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Tips and tricks to help you use your Macintosh |
By Terry Lawrence, program director MacWest Computer Society, Vancouver. British Columbia You don’t die when you crash. Crashing your Mac is a bit different from crashing your car. Almost invariably it is just a software “crash”, meaning that the freeze or crash was not the result of a problem with the computer itself, but just the result of a conflict between two programs (or their extensions), or insufficient memory (RAM) allocated to the program(s), or insufficient memory in general. Hardware problems such as a Hard Disk, CD player, Logic Board, CPU, or RAM failure do occur, but they are rare. Those are problems that you should leave to a certified Apple technician to deal with, unless you are very knowledgeable about electronics. Software problems, on the other hand, you should learn how to fix yourself. It can save you a lot of time and money, and make you more comfortable and confident using your Mac. Getting out of the Freeze or Crash. The standard Macintosh Force Quit using the keyboard combination of - Command+Option+Escape (esc) - doesn’t work on the new USB G3 & G4 towers or iMac’s. (Truth be known, it hardly ever works even on older Mac’s). The standard Macintosh Force Restart - Command+Control+Power key - also doesn’t work on version A, B, & C iMacs running OS 8.5x or 8.6. It does work with OS 9 due to USB code changes, at least on the Slot Loading iMacs. If you can’t restart from the keyboard, push the power button on the front of the iMac. If that doesn’t work, use a paperclip to push the restart button (the one with the black triangle) next to the telephone socket in the iMac’s right side, or push the button with the black triangle on the side of the Slot Loading iMacs. If all else fails, pull the power cord, and then plug it back in and restart. Follow up restart by running Disk First Aid, even if it ran automatically during restart after the crash. The automatic Disk First Aid is not the same program as the regular Disk First Aid. You should run both. Run a virus check if you suspect a virus. It is very unlikely that you have a virus, but it doesn’t hurt to check periodically. Rebuilding the Desktop and deleting corrupted preference files. After a crash (or a series of crashes), it’s a good idea to throw out the Finder Preferences and rebuild the desktop file. Open the Preferences folder in the System folder and drag the Finder Preferences into the trash can. Then restart holding the Command+Option keys down until the computer asks you if you want to rebuild the desktop. Click OK. This will get rid of any corrupted finder preferences that may cause the problem to recur, if it was a Finder problem that caused the crash. Empty the trash. Zap that PRAM. If the problem continues, try resetting (Zapping) the Parameter RAM. Restart the computer while holding down the Command+Option+P+R keys until the startup chime has sounded several times. Then release the keys and let the startup continue as usual. After zapping the PRAM, you will need to reselect the Hard Disk as the startup disk if you are using OS 8.5x, 8.6, or OS 9x.. Open the Startup Disk control panel (Apple Menu>Control Panels>Startup Disk), and click once on the Hard Disk to select it. Then close the control panel. This will eliminate the flashing question mark at startup, which is caused by the computer resetting it’s default startup disk to a nonexistent network server in OS 8.5 or later. Of course, if you are a client computer running off a network server, leave it on the network disk. Dealing with Extension and Control Panel problems. Probably the single largest cause of operating system freezes and crashes are extension conflicts, and, to a lesser extent, control panel conflicts. Extensions are files that add a function to, or “extend”, the basic operating system. When two or more of them try to load, or grab control of the computer at the same time, you have a conflict. Control panels can do the same thing. The Extensions Manager control panel allows you to deal with these problems by disabling, or turning off, individual extensions, and by creating specific sets of extensions that include or exclude particular extensions or control panels that are in conflict with each other. For example, if your Iomega Zip driver extension is causing conflicts with several other extensions loaded by other application programs, you can create an extension set that includes all extensions except the Iomega driver, and use that as your standard set except when you need to use the Zip drive. You can also create a set that includes the Iomega driver, and excludes those particular extensions that it conflicts with, which you would use when using the Zip drive. You then select the desired set from the extensions manager, and restart to load only the desired set of extension and control panels. You can quickly check to see if a third party (non-apple) extension is causing your problems by selecting the Extension Manager’s Mac OS Base Set as your startup set. If this resolves your freezes or crashes, you know that one of the third party extensions or control panels is causing your problems. You can often resolve problems by changing the load order of the extensions or control panels. Type a space or asterisk * in front of the name of an extension or control panel to move it to the top of the load order list, or type a Z or tilde ~ in front of the name to cause it to load last. Conflict Catcher from Casady & Green is a powerful utility that, among other things, enables you to automate the process of tracking down and resolving extension problems. It is sort of an Extensions Manager on steroids. There isn’t space in a brief article like this to go into the details of tracking down and resolving the various kinds of conflicts, but there are several good books on the subject, including the 268 page Conflict Catcher manual, and MacWest First Byte meetings Q&A sessions often get into discussions on Extension and Control Panel troubleshooting. Help! I just get a flashing question mark when I try to start up. A flashing question mark (?) at start-up* indicates the computer is looking for a valid System Folder WITH THAT NAME and isn’t finding one. This usually indicates a serious problem with your system folder. For example, one of more of it’s vital components may have been trashed or moved to another folder, and are no longer in the System Folder. You may have to start your computer from another disk with a valid system folder on it, such as a Utility CD, or an OS install CD. If you can’t find the problem with the system folder, the best bet is to do a Clean Install of the Operating System from your OS CD. If the flashing question mark is alternating with a folder for a few seconds, and the computer then proceeds with it’s startup sequence, you need to select the Hard Disk as the startup disk in the Startup Disk control panel as discussed earlier in this article. Other utilities. There are a variety of special application programs called Utilities that check your computer for problems, and try to correct them. Usually these utilities have one or more System Folders on their CD’s, so they can act as emergency startup disks, and you can select them as startup disks in order to work on the Hard Disk. Norton Utilities , Tech Tool Pro, Disk Warrior, Hard Disk Toolkit, File Buddy, and Conflict Catcher are the best known of these Macintosh utilities. Tech Tool Pro is by far the most versatile of the lot, offering far more tests and options than any of the others. Norton Utilities offers a more limited number of tests and fix-it options, and in my opinion, hasn’t really kept up with the changes in the operating system the way Tech Tool has in the past few years. Both will defragment your files and hard disk, but Tech Tool uses a safer, if somewhat slower, method. Both will attempt to fix Directory problems, which are a principal source of Hard Disk problems. Tech Tool Pro now uses a new routine similar to Disk Warrior to rebuild a damaged Directory. Disk Warrior is a one-purpose utility that creates a new, clean, Directory for your hard disk, Zip disk, Floppy, Superdisk, or whatever disk, and instead of attempting to “fix” the old, corrupted Directory, it replaces it with the new one. Although this utility does only one thing, it does it very well. It will often salvage damaged or “unreadable” Zip disks or hard disks that neither Norton or Tech Tool can repair. Hard Disk Toolkit is a utility that Mounts, Unmounts, Initializes, Formats, and Partitions Hard Disks. This utility will often “mount” disks that otherwise will not show up on your desktop. It works well with non-apple drives, and is sort of a heavy-duty version of the Apple Drive Setup utility. File Buddy does with files what Hard Disk Toolkit does with disks. It can also find and open or delete invisible files, making it very handy for solving problems caused by programs or viruses that create invisible files. Conflict Catcher does just what it’s name implies, and is invaluable for dealing with extension conflicts, as well as facilitating OS clean installs through it’s Clean Install System Merge. |