introductory macintosh frequently asked questions faq archive name macintosh general faq version last modified april copyright elliotte harold changes where can i ftp macintosh software i added the ftp site anl anl fr what is bin hqx cpt image etc disk doubler will decode packit archives binhex will decode macbinary files not stuffit files as the last version erroneously indicated i added the question how can i get binhex stuffit etc from a pc comp sys mac faq part an introduction to the macintosh newsgroups i introduction how do i use this document what other information is available which newsgroup should i post to someone just asked why the system was taking up sixteen megabytes on their iicx shouldn t i display my knowledge to the world by posting the seventeenth response to their question ii ftp where can i ftp macintosh software can i get shareware by e mail where can i find application x can someone mail me application x what is bin hqx cpt image etc how can i get binhex stuffit etc how can i get binhex stuffit etc from a pc iii troubleshooting what to do when things go wrong identify the problem read the read me file check for viruses reinstall the application and all its support files reinstall the system software isolate the problem contact technical support iv preventive maintenance trash unneeded files reevaluate your extensions rebuild the desktop zap the pram and reset the clock resize the system heap reinstall the system software disk utilities backing up disk defragmentation reformatting and partitioning your hard disk other faq lists currently available b comp sys mac system i memory why is my system using so much memory what is mode the bit enabler do i need them cache and carry how much memory should i allot to my cache ii system software why does apple charge for system what does system give me for my that system doesn t where can i get system how can i use system on a system only mac non us scripts and systems what is system tuneup do i need it why do my da s disappear when i turn on multifinder do i need system how can i get system on k disks iii hard disks filesharing and the file system help my folder disappeared why can t i throw this folder away why can t i share my removable drive why can t i eject this syquest cartridge cd rom etc why can t i rename my hard disk iv miscellaneous what does system error xxx mean what is a type error what is a rose easy access or one answer many questions c comp sys mac misc i viruses help i have a virus reporting new viruses ii printing and postscript how do i make a postscript file how do i print a postscript file why won t my postscript file print on my mainframe s printer why are my postscript files so big how can i print postscript on a non postscript printer how do i make my imagewriter ii print in color why doesn t printmonitor work with the imagewriter why did my document change when i printed it how can i preview a postscript file how do i edit a postscript file iii dos and the mac how can i move files between a mac and a pc how can i translate files to a dos format should i buy softpc or a real pc iv security how can i prevent users from changing the contents of a folder how can i password protect my mac v no particular place to go miscellaneous miscellanea are there any good books about the mac how do i take a picture of the screen how do i use a picture for my desktop can i replace the welcome to macintosh box with a picture what is autodoubler spacesaver more disk space are they safe how do they compare to timestwo stacker and edisk where did my icons go where can i find a user group this work is copyright by elliotte m harold permission is hereby granted to distribute this unmodified document provided that no fee in excess of normal on line charges is required for such distribution portions of this document may be extracted and quoted free of charge and without necessity of citation in normal on line communication provided only that said quotes are not represented as the correspondent s original work permission for quotation of this document in printed material and edited on line communication such as the info mac digest and tidbits is given subject to normal citation procedures i e you have to say where you got it disclaimer i do my best to ensure that information contained in this document is current and accurate but i can accept no responsibility for actions resulting from information contained herein this document is provided as is and with no warranty of any kind corrections and suggestions should be addressed to erh tesla njit edu apple macintosh laserwriter imagewriter finder hypercard and multifinder are registered trademarks and powerbook is a trademark of apple computer inc linotronic is a registered trademark of linotype hell ag inc postscript is a registered trademark and illustrator and photoshop are trademarks of adobe systems inc microsoft is a registered trademark of microsoft corporation pagemaker is a registered trademark of aldus corp autodoubler and diskdoubler are trademarks of fifth generation systems inc stuffit and stuffit deluxe are trademarks of raymond lau and aladdin systems inc stuffit spacesaver is a trademark of aladdin systems inc more disk space is a trademark of alysis software corporation timestwo is a trademark of golden triangle computers inc unix is a registered trademark of at t all other tradenames are trademarks of their respective manufacturers this is the first part of the this faq the second part is posted to comp sys mac system and features many questions about system software the third part is posted every two weeks in comp sys mac misc tables of contents for those two pieces are included above please familiarize yourself with all three sections of this document before posting all pieces are available for anonymous ftp from rtfm mit edu in the directory pub usenet news answers macintosh except for this introductory faq which appears in multiple newsgroups and is stored as general faq z the name of each file has the format of the last part of the group name followed by faq z e g the faq for comp sys mac system is stored as system faq z and the faq for comp sys mac misc is stored as misc faq z rtfm stores files as compressed z binary files if you leave off the z at the end of the file name when getting the file rtfm will automatically decompress the file before sending it to you you can also have these files mailed to you by sending an e mail message to mail server rtfm mit edu with the line send pub usenet news answers macintosh name in the body text where name is the name of the file you want as specified above e g general faq you can also send this server a message with the subject help for more detailed instructions i have a question congratulations you ve come to the right place usenet is a wonderful resource for information ranging from basic questions how do i lock a floppy disk to queries that would make steve jobs himself run screaming from the room in terror i used resedit to remove resources init wdef and nvir from my system file and used the hex editor to add code string a b as a patch to the sfgetfile routine so the standard file dialog box would be a nice shade of mauve everything worked fine until i installed supercdevblaster and now when i use the aldus driver to print from pagemaker d to a linotronic my system hangs p s i m running system on a powerbook since the macintosh newsgroups are medium to high volume we ask that you first peruse this faq list including at least the table of contents for the other pieces of it check any other relevant on line resources listed below in question especially the faq lists for the other macintosh newsgroups and rtfm read the friendly manual before posting your question we realize that you are personally incensed that the system is taking up fourteen of your newly installed twenty megs of ram but this question has already made its way around the world three hundred times before and it s developing tired feet finally before posting to any newsgroup macintosh or otherwise please familiarize yourself with the basic etiquette of usenet as described in the newsgroup news announce newusers how do i use this document where can i get it comp sys mac faq is currently divided into multiple pieces a general introduction which you re reading now and specific lists for the newsgroups comp sys mac system and comp sys mac misc faq lists for comp sys mac wanted comp sys mac apps and comp sys mac hardware are in development when ready each part will be available in its respective newsgroup all pieces are available via anonymous ftp from rtfm mit edu in the pub usenet news answers macintosh directory except for this document itself which is named general faq z the pieces are named as per the last part of the newsgroup they cover followed by faq e g system faq z misc faq z the z means the file is stored compressed so you ll need to ftp it in binary mode and use either maccompress stuffit deluxe or the unix uncompress command to decompress it however if you leave off the z extension when you get the file rtfm will automatically decompress the file before sending it to you this introductory document is posted to all of the concerned newsgroups the tables of contents for each of the specific faq lists are at the beginning of this file so you should be able to get at least some idea whether your question is answered anywhere else in the faq even if you don t have the other parts at hand it s not always obvious especially to newcomers where a particular question or comment should be posted please familiarize yourself with the faq lists in all the major macintosh newsgroups before posting in any of them which questions appear in which faqs can serve as a basic guide to what posts belong where to jump to a particular question search for section number question number enclosed in parentheses for example to find where can i ftp macintosh software search for the string to jump to a section instead of a question use a zero for the question number what other information is available comp sys mac faq provides short answers to a number of frequently asked questions appropriate for the usenet newsgroup comp sys mac misc and comp sys mac system four other files are worthy of particular note daryl spitzer maintains a faq list covering macintosh programming for the newsgroup comp sys mac programmer it s posted to that group weekly and available for anonymous ftp from ftp cs uoregon in pub mac eric rosen maintains a frequently asked questions list for comp sys mac comm available in that newsgroup and from rascal ics utexas edu in mac faq where the file you re reading now is also irregularly archived this list answers many frequently asked questions about networking unix and the mac telecommunications and foreign file formats norm walsh has compiled an excellent faq for comp fonts that answers a lot of questions about the various kinds of fonts and cross platform conversion and printing it s available in comp fonts or by ftp from ibis cs umass edu in pub norm comp fonts faq finally jim jagielski maintains a faq for comp unix aux covering apple s unix environment a ux it s posted every to weeks in comp unix aux and news answers it s available for anonymous ftp at jagubox gsfc nasa gov which newsgroup should i post to there are no stupid questions but there are misplaced ones you wouldn t ask your english teacher how to do the definite integral of ln x between zero and one would you so don t ask the programmer newsgroup why your system is so slow when microsoft word is in the background ignorance of basic netiquette is not an excuse if you want people to help you you need to learn their ways of communicating posting questions to the proper newsgroup will fill your mailbox with pearls of wisdom and maybe a few rotten oysters too posting to the wrong newsgroup often engenders a thundering silence for instance the most common and glaring mispost one that seems as incongruous to dwellers in the macintosh regions of usenet as would a purple elephant to aleuts in the arctic asking a question about networking anywhere except comp sys mac comm normally produces no useful responses posting the same question to comp sys mac comm ensures that your post is read and considered by dozens of experienced network administrators and not a few network software designers please post to exactly one newsgroup do not cross post if a question isn t important enough for you to take the extra minute to figure out where it properly belongs it s not important enough for several thousand people to spend their time reading for the same reason comp sys mac misc should not be used as a catch all newsgroup the breakdown of questions between different newsgroups in this document can also serve as a reasonable guide to what belongs where specifically questions about productivity applications software you bought your macintosh to run not software you bought to make your macintosh run better should go to comp sys mac apps unless the application is covered in a more specific newsgroup communications programs games hypercard compilers and databases all have more topical comp sys mac newsgroups post questions about non communications hardware including questions about what software is necessary to make particular hardware work to comp sys mac hardware questions about macos system software belong in comp sys mac system questions about utilities and extensions normally belong in comp sys mac misc questions about a ux go to comp unix aux detailed questions about appletalk belong in comp protocols appletalk direct questions about hypercard to comp sys mac hypercard non hypercard programming questions and questions about development environments should go to comp sys mac programmer resedit questions may be posted either to comp sys mac misc comp sys mac system or comp sys mac programmer but generally the netters who inhabit the darker recesses of comp sys mac programmer are considerably more practiced at the art of resource hacking a general exception to the above rules is that any very technical question about an application that actually begins to delve into the how s of a program as well as the what s recent example how does writenow which is written entirely in assembly compare to other word processors written in high level languages might be better addressed to the programmer newsgroup for sale and want to buy posts should go to comp sys mac wanted and misc forsale computers mac only we understand that you re desperate to sell your upgraded k mac to get the for a powerbook but trust me anyone who wants to buy it will be reading comp sys mac wanted political and religious questions the mac is better than windows is not is too is not is too hey how bout the amiga what about it is not is too belong in comp sys mac advocacy anything not specifically mentioned above probably belongs in comp sys mac misc finally don t be so provincial as to consider only the comp sys mac newsgroups the appropriate forums for your questions many questions about modems in comp sys mac comm are much more thoroughly discussed in comp dcom modems questions about mac midi are often better handled in comp music even though it s not a macintosh specific newsgroup shop around usenet s a big place and not everything relevant to the macintosh happens in comp sys mac someone just asked why the system was taking up sixteen of their twenty megabytes of ram shouldn t i put my brilliance and wit on display for the world by posting the seventeenth response no frequent answers are just as boring and uninteresting as frequent questions unless you really have something new to add to the traditional answers such as the recent discovery that fonts in system could eat memory private e mail is a much better medium for answering common questions like this one you might want to add a mention of this faq in your e mail response and a polite suggestion that your correspondent read it before posting future questions i do read all the newsgroups covered here and have written a small script in microphone ii that lets me send pwfaq s people with frequently asked questions the section of this document that answers their question with just the click of a button so please don t feel obligated to respond to someone who cares so little about the answer to their question they can t be troubled to read the faq list to get it ftp where can i ftp mac software the three major north american internet archives of shareware freeware and demo software are sumex aim stanford edu mac archive umich edu and wuarchive wustl edu which mirrors the other two sites and several others wuarchive often holds on to files after other sites remove them for space concerns and still has files that were deleted from the formerly important site rascal ics utexas edu rascal was notable for storing its files in macbinary format rather than the less efficient binhex format common at the other archives unless otherwise noted shareware and freeware mentioned in this document should be available at the above sites to keep traffic on the internet manageable scandinavians should try connecting to ftp funet fi ftp lth se or sics se instead those in the u k should look first at src doc ic ac uk continental europeans can try nic switch ch ezinfo ethz ch and anl anl fr australian users should try to find what they want at archie au which mirrors info mac and mac archive japanese users will find sumex mirrored at ftp u tokyo ac jp a fourth very important site is ftp apple com this is apple s semi official repository for system software developer tools source code technical notes and other things that come more or less straight from apple s mouth some material at this site may not be distributed outside the u s or by other sites that don t have an official license to distribute apple system software please read the various readme documents available at ftp apple com for the detailed info if you re connecting from outside the u s or if you wish to redistribute material you find here can i get shareware by e mail the info mac archives at sumex aim are available by e mail from listserv ricevm bitnet alternately listserv ricevm rice edu the listserver responds to the commands macarch help macarch index and macarch get filename mac archive files are available from mac mac archive umich edu send it a message containing the words help and index no quotes on the first two lines of your message for instructions on getting started and a list of the files you may request you can retrieve files from other sites by using the server at ftpmail decwrl dec com for details send it a message with just the text help no quotes where can i find application x if you can t find what you re looking for at one of the above sites try telnetting to your nearest archie server or sending it an e mail message addressed to archie with the subject help archie servers are located at archie rutgers edu america archie mcgill ca the original archie server in canada archie au australia archie funet fi scandinavia and archie doc ic ac uk the u k and the continent these sites index the tens of thousands of files available for anonymous ftp login as archie no password is needed and type prog filename to find what you re looking for or type help for more detailed instructions for instance you would type prog disinfectant to search for a convenient ftp site for disinfectant if the initial search fails to turn up the file you want try variations on and substrings of the name for instance if you didn t find disinfectant with prog disinfectant you might try prog disi instead substring searches often hide the gold in a pile of dross to avoid many erroneous matches add a hqx to the end of the substring e g prog disi hqx most mac software available on the net ends in hqx but almost no unix or pc software does please check the above archives and archie personally before asking where you can find a particular piece of shareware if you follow the above advice you should almost never have to ask the net where to find a particular piece of software can someone mail me application x no nor will anyone mail you a part of a file from comp binaries mac that was corrupt or missed at your site please refer to the first questions in this section to find out about anonymous ftp archie and automatic e mail servers what is bin hqx cpt etc most files available by ftp are modified twice to allow them to more easily pass through foreign computer systems first they re compressed to make them faster to download and then they re translated to either a binhex hqx or macbinary bin format that other computers can digest the macintosh uses a special two fork filing system that chokes most other computers binhex files are bit ascii text files while macbinary files are pure bit binary data that must always be transferred using a binary protocol how a file has been translated and compressed for transmission is indicated by its suffix normally a file will have a name something like filename xxx yyy xxx indicates how it was compressed and yyy indicates how it was translated to use a file you ve ftp d and downloaded to your mac you ll need to reverse the process most files you get from the net require a two step decoding process first change the binhex hqx or macbinary bin file to a double clickable macintosh file then decompress it which programs decode which file types is covered in the table below also note that most macintosh telecommunications programs will automatically convert macbinary files to regular macintosh files as they are downloaded suffix sit cpt hqx bin pit z image dd zip uu tar extractors stuffit x x x x x compact pro x x packit x uutool x maccompress x suntar x x x x binhex x binhex x diskdoubler x x unzip x diskcopy x macutil x x x x a few notes on the decompressors stuffit is a family of products that use several different compression schemes the freeware stuffit expander will unstuff all of them versions of stuffit earlier than stuffit stuffit classic unstuffit and stuffit deluxe and will not unstuff the increasing number of files stuffed by stuffit you need to get a more recent version of stuffit or stuffit expander stuffit lite and deluxe consistently makes smaller archives than any other macintosh compression utility to allow maximum space for files on the various ftp sites and to keep net bandwidth down please compress all files you send to anonymous ftp sites with stuffit uutool maccompress and suntar handle the popular unix formats of uuencode uu compress z and tar tar respectively the unix versions are often more robust than the mac products so use them instead when that s an option translators that allow stuffit lite to expand uuencoded and tar files are also available by anonymous ftp macutil is dik winter s package of unix utilities to decompress and debinhex files on a workstation before downloading them to a mac since unix stores files differently than does the mac macutil creates macbinary bin files which should be automatically converted on download it can t decompress everything in particular it can t decompress the new stuffit archives however if you need only one or two files out of an archive for instance if you want to read the readme to find out if a program does what you need it to do before you download all of it macutil is indispensable it can be found at sumex aim in the info mac unix directory a few notes on the compression formats bin these are macbinary files always use a binary file transfer protocol when transferring them never ascii or text most files on the net are stored as hqx instead only rascal stores most of its files in bin format most communications programs such as zterm and mackermit are capable of translating macbinary files on the fly as they download if they know in advance they ll be downloading macbinary files image this format is normally used only for system software so that on line users can download files that can easily be converted into exact copies of the installer floppies instead of using diskcopy to restore the images to floppies you can use steve christensen s freeware utility mountimage to treat the images on your hard disk as actual floppies inserted in a floppy drive mountimage has a reputation for being buggy so you should have some blank floppies and a copy of diskcopy handy just in case sea x x sea files don t merit a position in the above table because they re self extracting they may have been created with compact pro stuffit or even diskdoubler but all should be capable of decompressing themselves when double clicked for some unknown reason alysis has chosen not to use this industry standard designation for self extracting archives created with their payware products superdisk and more disk space instead they append either x or x to self extracting archives how can i get binhex stuffit etc by far the easiest way to get these programs is to ask a human being to copy them onto a floppy for you if you re at a university there s absolutely no excuse for not finding someone to give you a copy and if you re anywhere less remote than mcmurdo sound chances are very good that someone at a computer center dealership or user group can provide you with a copy of stuffit once you have stuffit any version you don t need binhex if you re such a computer geek that the thought of actually asking a living breathing human being instead of a computer terminal for something turns you into a quivering mass of protoplasmic jelly you can probably download a working copy of stuffit from a local bulletin board system if you have religious objections to software gotten by any means other than anonymous ftp then i suppose i ll mention that you can in fact ftp a working copy of stuffit though this is by far the hardest way to get it ftp to wuarchive wustl edu and login type the word binary hit return type cd mirrors rascal ics utexas edu compression and hit return then get stuffit expander sea bin and hit return of course it s always possible that by the time you read this stuffit expander will have been updated and the name changed so if this fails look for something similar if you ve ftp d straight onto your mac you should now have a self extracting archive which will produce a working copy of stuffit expander when double clicked if you ve ftp d to your mainframe or unix account first you still need to use a modem program to download it to your mac just make sure that the mac is receiving in macbinary mode and the mainframe is sending in binary mode if you need more details on the last step consult the faq list for comp sys mac comm and the manuals for both your mainframe and macintosh telecommunications software how can i get binhex stuffit etc from a pc you can t there is absolutely no way to get an executable macintosh file from an ftp site onto a pc and then onto your mac without some software obtained by means other than anonymous ftp you must beg borrow or steal the necessary software such as binhex or stuffit lite from another person i realize this may terrify those among you who haven t left your parents basement since you got an apple ii in but eventually you re going to need to link up with some human being other than your mother though i suppose if you re this much of a nerd you could send your mother out to get it for you while you re gathering your nerves for a venture into the strange and terrifying world of daylight please don t bother the net by asking this question again there simply is no way to move executable macintosh programs from a pc or other non macintosh computer onto a mac without software that is not bundled with most macs troubleshooting what to do before posting when things go wrong while the various faq lists cover a lot of specific problems there are far more problems that aren t covered here these are a few basic techniques you should follow before asking for help you should probably also perform the ten step preventative maintenance routine described in section four especially rebuilding the desktop and resizing the system heap following these steps may or may not solve your problem but it will at least make it easier for others to recommend solutions to you identify the problem microsoft word is crashing doesn t say much what were you doing when it crashed can you repeat the actions that lead to the crash the more information you provide about the actions preceding the crash the more likely it is someone can help you the more precisely you ve identified the problem and the actions preceding it step the easier it will be to tell if the following steps fix the problem for example sometimes quarkxpress crashes with a coprocessor not installed error is not nearly as helpful as quarkxpress crashes when i link two text boxes on a master page when copies of those text boxes already contain text the former will leave you wondering whether the bug remains after a given step the latter lets you go right to the problem and see if it s still there or not read the read me file many companies include a list of known incompatibilities and bugs in their read me files often these aren t documented in the manual read any read me files to see if any of the problems sound familiar check for viruses run disinfectant or another anti viral across your disk virus infections are rarer than most people think but they do occur and they do cause all sorts of weird problems when they do reinstall the application and all its support files for half a dozen reasons external magnetic fields improperly written software the alignment of the planets a file on a disk may not contain the data it s supposed to contain this can cause all types of unexplained unusual behavior restoring from original masters will normally fix this reinstall the system software bits are even more likely to get twiddled in the system file than in the application and the effects can be just as disastrous see question for a detailed procedure for performing a clean reinstall if the problem continues to occur after you ve taken these steps chances are you ve found either a conflict between your application and some other software or a genuine bug in the program so it s time to isolate the problem you need to find the minimal system on which the problem will assert itself here are the basic steps of isolating the cause of a system or application crash a run only one application at a time occasionally applications do conflict with each other if the problem does not manifest itself without other applications running simultaneously you can begin launching other applications until you find the one that causes the crash b if you re running system turn off multifinder if you re running system allot as much memory to the application as you can afford sometimes programs just need more memory especially when performing complicated operations c if you re running system turn off virtual memory and bit addressing there s still an awful lot of system hostile software out there including some from companies that really have no excuse can you say microsoft word boys and girls i knew you could some of this software only expresses its incompatibilities when certain uncommon actions are taken d boot from a virgin system floppy if the problem disappears you likely have an init conflict you need to progressively remove extensions until the problem vanishes use a little common sense when choosing the first extensions to remove if the problem occurs when you try to open a file remove any inits that mess with the standard file open procedure such as super boomerang first if the problem remains after the obvious candidates have been eliminated either remove the remaining extensions one at a time or if you have a lot of them perform a binary search by removing half of the extensions at a time once the problem disappears add half of the most recently removed set back continue until you ve narrowed the conflict down to one extension when you think you ve found the offending init restart with only that init enabled just to make sure that it and it alone is indeed causing the problem contact technical support by now you should have a very good idea of when where and why the conflict occurs if a tech support number is available for the software call it if you re lucky the company will have a work around or fix available if not perhaps they ll at least add the bug to their database of problems to be fixed in the next release preventive maintenance you wouldn t drive your car miles without giving it a tune up a computer is no different regular tune ups avoid a lot of problems although there are mac mechanics who ll be happy to charge you or more for the equivalent of an oil change there s no reason you can t change it yourself the following nine step program should be performed about every three months trash unneeded files many of the operations that follow will run faster and more smoothly the more free disk space there is to work with so spend a little time cleaning up your hard disk if you re at all like me you ll find several megabytes worth of preferences files for applications you no longer have archives of software you ve dearchived shareware you tried out and didn t like announcements for events that have come and gone and many other files you no longer need if you re running system you may also have several more megabytes in your trash can alone throw them away and empty the trash rethink your extensions some macintoshes attract inits like a new suit attracts rain seriously consider whether you actually need every extension in your collection if you don t use the functionality of an extension at least every fifth time you boot up you re probably better off not storing it in your system folder where it only takes up memory destabilizes your system and slows down every startup for instance if you only read pc disks once a month there s no need to keep accesspc loaded all the time cutting back on your extension habit can really help avoid crashes rebuild the desktop the desktop file database holds all the information necessary to associate each file with the application that created it it lets the system know what application should be launched when you open a given file and what icons it should display where depending on its size each application has one or more representatives in the desktop file as applications and files move on and off your hard disk the desktop file can be become bloated and corrupt think of it as a congress for your mac every so often it s necessary to throw the bums out and start with a clean slate fortunately it s easier to rebuild the desktop than to defeat an incumbent one warning rebuilding the desktop will erase all comments you ve stored in the get info boxes under system maurice volaski s freeware init commentkeeper will retain those comments across a rebuild commentkeeper also works with system but only if apple s desktop manager extension is also installed to rebuild the desktop restart your mac and as your extensions finish loading depress the command and option keys you ll be presented with a dialog box asking if you want to rebuild the desktop and warning you that this could take a few minutes click ok it will take more than a few minutes the more files you have the longer it will take if you re running system you may want to turn off multifinder before trying to rebuild the desktop if you re experiencing definite problems and not just doing preventive maintenance you may want to use fifth generation s freeware init desktop reset desktop reset completely deletes the desktop file before rebuilding it thus eliminating possibly corrupt data structures zap the pram and reset the clock all macs from the original k thin mac to the quadra contain a small amount of battery powered ram to hold certain settings that properly move with the cpu rather than with the disk such as which disk to boot from unfortunately this parameter ram can become corrupted and cause unexplained crashes to reset it under system hold down the command option p and r keys while restarting your mac under system hold down the command option and shift keys while selecting the control panel from the apple menu click yes when asked if you want to zap the parameter ram since you ve erased almost all the settings in the general control panel you should now reset them to whatever you want the one setting that zapping the pram does not erase is the date and time but since the internal clock in the macintosh is notoriously inaccurate you ll probably want to take this opportunity to reset it anyway resize the system heap even after rethinking their extensions as per step two most people still have at least half a row of icons march across the bottom of their screen every time they restart all these extensions and most applications too need space in a section of memory called the system heap if the system heap isn t big enough to comfortably accommodate all the programs that want a piece of it they all start playing king of the mountain on the system heap knocking each other off to get bigger pieces for themselves and trying to climb back on after they get knocked off all this fighting amongst the programs severely degrades system performance and almost inevitably crashes the mac if you re using system your macintosh will automatically resize the system heap as necessary but if you re running system it s important to set your system heap size large enough to manage all your extensions and applications by default this size is set to k way too small for most macs with any extensions at all the system heap size is stored in the normally non editable boot blocks of every system disk bill steinberg s freeware utility bootman not only lets you resize your system heap but even checks how much memory your heap is already using so it can tell how much needs to be allocated if you re running system get bootman use it and be amazed at how infrequently your macintosh crashes reinstall the system software system files can become corrupt and fragmented especially if you ve stored lots of fonts and desk accessories inside them merely updating the system software will often not fix system file corruption i recommend doing a clean reinstall here s how boot from the installer floppy of your system disks copy any non standard fonts and desk accessories out of your system file into a temporary suitcase trash the system file on your hard disk also trash the finder multifinder da handler and all other standard apple extensions like control panel and chooser these will all be replaced in the new installation if you re running or installing system move everything in the extensions control panels and preferences folders into the top level of the system folder rename the system folder any name other than system folder is fine double click the installer script on your system disk then choose customize select the appropriate software for your model mac and printer you could do an easy install instead but that will only add a lot of extensions and code you don t need that waste your memory and disk space once installation is finished move everything from the temporary folder you created in step into the new system folder if you re asked if you want to replace anything you forgot to take something out in step you ll need to replace things individually until you find the duplicate piece reinstall any fonts or da s you removed in step reboot you should now have a clean defragmented system file that takes up less memory and disk space and a much more stable system overall disk utilities much like system files hard disks have data structures that occasionally become corrupted affecting performance and even causing data loss apple includes disk first aid a simple utility for detecting and repairing hard disk problems with its system disks it s also available for anonymous ftp from ftp apple com in the directory dts mac sys soft hdsc even if you have an earlier version you should get the latest version from ftp apple com and run it on all your hard disks several companies have released payware disk utilities that detect and repair considerably more problems than disk first aid though interestingly none of them detect and repair everything that disk first aid does the three most effective for general work are central point s mactools deluxe fifth generation s public utilites and symantec s norton utilities for the macintosh a department or work group should have all of these as well as disk first aid since none of them fix everything the others do for individuals mactools street is about half the price of norton street or public utilities street so features and ease of use being roughly equal i recommend mactools all of these products occasionally encounter problems they can t fix when that happens it s time to backup and reformat backing up this is one part of preventative maintenance that should be done a lot more often than every three months the simplest back up is to merely copy all the files on your hard disk onto floppies or other removable media if you keep your data files separate from your application and support files then it s easy to only back up those folders which change frequently nonetheless every three months you should do a complete backup of your hard disk a number of programs are available to make backing up easier apple included a very basic full backup application with system with the performas apple ships a new apple backup utility that can backup the entire disk or just the system folder onto floppies the previously mentioned norton utilities for the mac and mactools deluxe include more powerful floppy backup utilities that incorporate compression and incremental backups finally if you re lucky enough to have a tape drive network server or removable media device to use for backups you should check out the more powerful payware utilities redux street doesn t support tape drives and diskfit pro street there are no freely available backup utilities other than the old hd backup from system disk defragmentation as disks fill up it gets harder and harder to find enough free space in the same place to write large files therefore the operating system will often split larger files into pieces to be stored in different places on your hard disk as files become more and more fragmented performance can degrade there are several ways to defragment a hard disk the most tedious but cheapest method is to backup all your files erase the hard disk and you might as well reformat while you re at it see question and restore all the files a number of payware utilities including norton utilities for the mac and mac tools deluxe can defragment a disk in place i e without erasing it although the ads for all these products brag about their safety once you ve bought the software and opened the shrink wrap they all warn you to back up your disk before defragmenting it in case something does go wrong there are no freeware or shareware disk defragmenters so please don t annoy the net by asking for one reformat your hard disk just as a floppy disk needs to be initialized before use so a hard disk must be formatted before it can hold data you don t need to reformat every three months but when your system is crashing no matter what you try reformatting is the ultimate means of wiping the slate clean reformatting your hard disk may even gain you a few extra megabytes of space not all hard disks are created equal some can hold more data than others to facilitate mass production and advertising without a lot of asterisks megabytes is the average formatted capacity your mileage may vary apple often formats drives to the lowest common denominator of drive capacity when you reformat there s no reason at all not to reclaim whatever unused space apple s left on your disk unlike floppies hard disks need a special program to initialize them most hard disks come with formatting software apple s disks and system software ship with hd sc setup a minimal disk formatter which will format apple brand hard drives only most other manufacturers ship appropriate formatting software with their hard drives normally this will be all you need to reformat your hard disk a number of general purpose formatters are also available which go beyond the bundled software to include features like encryption password protection multiple partitioning faster disk access system compatibility and even compression two of the best are the payware drive and hard disk toolkit personal edition street for either while there are one or two freeware formatters available none are likely to be superior to the ones bundled with your hard disk powerbook users should be sure to turn off sleep and processor cycling before reformatting their hard drives no matter what software they use otherwise disk corruption crashes and data losses are a very good possibility elliotte rusty harold department of mathematics elharo shiva njit edu new jersey institute of technology erh tesla njit edu newark nj
