PowerCADD Forum

Hi guys, if I leave my i9 with Mojave and PowerCADD and buy one of the new M MacBooks and use Migration Assistant to transfer all my data (even If I delete PC and all it’s files after migration), will Migration Assistant transfer the old system too? I’m guessing that if I chose not to migrate “System and Network) that would not happen and si would need to set the new network unless I do it before migration. Am I correct? I understand Time Machine will transfer the old system too.

All the times I've used migration assistant, I've just used it to move a user account, not applications or system. I read an article that's worth contemplating about why you may want to start over with a fresh user account from scratch, but I can't find it now. Not saying you should, but it worth thinking about, I guess.

I've been having issues with my late 2015 27" iMac lately, having erratic behavior and kernel panics. I had it at the Apple Store a week ago, and they erased the disk and reinstalled Sierra for me. I then used Migration Assistant to migrate things over, and it migrated system files, too, and the kernel panics started again. (I was hoping to avoid having to reinstall all my software, which is why I used Migration Assistant.) Yesterday, I was back at the Apple Store trying to resolve the issue, and the "genius" that I dealt with recommended that, next time, I drag my old user folder data to the reformatted computer, and install the software from scratch and skip Migration Assistant. (My particular problem might be a logic board issue, we are still trying to straighten it out, so I can't guarantee the old system files are the problem.)

RTCool wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 01, 2021 2:53 pm

All the times I've used migration assistant, I've just used it to move a user account, not applications or system. I read an article that's worth contemplating about why you may want to start over with a fresh user account from scratch, but I can't find it now. Not saying you should, but it worth thinking about, I guess.

Just to add my $0.02, and my opinions come from dealing with many PowerCADD users who have had Migration Assistant(MA) reinstall their user's account to a new machine...

I have used migration assistant many times without any issues myself. However, I have had a number of users who have had key commands (or other) issues in PowerCADD after having a user recreated with MA. In all cases that I remember is boiled down to file permissions not being set correctly by MA. That is PowerCADD could no longer have write access to its own preferences. Usually to correct this problem, I could instruct the user to delete all of the PowerCADD preferences files and the PowerCADD preferences folder and things would be okay. However, Resetting PowerCADD... from PowerCAD would not solve the problem. I have many hours of technical support dealing with this issue so that today when I have a user with weird issues, one of my first questions is, "Was your user restored with MA?"

The first problem with MA is that to set up a machine, people generally set up a user account which has the same name as their old account, and then use MA to migrate their old user account onto the one they just set up. Here is where MA fails. The solution, when a new machine is set up create a temporary 'AdminBlahBlahBlah' account and then use MA to move your old account to the machine, then things seem to be fine. It's a pain but I've never had MA fail in this circumstance.

You can bypass MA by creating you user account copying you user folder over top of that account, and then correct my user permissions, group and all of that using Unix shell commands after the copy is done, which is faster than MA, but it isn't the way most users can do it.

patrickm wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 01, 2021 7:01 pm

I've been having issues with my late 2015 27" iMac lately, having erratic behavior and kernel panics. I had it at the Apple Store a week ago, and they erased the disk and reinstalled Sierra for me. I then used Migration Assistant to migrate things over, and it migrated system files, too, and the kernel panics started again. (I was hoping to avoid having to reinstall all my software, which is why I used Migration Assistant.) Yesterday, I was back at the Apple Store trying to resolve the issue, and the "genius" that I dealt with recommended that, next time, I drag my old user folder data to the reformatted computer, and install the software from scratch and skip Migration Assistant. (My particular problem might be a logic board issue, we are still trying to straighten it out, so I can't guarantee the old system files are the problem.)

I just got my computer back from Apple, and it turns out I didn't corrupt it by using Migration Assistant. They thought it was a bad logic board or RAM, but it turned out the drive was failing. Boy, it runs better now!

I am trying to get my repaired iMac up and running. The computer was wiped, so I am installing applications, to get things as back to normal as possible. I am using Sierra, because that's what worked for me prior to my computer issues. I dragged PowerCADD over to my repaired disk, replaced the preferences, and it all works fine, except the key commands are not working. I remember this being discussed in the past, but I didn't pay much attention, since I didn't have that problem. My custom palettes all came through fine, just my keyboard commands don't seem to be working. Any tips on how to rectify this situation would be appreciated. It's amazing how internalized these commands are -- I have a hard time remembering what they are, they are so automatic on a subconscious level.

thanks,
patrick

patrick,

do you use Time Machine for backups?

I have been using Time Machine and SuperDuper and BackBlaze. (I'm sort of paranoid!). On the advice of the Apple geniuses, they said to do clean installs where possible instead of using Migration Assistant.

I found this thread:
http://www.engsw.com/PowerCADDForum/vie ... ?f=2&t=150

I'll keep you posted if I figure this out...

I believe you will only have to recover the following file from a backup.

~Library/Preferences/PowerCADD/PowerCADD 9 Key Commands