Reinstall OS or upgrade?

[davemchine]

I've been happily using El Capitan until recently. My computer now becomes unresponsive after as little as 24hrs and I have to power it off and back on. I also get weird errors like the one pictured below where the OS thinks I'm trying to run a powerpc version of safari which of course I am not. I've ran DiskWarrior on the startup drive and it reports no problems. Same with DiskUtil. I need this computer to be more reliable. Should I reinstall El Capitan from scratch and reinstall all my apps (ugh) or should I let the App store update the OS to whatever is current?

[space-time]

What a strange error. Did you use migration assistant to upgrade from a 10.4 or 10.5 all the way to El Crapitan and maybe some PPC DNA code got carried over and contaminated your current INTEL DNA? Seriously how could such an error occur these days?

I would say backup, nuke and pave, then copy over only documents and media. Do not migrate and setting, any Apps. I like those fresh. But that is just me.

[mattkime]

Clone your current drive and try upgrading.

[jdc]

If you have a password manager, like 1Password, reinstalling from scratch should be pretty easy.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

I've always been a big fan of nuking and paving when upgrading to a newer version of an OS.

[davemchine]

Space, I haven't upgraded since El Capitan came out in in 2015. I can't remember if I used migration assistant or not but powerpc apps haven't been supported since 2013 I think. A very weird error.

mattkime, I'm taking your advice (because I'm lazy) and performing a CCC clone and will then let the App store perform the OS upgrade. If it works then great! If not I can do the nuke and pave. What a pain!

[GeneL]

This topic really hits home for me.

I'm running El Cap on the New/Old Stock 2012 Mini that I bought last year.

I've not encountered any unusual problems with El Cap, so far.

OTOH, the iMac that we bought for Mavis came with Sierra and even I can't figure out a lot of the issues we've run into. It has been driving Mavis crazy, because she's coming from using her previous older Mini that I hadn't even upgraded to Snow Leopard.

In the past she rarely had a problem that required my intervention, but now it seems that when she gets stuck, I can't easily figure out what the problem is.

I will sit and work on it and usually I will eventually figure out what to do, but it is terribly frustrating for me, as well.

She is sure that the computer is defective and wishes that she could return it. I've told her that the choices are to go into our local Apple Store and have them check the iMac and then to instruct us how to use the new OS if everything else checks out okay.

The alternative I've offered her is to let her take my Mini and that I would use the iMac.

Is this a common experience with the newest operating systems? What happened to Apple's OS being intuitive?

It just really bothers me that we've had such a difficult time using one of the latest OS from Apple. This is definitely a new experience for me after using a Mac since the early '90s.

Any suggestions?