Lesson 24. 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 I follow to fix troubles on Macs, before calling tech support. I go down the list until the problem is fixed (but also check this chapter for other problem-solving tips):

Make sure you’ve got plenty of free space on the hard disk, at least a gigabyte. If not, clear up space and restart.

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