Can't restore from Time Machine during SL install?

I wanted to restore my new system from a Time Machine backup of my old computer, so I inserted the install disk and restarted holding down "C". I got a message saying "to restore from a TM backup use the utilities menu" ... but ... there is no utilities menu.
Now it reinstalled itself, but my options seem to be limited to using Migration Assistant, which is what I used first time around. Any alternatives?
(I am trying to get around the annoying Photoshop 'Licensing not working' problem http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/405/kb405970.html)

I would try again.
After you boot from the DVD, and select the language, you should see the menu's appear at the top of the monitor. One of them should be for "Utilities".

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Had to install a new hard drive early 2008 iMac, now can't restore from Time Machine.

Had to install a new hard drive in a early 2008 iMac, now can't restore from Time Machine. Backups show in Time Machine but I can't select them.
Serial Number QP*****1LW
<Edited by Host>

Here are some notes on Time Machine problems.
http://pondini.org/TM/
Troubleshooting.html
I have asked the hosts that your serial number be removed. Best not to publish it,

Renamed multiple files iTunes Match. Can I restore from time machine?

Hi
Hopefully someone might be able to assist.
I downloaded a live album from a bands official store on their website.
After importing into my itunes library, I tried to rename the two discs so that they appeared as one album, (I've done this lots of times before).
Stupidly, I was rushing before I had to leave the house, was unaware that is actually selected 50 albums and accidently renamed a large number of files as one album!!!
It's made slightly more complicate because I have iTunes Match and they were all stored in the cloud.
Can I restore from time machine and manually update iTunes Match?
Amy help would be appreciated
Thanks

when i say right clicking, i mean in itunes, right clicking the song and going get info and then changing the properties via the info tab.
yehh i done the grouping tracks together by holding down the command key.
but because i have some smart playlists with the same songs in, i changed both the genre and grouping not realising, this was ok for one smart playlist but totally messed the other up, especially because in for example "dance classics" smart playlist, there also in a folder on my hdd, . and thats the playlist i messed up., but if i drag the folder back into itunes, there all over the show on itunes and in the other playlist too, hence why it isnt as easy to easilly sort and rectify.
so what id like to do is just copy the folder again from my time machine backup, replacing the files but im unsure if this would solve it.
Message was edited by: Ian-K

Lost mail rules when upgrading to ML, can't restore from time machine

Hi,
I've installed mountain lion and restored from time machine and mail rules were not there. There's only news from apple.
I tried to restore the rules myself (MessageRules.plist and MessageRules.plist.backup) but when opening mail rules were not there yet. Nevertheless, i can add rules manually, so if there was a way of looking at the past rules I could just copy them (though it's not the best way).

My rules are still there, so perhaps Apple support speak with resource forked tongue.
Comparing an old (pre ML) rules file from 20th June with the ML one, the differences are:
The file name was: MessageRules.plist, the ML one is SynchedRules.plist. Both are in my V2 folder, but the old Rules have been copied (by Mail, not me) into the new SynchedRules file.
In the old file, for each item (Rule) the first line was Active (Key) String (Type) 1 (Value). In the ML file, this line is no longer there, so the first line is AllCriteriaMustBeSatisfied.
You can see these differnces in the "preview" part of Finder Show Info, if you have the two files to compare.
Thus, just copying and renaming the old Rules file probably won't work, because of this difference. Mail probably just makes a new file because the copied file isn't as expected. It should be possible to edit the old plist file to remove the "Active" line, and rename it to SynchedRules.plist (but see below). The top is slightly different, just below <dict>, as this relates to the Active line. There are a couple of lines at the bottom that aren't in the new file.
The "Active" line that has gone is now in a file called RulesActiveState.plist. This file is just a list of RuleIds from the SynchedRules.plist (like this:
AC6F6611-FF61-4AA6-9682-BA100EFAC233)
Doing this does sound rather tedious, but might be quicker than manually re-entering blocked email addresses etc. to replicate old rules. As plist files are in xml format, it should be possible to use a text editor to delete the unwanted "Active" line from the message rules list by Find & Replace All (with nothing). All this could then be copied to the "SynchedRules.plist. You would need to copy the RuleIds into the RulesActiveState.plist as well.
Make a copy of the files first just in case...

Can't restore from time machine after SSD upgrade

Macbook Pro 13" mid-2009, 10.7.5 Lion
I just swapped out my 160GB HDD with a 250GB SSD on my MBP. When I booted up, I pressed Command-R to try to get into recovery mode but all it does was showing a gray folder with a question mark on it.
I had previously backed up my HDD with time machine. My original HDD is no longer available because I tried to upgrade to Mavericks (since the command-R was not working) and upon restarting my MBP was locked with system pin code (that is another nightmare all by itself)
What are my options besides getting a 10.7 Lion CD from the apple store and try to boot it up that way? and then restore from time machine?
Any other way I can get into receovery mode?
Thanks (My MBP is now a brick sitting on my desk)

It's a bare drive so it isn't formatted and it doesn't yet have a Recovery HD installed on it.
Your computer originally came with a version of Leopard installed. You can reinstall it if you still have the original discs that came with the computer. Or, if you have a retail Snow Leopard DVD you can reinstall Snow Leopard from which you can then upgrade to Mavericks (Lion is no longer available for re-download.) It's unlikely your local Apple Store has a Lion USB flash drive or DVD although you can certainly make an appointment and ask for their help.
You should see if you can boot from the Recovery HD invisible image in your Time Machine backup drive. Connect it to the computer and use OPTION boot to get the boot manager. If you see a Recovery HD on your backup drive displayed, then boot from it.

Can't restore from Time Machine backup error message

My hard drive on my Macbook failed a few days ago. Just makes a clanking noise and won't boot up etc... I installed a new drive, formatted it, and selected restore from Time Machine backup from the installer screen. It started restoring from my backup I had on an external drive and everything was fine untill it got about 6% done then get a message that says "An error occured when restoring from the backup" It is pretty non descriptive. It also says please restart your system and try again or something to that effect. I tried again, same problem. When I try to copy files over manually I eventually gets some error that says there is a problem with a file and it will quit. Any ideas on how to get my data? I can see all my files on there, but can't get them. My backup disc is just used for backup on this one machine nothing else, so it shouldn't have a problem. Help!

Good to hear MA is doing something!
>I have never had much luck with Time Machine...
Same here, not one good backup or restore, can't tell which.
You can set any of these to Clone/Update as often as you wish...
Carbon copy cloner...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/products/tribackup.html

During upgrade to Lion on Macbook Pro the upgrade stops at OS utilites after rebooting asking to restore from time machine backup or install new copy

My Daughter is currently upgrading her MacBook Pro to OS X Lion. During the upgrade the system rebooted and then stops at the OS X Utilites menu. I have installed this same upgrade on My MacBook Pro and the family iMAC without issue. Did the upgrade encounter a problem? The only options are to Restore from Time Machine Backup, Reinstall Mac OS X, Get help, or Disk Utility.
I'm not sure how recient the backup is on the TimeMachine for her system and she is concered that she may loose a lot of updates she has made to iTunes and iPhoto.
Please help.

I have 8 GB of RAM, but would that even matter during install? Performance once installed and running sure, but I questiong whether the installer would demand that much more, or why it would affect mountain lion when restoring from a time machine backup.

Can't restore from Time Machine using recovery partition

I came up with the idéa to put in an extra disk (SSD) into my mid 2009 13" Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion and create my own fusion drive.
In order to make sure not to lose all of my data I made sure to back up all my files using Time Machine so that simply could restore my entire system to the new drive.
Careful as one should be when about to wipe the entire drive on a computer I wanted to check so that I could make a proper restore from my TM backup disk. So I booted into recovery mode and choose to restore from Time Machine and then I selected my external drive, but then nothing. Where the list of my latest backups should be there was nothing.
I've tried to format the disk several times, changing disk permissions etc.
Does anyone have a clue what could solve this? Is it possible that it has something to do with the fact that I'm (probably) running 10.8.3 and that my recovery partition is 10.8.2?

Is the TM backup complete? When you Enter Time Machine, do you have snapshots going back in time?
See here for info on a problem Pondini has found with Time Machine that may have affected you:
UPDATED: Serious Time Machine bug on Mountain Lion (Updated)
You may just have to restart your TM backups to get those folders backed up.
If you do have that issue, please post at his link. He is trying to get enough background info to pass to Apple to solve the problem.

Restore from Time Machine & OS X install not working

Mid 2009 Macbook Pro
Installed new hard drive, reformatted to GUID, hard drive is verified.
Booted from USB Recovery HD
Selected Restore from TIme Machine
Plugged in external, it shows up, click on it, back up from this morning is there, pick new formatted hard drive
Get error "An error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination disk. Restart your computer, and then try restoring again."
Do exactly that 3 times
Then try installing OS X
Get this error "An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again."
Try that 3 times
Reset PRAM
Tried both again same errors

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
First, are you running Leopard or Snow Leopard? Your settings at the bottom of your post say Snow Leopard, but this is the +Leopard > Time Machine+ forum, so I'm not sure which is right.
Did you do the full system restore, starting by booting from your OSX disc? If not, what exactly did you do?
Exactly what is wrong with Software Update? What happens, or doesn't happen?

Migrate, restore from Time Machine or fresh install

Folks
Getting an MBP today and migrating from MBA. Should I fresh install, use the migrate tool or restore from Time Machine?

You are going to get several answers here depending on users' opinion and experiences. My own view, having done the Time Machine backup as demo in a class, is that, if you have the time and all the settings written down, the best way is to start from scratch. Indeed, the last two Macs I bought, I even installed the OS myself, despite them being out of the box.
Having written that, I do find Time Machine a useful facility and it is possible to selectively bring the data back, which is really quite useful with a new machine. This would be a great tool in the case of a stolen computer or if a hard disk had crashed and it was necessary to get up and running quickly. As a note, I still found that with the TM restore, certain parts (such as Mailboxes and some other network related security stuff) still needed setting up again.
I did use the migrate tool once and was not over-convinced although I understand it has been updated. Someone else should offer an opinion on that.
If time is of the essence, go for the TM or Migrate tool. If you want a more stable and secure environment (perhaps that backup could bring over a problem), go from scratch with a selective backup.

Can't restore from Time Machine

I have an early 2011 17" MBP, the last model made, I think. I use the pegasus 12 TB thunderbolt setup with time machine to backup my files.
I've had no problems, all is well.
My computer has been slowing down since I installed Mountain Lion. It has reached the point of absurdity it is so slow now. I decided to do some looking around and figured I would do the following:
1) get a 6G SSD 480GB and put it in the main hard drive and keep the former hard drive with all its data as a separate external backup.
2) put in a new install of Mountain Lion. Reinstall all my programs: Aperuture 3, Photoshop CS6, pages, quicken, and so forth.
Sounds simple enough. Got my SSD drive this morning from OWC. Install was simple, went into internet recovery mode. It all worked great.
I did not want to just image back from TM all that I had because it was so slow. Seeing as I'm going to also put a second HD where the optical drive currently is, I wanted to install carefully on the SSD to maximize speed and space.
The reinstall of 10.8.x went well. Talk about zippy, wow. Got linked back up to iCloud, all the usual email, contacts, etc synced with the computer flawlessly.
So far, all is going well except for one minor deal. Major deal.
Time machine is recognized fine by the fresh install. I can open TM and see the Pegasus with all it's information. However, I cannot find but the image for "now." I cannot go back any further for some reason. I did change the name of my new hard drive, could that be an issue?
I cannot find my disk of Aperture 3. I had purchased Ap2 and kept upgrading with CD's through AP3. The AP3 I have is an upgrade disk and for whatever reason, I cannot seem to find any of my former Aperture disks. Simple enough, I thought, I'll just restore AP3 from Time Machine.
Same problem is happening: I can see Aperture 3 in TM. I highlight the app. The "restore" button is greyed out and I can only access the "now" image and cannot go further back on images/time.
Any idea why Time Machine is not working with restore? Why I cannot take all the last year of faithfully saving daily backups to time machine and see them?
I can't see them, restore them. Only the "now" image is visible and it will not let me restore anything. Anything. I tried various files, a single picture, and nothing is working. I am getting frustrated thinking that maybe this whole time machine as a backup is a joke.
Help?
Thanks.

DocDoc, that worked. I read that page and it meantioned how to exactly click what. I'm not sure why TM is so particular, but nevertheless, I was able to open a finder window pre-TM, click on my new hard drive. Then I opened TM and again, clicked on my hard drive in that finder window. Then navigated to the folder I wanted, which was the applications folder.
The "now" image wouldn't do anything when right clicked (on aperture.app) except offer to get info or to delete all backups of aperture. I almost gave up, figuring the purpled out timeline (as previous) on TM was bunk. I couldn't go backwards to a previous image before.
But having navigated that exact way somehow made TM happy. A previous image about 1 month ago was able to be saved to my application folder. 986megs or something like that in a few seconds. When TB works, it zips right along.
I don't care for how persnickety TM is, but am glad it worked nevertheless. Thanks for your help.

Brand new iMac, Can I restore from Time machine or start new?

My Mac Pro died a month ago so I am replacing it with a 27 Inch iMac. I had a time machine back up on my Mac Pro. When I get my iMac can I restore from the time machine so that I don't have to go through installing all of my programs again or should I start fresh and install everything fr

It's probably "better" to put a fresh install of everything but it certainly isn't the easiest or fastest. I'd say if everythg was running fine at the time of your last TM backup I'd restore from the TM probably using Migration Assistant. Installing and registering a bunch of software can be a pain. I've always used Migration Assistant when I get a new Mac. What happened to the Mac Pro? Is the hard drive still available? You could stick it into an external enclosure and migrate from that.

Can't restore from Time Machine "error occurred adding a recovery system"

Here's the situation:
MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard was upgraded to Mountain Lion 10.8.2.
A Time Machine backup exists (on Time Capsule) from the day before the upgrade.
I am trying to restore the Time Machine backup to a blank hard drive connected to the MacBook via FIrewire, but after rebooting with Command-R and selecting the backup source and HD destination I keep getting this (unhelpful) messages:
"An error occured while adding a recovery system to the destination disk" and "the recovery system could not be added"
Is what I am attempting impossible, or is there something else going on? What use is Time Machine if I can't restore?

Hi FranzKafka
I know it has been a while since your question, but the issue is possibly dependent on the blank HD, h=was it changed from the GUID partitioning? If so change back and you will find the Time Machine will restore back... without having to reinstall OSX. As you say, all of the original settings are captuered within TM.

Going back to leopard from snow leopard Can I restore from Time machine

My Imac continues to lock up about three times a day since I went to Snow Leopard.
I want to go back to Leopard where I did not have these problems.
Can I reformat and do a clean install and then restore everything from time machine even though the back up is from Snow Leopard?

You can restore the system to any previous dated state shown in your Time Machine backups. However, this will not preserve anything you created after that date. You can also restore individual files & folders from later backups but you may or may not be able to use files you created using Snow Leopard while running Leopard, depending on the parent application & if it was updated to use a new file format with Snow Leopard.
It is generally much better to resolve the issues you have with Snow Leopard & continue using it than to try to do this. Most issues are fairly easy to resolve. If you want help with that, let us know.

Restore from Time Machine or fresh install?

Hey everyone,
I will be purchasing a 27" i7 within the next week or so, and was wondering if anyone had experience when restoring from a Time Machine backup versus reinstalling all of your apps. Is there any performance loss from restoring a backup?
I don't really need to restore from backup -- it would just be quicker to not have to reinstall all of my apps manually. But being that this is a new machine, and I want it to be as quick possible, I have this fear that the image of my old machine will somehow "bog down" this new machine.
Are my fears justified, or just crazy?
Thanks guys/gals!

You should only use the +restore complete startup volume from Time Machine+ method if you are restoring to the same Mac or to a Mac that is the same model.
You can use Migration Assistant and use the Time Machine backup as the data source. There is a screen where you can select what to migrate, and you can migrate applications. However, I recommend you only select Users and NOT select +Applications, Settings, and Other...+ Applications are best re-installed from their original source, making sure you have the latest version and weeding out (not installing) apps you no longer use.
Also, before you migrate in any data, I recommend you use your iMac +as is+ for a while. Setup Assistant will offer to migrate data. Decline doing so at that point. Set it up and run Software Update to install the recent updates from Apple, then run it until you are satisfied that it is 100% perfect. Then, if you want to use Migration Assistant, you can run it from Applications/Utilities/.

Can't restore from Time Machine during SL install?

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