Firstly we will do a 'Permissions' repair of all Apple - originated installer packages - these are the applications installed using the Apple Installer application [the mac wizard with the Tuxedo icon].
• Quit all open applications [you can do this super fast, by holding your thumb on the 'Apple' key and with two fingers alternate pressing the 'q' key and the 'tab' key]. Ensure all applications are 'Quit' by looking at the 'Dock' [the strip of icons at the bottom of the screen] and if there are no black triangles (or glow-spots when using Leopard 10.5) beneath any of the icons apart from 'Finder', then everything has now 'Quit'
• Then we need to launch the 'Disk Utility' - Find the 'Go' menu and select 'Utilities'. From the newly opened window, find 'Disk Utility' and double-click it to open it.
• Next select your 'Hard Drive' from the list in the left-hand side of the 'Disk Utility' window. Usually your hard drive is called 'Macintosh HD' (unless you've renamed it). This will be the second icon down, slightly inset.
• Once the 'Hard Drive' has been selected, ensure you are on the 'First Aid' tab, then four buttons become visible in the right-hand side of the 'Disk Utility' window. Click the 'Repair Disk Permissions' button and go make a cuppa tea (usually this takes about 4 mins depending on the size of your hard drive). It will tell you when it's complete.
• Once the permissions repair has finished, quit 'Disk Utility'. To effect the newly changed permissions, you need to either 'Log out' and 'log back in' or restart the mac.
Because we are going to do another task, shut the mac down...
Secondly we are going to check the condition of the 'file system' structure. This procedure is done without the pretty desktop interface, so get your glasses on and print this page out, so you can refer to it, as your computer is as good as turned off while we do this check.
• Power up your Mac and on the sound of the chime, put your fingers on the 'Apple' key and the 's' key simultaneously. It's a bit scary if your not a geek, but the screen will turn black and some 'crazy' white text starts writing all over the screen. You can let go of the keys if you've got crazy-text-screen and wait for the writing to stop. the last line will say something like 'local root host #'. If there are some 'S's then just delete them (you kept your fingers on the keys for too long).
• next press the space-bar once, then type /sbin/fsck -fy and hit the 'Return' key.
• If you got it right, then the screen will start writing '** Root file system', followed by '** Checking volume' and '** Checking Extents Overflow file' and lots more lines of text starting with '** Checking...'.
• If you got it wrong, then it will say 'command not found', so try it again, exactly as written two bullets above. I'll phonetically outline it here, just to make it clear (or confuse you more).
[space bar][forward slash][sbin][forward slash][fsck][space bar][hyphen][fy][carriage return].
• Once the process has finished it will either say 'The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK.' (Maybe your hard drive is no-longer called 'Macintosh HD', if so, then it will say the same as above but with the name of your hard drive instead of 'Macintosh HD').
Or it will say '** file system modified' or worse, '** unable to repair the Macintosh HD'.
• If it says 'The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK.', then type 'reboot' and 'carriage return'. The computer will turn itself off then restart as normal.
• If it says '** file system modified', then press the 'up' arrow key. This just repeats the last command entered. Then press 'carriage return' and it checks everything again. Keep doing this until the result is 'The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK.' If after four attempts, it still says '** file system modified', then the system is badly damaged and we need to reinstall the system from the DVD that came with the computer or repair the system with another disk utility application, 'Disk Warrior' or similar. Either way, type 'reboot' and 'carriage return'. The computer will turn itself off then restart as normal (or not, if the system is truly buggered).
• If it says '** unable to repair the Macintosh HD' then the system is badly damaged and we need to reinstall the system from the DVD that came with the computer or repair the system with another disk utility application, 'Disk Warrior' or similar. Either way, type 'reboot' and 'carriage return'. The computer will turn itself off then restart as normal (or not, if the system is truly buggered).
Now we have finished the primary integrity checks and we can delve deeper if the problem still persists...
