There are two schools of thought as to what a Clean Install actually is:
Under OS 9 and below, a clean install did not involve anything more drastic than choosing the Clean Install option in the OS installer, which would place a brand new System Folder on the hard drive after it renamed the existing System Folder to Previous System Folder. Once rebooted, all the extra extensions and control panels had to be moved from the old folders to the new. This, and other things that had to be done, could take the rest of the day to get finished.
With OS X, comes the confusion.
I maintain that a clean install under OS X is basically the same as one under OS 9. The option, on the OS X installer, is now called "Archive and Install" and is the default when installing on a HD that already has some flavor of OS X installed.
This process moves all your data and settings to a temporary location and instals a new copy of the system onto the HD. It renames the existing System folder to Previous System. On completion of the Install, the system moves all your stuff back into the correct folders, puts all your network settings back to what they were, sets up the printers you were using and hands the system back to you, already configure and set to go.
In the PC world, apparently, the term Clean Install refers to formatting the HD and installing the OS onto a clean platter.
This option is available in the OS X installer as "Format and Install"
Format and Install will destroy ALL the data on the drive and unless you backed up everything, it is gone. How confident are you that you actually found the Address Book data base or the Email one?
The move from 10.3 to 10.4 can be accomplished using the "Archive and Install" method. This is how I did mine. It is by far the easiest method.
Hope this helps
P
Doing a clean-install on my Mac G4 and installing Tiger OS10.4.
What are the steps necessary?
I do have an external hard drive to copy everthing over to before a clean install. Plus back-ups on several CDs.
What is involved and the steps?

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