Taming the beast
- Article 2 of 53
- iCreate, April 2004
Apple has made plenty of noise about how stable OS X is as an Operating System, but that doesn't mean that things won't go wrong. And when they do you'll be stuck. Join us as we show you how to fix every common Panther problem and apply corrective medicine to a sickly Mac.
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Typically, verbose mode will reveal that something can’t be accessed on the network or that permissions are wrong for some directories. The latter can be fixed with Disk Utility (see walkthrough). But the former is usually a sign of damaged network preferences. Use Safe Mode to get into your computer then make arbitrary changes to the network settings, save them, then change them back. Also, turning off network interfaces you don’t use (such as Ethernet, Airport or Internal Modem) is a good help in situations where your boot panel freezes, since your Mac may be waiting for a response from these unavailable networks. Equally importantly, make sure you have them listed in the right order in the Network section of the Systems Preferences; although OS X is supposed to run through them in order as it tries to access different networks, it is possible, depending on your settings, for it to decide to stop at a certain interface and go no further. An Airport connection, whose base station tries to connect to AOL for Internet access, is perfectly valid as a network configuration, so OS X will look no further down its list of connections than Airport. Which is fine, as long as you’re only trying to network with other Airport users within range. But since AOL UK doesn’t support Airport base stations with its software, no Internet connection can be made. So even if your internal modem is properly set up for Internet access, you’ll never be able to network with other computers using Airport and obtain an Internet connection as well unless you swap their order in the network interfaces list.
Corrupt preferences can kill both programs and operating system alike, depending upon whose preferences they are. Safe Mode will help you overcome the corrupt preferences of a log-in item, since it stops all log-in items from running, but obviously it won’t fix anything particular to an application you start up once you’ve made it through to your desktop.
Other enemies of application stability are third-party programs that modify OS X’s behaviour; particularly well known culprits are things like Default Folder, extra menu-bar items, or any of Unsanity’s “haxies” such as WindowShade that use its Application Program Enhancer (APE). If you are experiencing odd crashes or slow performance, locating the APE preference pane (in any of the PreferencePane folders in the various Library folders of your hard drive), dragging it to the Trash and then logging out and back in can often bring merciful relief.
Even worse than the application that crashes is the application that won’t go away. Force quit (available from the Apple Menu or by pressing Apple+Alt+esc) allows you to terminate with extreme prejudice any badly behaving application. Sometimes even that isn’t enough, and you’ll have to use the Activity Monitor’s Quit function to kill off a program that refuses to die.
That covers most of the possible problems with OS X itself. Like a pensioner in a retirement home, however, OS 9 waits ready for the slightest bit of attention you might give it. Run some old program and up it pops ready to do its best to help you in case you’ll visit it again.
In comparison to OS X, OS 9 is a dream to fix. No keystrokes to memorise for Classic since the Advanced tab of the Classic System Preferences provides its own Safe Mode (“Turn off Extensions”) and permissions fixer (“Rebuild Classic Desktop”). If these simple tools aren’t enough, a glance in a couple of folders is usually enough to fix most problems. Unlike OS X with the cryptic naming system and hidden folders and files inherited from Unix, OS 9 wears its files on its sleeves: problem with QuickTime? Just drag all the files marked QuickTime out the Extensions folder in your System Folder, download the latest installer and then reinstall it. Your corrupt files are a thing of the past. Similarly, there’s only one folder that will contain all the computer’s preferences rather than numerous ones inflicted on us by OS X (/etc, /var/db, /Library/Preferences and ~/Preferences, to name just a few). That’s not to say every OS 9 problem is easy to fix: damaged fonts can be the root causes of many problems that are seemingly unrelated and you’ll need a third-party utility such as Font Doctor to identify and repair a damaged font.
OS 9 and OS X are similar to analogue and digital TV. OS 9 can be flaky and temperamental and as more bugs appear, offer progressively poorer performance; but usually, all you have to do is fiddle with the aerial and it’s fine, albeit it not brilliant. OS X, however, is crystal perfect until enough bad things have accumulated that the whole picture just goes completely.
So it pays to ensure you maintain your system regularly: back up your data; run Disk Utility regularly, particularly after you’ve installed new software, to repair both permissions and the disk itself; run Software Update regularly to ensure you have the latest (and hopefully the most bug-free) versions of your system software; be careful not to install software from unknown third-parties that puts files in awkward places or modifies the system too severely (be especially wary of anything that needs an administrator password for no really good reason); and a surge protector is a must if you live in a part of the country that gets stormy weather often.
Take good care of OS X and it will take good care of you.
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