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A Beginner's Guide to Fixing OS X

applematters.com — A good introduction to the basics of fixing OS X without going nutso.

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  • john608, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4This little article is actually a great help. I just got a new Mac and I have been a windows user for years. I find the switch can be hard at times, and even simple things I still cannot do..still I like it ;)
    • beelz, on 10/12/2007, -23/+9fixing a mac? i thought they never break.crash.get viruses. ... blah blah blah...
    • chris86wm, on 10/12/2007, -12/+4thats only if you install linux on them!
      j/k, nice article.
    • freelance24, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I agree there are so many things that a i am used to doing to keep windows up to date. and bug free i think that there is a some thing that i need to do i use this program that helps alothttp://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/macjanitor.html
      it is called mac janitor it does most of the things that need to be done weekly monthly and daily. it helps alot on machines that are in stand by alot
    • flernk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That really is a great beginner's guide. One important first-step is to simply close programs you aren't currently using. It's a good idea to get familiar with Activity Monitor (in your Utilities folder) to find out which programs are eating your memory. You can force-quit them directly from there if you need to. Sometimes, even a badly written widget can give you headaches.

      Reinstalling OSX really is a last resort. In the years I've been using Apple, I've never had to reinstall the operating system for any reason.
  • Systemind, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Don't worry, you won't need most of it.
    • TheShrike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No joke...

      Seriously... was it just me, or did they actually suggest reinstalling OS X? The set of circumstances under which that's a viable solution are so small that anyone can confidently say "You'll NEVER have to do that"
  • adalgiso, on 10/12/2007, -11/+3Basically, what this article tells me is that there is no way to "fix" a problem with your Mac other than a) hoping a PRAM/NVRAM reset works, b)Buying $200 dollars worth of software, or c) going to an Apple store to have them tell you how much it would cost to fix your computer. None of those sound at all pleasing to me. For Windows: corrupt OS files? --> chkdsk /r, Automated System Recovery, Last known good configuration. Lost files? GetDataBackNTFS -- works every time, and its shareware.
    • Bhima, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4uhmm.. yes that's about it. I've been using Mac for years and problems do crop up from time to time but usually there isn't much to be done. If it is a software problem fiddling with permissions & preferences is the only thing I've ever done.
      If it was a hard drive problem disk warrior is the only thing you need.
      If it was a hardware problem just take it to the store and have it fixed. (I fix my own Macs however my Mum & my Sisters just take them in to the Apple store).

      I've only had to reinstall the OS once and that was when I did something stupid as root trying to delete bad prefs (I did have a bottle of Jack Daniels on my desk at the time).

      Having said all of that, if the guy was going to bother writing an article he could gone into a lot more detail.
    • gavroche, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Its not like you will have to fix your mac too
    • nTensify, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Basically, what this article tells me is that there is no way to "fix" a problem with your Mac other than a) hoping a PRAM/NVRAM reset works, b)Buying $200 dollars worth of software, or c) going to an Apple store to have them tell you how much it would cost to fix your computer."

      That's simply because when something goes wrong on a Mac, it's generally a serious problem, as the OS has taken care of all of the trivial problems that occur.

      Most of the time, if anything goes wrong at all, you can just fire up diskutil, Repair permissions and restart and everything will be back to normal.
  • slyckidiot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Well, at least repairing permissions isn't listed. I was a bit suprised.
    • vonnie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Repairing permissions was only really usefull when you were dual booting OS9.
      http://www.unsanity.org/archives/000410.php
      http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/repair_permissions_voodoo
    • Thud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I actually had a problem in OSX on my G4 mini (non dual-boot) that was fixed by repairing permissions.
      It happened after I did a fresh install of 10.3 and then upgraded to 10.4 on a new hard drive.
      Activity Monitor would not show any processes, memory usage, or any other data except disk usage. No errors, it was just completely blank-- as if no processes at all were running. However I could run "top" from a shell and see everything.

      Repairing permissions fixed the problem-- though I don't know what the root cause was.
  • kevinrosesmom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Good article. Not really necessary most of the time, but I could have used the knowledge about deleting preference files to fix iCal several months back (the week view disappeared for some reason, deleting it fixed it immediately)

    I feel so dumb with OS X sometimes b/c I know so much about the structure of windows, but so little about OS X. Then I realize that I'm happier not needing to know. :)
    • SystemError, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Touché, I know more about the structure on OS X and Unix. It all depends on what you are use too and run.
      My Win skills now suck ever since I switched to Mac 5 years ago.
  • arcsbite, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2re-install the OS...sounds like the PC tech guy I have to call once a month...
    • gavroche, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6One of my many computers is a mac and has never been re-formatted since Mac Os 7.5, thats my oldest computer still plugged, and of course its not a pc running windows
    • arcsbite, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2i'm a Mac user.....I know.
      I was being ironic....I tihnk.
  • ibnabouna, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Mac OS X doesn't need much fixing. It fixes itself for the most part. The only thing you can really do is maintenance.
    • gavroche, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8you mean cleaning up the desktop ;-)
  • simX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Ugh, this is the worst article ever created on Mac OS X troubleshooting. They could have at least gone into depth on how to find the name of the preference file (reverse DNS naming system, so you have com.panic -- reversed URL of the company the product comes from -- and then the product name and .plist, so you have com.panic.transmit.plist as the name of the Transmit preference file). The article could have talked about manually doing cleaning of ~/Library/Caches/ or ~/Library/Application Support/ , since extra files used by applications are often stored in these places.

    The article could have also talked about creating new users as a troubleshooting step, so that you can see whether the problem is system-wide, or if it's only restricted to one user. (If it's only restricted to one user, it's likely a preference/cache/application support corruption problem.) This is a really useful tool.

    But no, this article just sucked. Sorry, marked as lame.

    (As a rule, anything from applematters.com is not that great.)
    • simX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2In the interest of full disclosure (well, it's after the fact, but I guess it's better late than never), I do write for applexnet.com which could be regarded as a competitor to applematters.com . But I still stand by comments about the article.
    • Stepbasin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I love people like you who don't read the title of the article you are commenting on. You just make me laugh so hard! It is a BEGINNER'S GUIDE to fixing OS X. Not an advanced user's guide to manually troubleshooting your system. Remember, the average novice isn't going to go deleting random files they have never heard about until things get fixed. They are looking for a simple solution. I.e run program, click fix, wait for fixing to finish. Thankfully you didn't say something really stupid like "Well all they would have to do is open the terminal and . . ." You weren't that dumb, but you were close.
    • ryanbutterworth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"They could have at least gone into depth on how to find the name of the preference file (reverse DNS naming system, so you have com.panic -- reversed URL of the company the product comes from"

      Really? I never realized that.. Interesting
    • IHatePants, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The contents of your post left me wondering, why don't you write an article? I'm not being funny or sarcastic here either. I'm a *nix guy myself, and a recent Mac convert. The stuff in your post clicked, made sense, and I'd bet you have a lot more helpful nuggets like that.

      The posted article is "ok" for people who just want to click a button or two and see if it's fixed. I'd like to see a troubleshooting article for those of us who aren't afraid to dig into hidden files, etc.

      Hope to see an article from you soon.
  • 1337director, on 10/12/2007, -20/+3lol macs, so inferior. except for video editing. A good G5 will rape any windows/linux box HARD in the ass until it bleeds. But seriously, acctually breaking down, so inferior. I've never had my American Windows XP ever crash or break down enough to stop my spyware from opening, and Linux, pfsh, that thing crashed so hard that I couldn't figure out how to install it lol!
    • SnakeO, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2I'm not quite sure what I should be thinking right now...
    • chris86wm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Linux, pfsh, that thing crashed so hard that I couldn't figure out how to install it lol"
      I think you need to slowly step away from the computer and throw yourself out the window.
    • ryanbutterworth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1C'mon, that's funny! Lighten up...
  • SuspectDevice, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If you look at the rest of the site its total bs mac bashing done by somebody with way too much time on there hands.
  • richardiscool, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2I don't know what this article is about; OS X NEVER BREAKS! FREEDOM IS SLAVERY!
    • inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2More accurately, OS X rarely breaks. The only people who say it never breaks (those you are presumably spoofing) are the small percentage of Mac zealots who scream about it on internet forums. Zealots are a vocal minority but do not speak for most of us. You wouldn't be taking their voice as the "typical" Mac user, would you? If so, you should examine comments on these and other forums more critically. Responding the way you have just insults people you have no reason to insult.

      Assuming you care...
    • richardiscool, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1No, not really.
    • inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oh well.
  • DrivinWest, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5As was said above, Mac OS X needs fixing? I've got two Macs (G4 and Intel) and they're the most trouble-free and user friendly computers I've ever owned. I used to build my own PCs and install Windows and Linux (Ubuntu and Fedora) but I just fail to see the point anymore.

    What I really like about MAC OS X is how incredibly powerful it is when you want it to be; Terminal is your command line interface just like in *nix but it is optional, not mandatory.

    Windows has its uses (games). Linux has it uses (servers). But for a day in and day out desktop computer? OS X all the way!
  • ch4rles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I have never had any problems with my powerbook, I'm glad to know there are resources available if there problems do arise, but for now, my mac is operating as advertised....
  • MiloMindrbindr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2On my 2nd mac now, had my first mac (powerbook) for 3 years without a single problem, gave it to my niece and it was working as good as the day I got it. I'd run the program mentioned in this article called Onyx once every few months to clean out the cache and tighthen up the system structure, but thats it.

    I have a windows media center box (only until Apple releases their PVR) and have never downloaded anything but the windows updates, program guide updates and the spyware removing stuff and the thing has tanked on me twice. Literally for no reason it just stops working. Yesterday, in fact, it randomly lost the tuner card driver, so i had to hunt that down and reinstall it. And im using all hardware that is MCE recommended. Nothing even close to this has ever happened with my mac. When they say they just work, theyre not kidding. I basically had/have a virgin XP box and it corrupts itself... go figure.
  • arizonagroove, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They failed to mention AppleJack which can apparently be a big help if your Mac goes screwy.

    http://applejack.sourceforge.net/

    Not had need to use it to resuce a borked system myself as yet.
  • Hamman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I've used my self-built PC for over a year now. It's been rock solid, and I've never experienced any problems with virueses, spyware or adware.
    Buy good hardware, use protection(firewall+antivirus) and have common sense(ie don't click on popups while surfing por... eh, tax planning websites).
  • collywolly, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1So much for it "just works" (lets face it we all know that is just a crappy marketing campaign).

    The last thing on the list is "reinstall OS X".
    I thought it was only bloody Windows crap you needed to do that with!
  • artman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0My previous graphite iMac finally bit the dust after 5 years. One reason was the slot CD drive finally failed (not a big fan of their slot drives) and then everything started to go in the OS (OS X and OS 9). I bought a new Mac and gave the other to a friend who said he could repair it. Within a week he had replaced the CD drive and guess what...(another thing this article doesn't mention) the BATTERY needed to be replaced on the motherboard. It now works fine.

    /happy with my new Mac
    //replace your battery!
  • xutopia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've had my mac for two years now and I haven't had a need to do any of the stuff this guy mentions. Actually reading his "fixes" sounds a lot like a tutorial telling me how to keep my car in order except he includes "Change your oil every week" in that tutorial.
  • MalDON, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2And Apples say they don't have problems...
    • heydigital, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I run a network with 60% PC, 40% Mac and keep a crash log. 20 instances of system crashes in 1 1/2 years, and only 1 of those was Windows, the rest of the crashes were Mac.
  • tirofiban, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Uhmmm..... I don't get it. When did OS X become broken? Tiger is working fine in the 3 Macs I've purchased recently for my family. And what's with repair permissons not being on the list? Weird article.

    Remember, when in doubt, ask yourself What Would Leo Do? And I don't remember Mr. Laporte ever saying any of those things.
  • drycounty, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I never run Tech Tool Pro, haven't since the days of OS 9. DiskWarrior is good -- but if a drive ever needs that, I honestly look at replacing said drive.

    Non-digg, not marked as lame but still ... how many Diggers need an introductory tutorial?
  • Gargoyle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmm, remind me to come back and search for this *IF* I ever get a problem! Here's a better solution... Don't install "haxies" like tinker tool and it's friends, stop "clock watching" your memory and cpu usage and let osx do what it does best.... Run and run so you can get some work done!
  • heydigital, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1...because Macs have problems too. Nice little article.
  • gaohegao, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0asdasd
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