Help needed can't get my time machine back ups to work.

[Steve Pepper]

I've now been trying for over a week to get my machine up and running. I've cleaned the machine and rebooted with a fresh system several times and works OK for a short while but then hangs.

I think I had a virus on the machine and it eventually crashed and refused to work. I've tried disk utility to erase the disc and tried a clean OS as well as trying to restore from a back up none of which give me back a stable machine.

I tried mackeeper to remove viruses from time machine with my macbook but it won't let me alter any files.

I then tried on a clean install to copy the last back up so I could remove the virus and then reinstall but it won't copy from time machine to the iMac drive.

I have also tried earlier back ups (back to June) I usually get about a day out of it (after doing a fresh virus check) before it eventually hangs.

Am I having hardware problems the iMac is just over a year old. Is there anything else I can try I've tried safe mode, clearing the drive before a fresh OS install from the net?

I don't want to lose all my old data.

I managed to save some to the iMac but things like all my mailboxes

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

What is the make of external drive you are using?

 

[Kaveman]

There is no way to "remove virus", mackeeper is almost malware it's so bad.

You should do a clean install from the DVDs and copy just your documents back in from your backups.

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

Sorry misunderstood thought it was an external drive issue.

 

[Steve Pepper]

Thanks, the main problem isn't so much the documents as I have most of these saved on a desktop folder that I managed to get over to the laptop more things like my email history as I can't find a way of importing that from time machine. also where are photos from iPhoto stored on time machine?

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

what is the OS X version?

 

[Steve Pepper]

Mavericks

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

You can enter Time Machine directly from Mail.app. Navigate to the mail box or message/s you wish to restore, select then click Restore.

Re: iPhoto, see if these help:

Is Time Machine backing up iPhoto on Maverick?

iPhoto '11: Restoring from Time Machine with iPhoto '11 (9.2 or later) and OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later)