck following the instructions above. Something else i noticed after the upgrade is that my iTunes could only see about 10% of my music and that only half my contacts were visible in address book. I havent had time to check all the music folders to see if they are still there hiwever i did notice there hadnt been a significant increase in free space on the HD which would correspond to the loss of music so hopefully its all still there. Any more info on the progress made would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Ben

11-08-2009, 06:49 PM	#20
Winter84 Prospect Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 12	I have finally had the chance to try out the helpful suggestions above. Thinking that the problem was probably this Path Finder app (the version I had was specifically for Tiger, had expired, and was not recognised by the Snow Leopard upgrade as incompatible - being an 'alternative Finder' I figured it might be getting in the way), and wanting to avoid the Migration Assistant, if possible, I tried various alternatives: 1) Erase and reinstall Tiger, clone back the data from my bootable backup drive, completely delete Path Finder (including preferences, caches, etc. and recommended by the developer), upgrade to Snow Leopard - same result as before. 2) Erase and install Snow Leopard with migration of the data from the backup drive in the install process, as Las Vegas suggested - still no help - but the migration migrated Path Finder from the backup drive. 3) Completely delete Path Finder from the backup drive (booting from that drive - back in Tiger). Then: Erase and install Snow Leopard followed by migration of the data using Migration Assistant under a new account, as suggested by mituw16 (except step 5, of course). This time the new account looks fine, but the problems still remain for the old migrated accounts. So it must be something in the setup of the old accounts. The visible differences are: at the right of the dock (it is on the bottom of the screen), in place of the Apps, Documents and Downloads icons is the old Mac OS X '@ spring' icon; and the Finder windows have the Tiger-style toolbar, which lacks the Quick Look icon and has the remaining items (except search) at the left of the toolbar. (I have screen images, but the files are too large to post at present.) If these are the only differences, I could of course live with them - the links to the three folders in the dock could be constructed, though they wouldn't be identical to what Snow Leopard creates. But my real concern is that there might be other, more serious, differences that I haven't yet found. My guess is that there is some setting or group of settings that is being migrated when it shouldn't be. Does that sound right, and does anyone have an idea what the settings might be? I have the feeling that it might be a couple of files that just need deleting so that Snow Leopard can recreate them the way it likes them. I haven't found anything in System Preferences or Finder preferences that looks as though it could help. Any thoughts would be gratefully received.

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