Strange thing happened. I want so sell my old Macbook and therefore used a disk image of the Snow Leopard DVD that I restored onto an external drive. I booted off the drive and went through the installation steps.
Now I really would like to perform "archive and install", as there might be some files that I need later, but I didn't see the option. The only options for installation I had, were, including others, optional printer drivers and Rosetta. So I just clicked through and I wasn't given any other option.
After about 45 minutes, my system booted again, and voila, there was my old system. Nothing changed.
How should I proceed to actually reset the system? All I have is that Snow Leopard DVD image.
Best Answer
Both the Archive and Install and Erase and Install options were removed in Snow Leopard (along with the "Options" button that used to allow access to them).
You can get the effect of an Erase and Install by erasing the disk with Utilities menu > Disk Utility before installing.
There's no way (that I know of) to mimic an Archive and Install without mucking around at the command line.
As I understand it, the main reason Archive and Install was there was to allow downgrading (i.e. reinstalling over a newer version). Snow Leopard is capable of doing an in-place downgrade, so the A&I capability was deemed redundant.
If you're selling the Mac, A&I is the wrong thing to do anyway. You really should back up everything you might need (the entire disk if you're not sure) to an external drive that you're going to keep, and then do a full erase of the internal drive to make sure the buyer isn't getting any of your private information.