Take Control of Troubleshooting Your Mac, 3rd Edition

Learn Troubleshooting Basics

If I were teaching you how to cook, I’d start by making sure you knew the basic techniques you’d be repeating many times: how to julienne vegetables, deglaze a pan, cream butter, roast poultry, and so on. That way, when we got to specific recipes later, I could simply say, “sweat the aromatics in butter and purée the tomatoes” without having to explain the meanings of words like “sweat,” “aromatics,” and “purée.”

I want to do the same thing in this chapter: make sure you have a grasp of certain procedures that come up in many different Mac troubleshooting tasks. Then, when I describe the specific steps you’ll follow to solve various problems, I can say, “start up in safe mode” without having to spell out that process ...