Mac OS X Lion: Peachpit Learning Series

Lesson 22. Basic Troubleshooting

Goals

Noisy hard disk?

Use simple troubleshooting techniques

Force quit an application

Understand when and how to restart

Do a safe boot

Repair permissions

Delete a preference file

Check for software updates

Create another user to test software problems

Report crashes to Apple

Force a disk to eject

All computers, even Macs, act funny at times. Fortunately, it’s often something that you can fix yourself. These are the steps we follow to fix troubles on our Macs, before calling tech support. We keep going down the list until the problem is fixed (but also check this chapter for other problem-solving tips):

Make ...