boot

Sometimes after adding new system components or otherwise changing the hardware configuration of your system you may find that the OS will load rather slowly. Usually this will only happen after the first restart as the system configures the kernel extensions needed for the new hardware; however, there are times when it can persist. If the system always runs slowly then there may be problems with the hard drive, or the configured filesystems on it, and you should run diagnostics utilities to tackle the issue. If on the other hand the system runs fine except for slugishness or pauses during … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed from our readers. This week we have questions on how to turn off previews in Safari, the best format option to use when setting up a hard drive for OS X, and problems with updating Boot Camp drivers. We continually answer e-mail questions, and though we present a few here, we certainly welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

Question: Disabling Safari previews

MacFixIt reader "P. Calderon" asks:

How do I [turn off Safari previews]?

Answer:

If … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed from our readers. This week we have questions on external disks no longer mounting even though they are recognized by the system, an iMac no longer turning on, and the latest Boot Camp update not installing. We continually answer e-mail questions, and while we present a few here, we certainly welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

Question: External disk stops mounting

MacFixIt reader Arturo asks:

I have an external disk that suddenly stopped mounting. It shows under Disk … Read more

Periodically, people will ask about the options for installing different versions of OS X on their systems. Though installing a newly released version of OS X is possible and recommended (at least by Apple) for all supported Macs, there may be problems if you decide to install a version of OS X that was released before your Mac was issued.

Many times OS X will come with machine-specific driver modifications that will not be present if an older OS is installed, and therefore even if the OS boots properly you may have problems getting the system or its components to … Read more

External hard disks have become a very convenient way to not only expand the storage capabilities of a system, but also expand options for booting, cloning, and performing various diagnostics. As a result, people may have a number of different external drives that they keep attached to the system. Though in most cases this setup results in normal behavior, a few people have found that restarting the system with certain USB drives connected results in the system not booting.

When this happens, the system may sit at a gray or black screen without showing an Apple symbol or any other … Read more

Apple has released a couple of updates today pertaining to Boot Camp as well as MacBook and MacBook Pro systems. The update for Boot Camp addresses some critical bugs, and adds support for the Radeon 5870 GPU, Apple USB Ethernet adapter, and the MacBook Air external superdrive.

Apple recommends that all Boot Camp 3.1 users apply the update to address the bug fixes (currently undocumented).

There are two versions of the update, one for 32-bit Windows operating systems, and the other for 64-bit operating systems. Apple's software update utility in Windows should detect the proper version for your … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed from our readers. This week we focus on using a VM image or Boot Camp partition in Parallels, adding alarms to the "Birthdays" calendar in iCal, and getting movies to view on an Apple TV. We continually answer e-mail questions and while we present a few here, we certainly welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

Question: Standalone Virtual Machine or Boot Camp in Parallels?

MacFixIt reader "Jack" asks:

When installing Parallels 6 and Windows … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed from our readers. This week we have questions on boot camp drivers not installing on MacBook systems, how to undo the Terminal command to disable DNS prefetching in Safari, black rectangles appearing over Finder items, and how many CPU settings are recommended for use with Windows XP in Parallels Desktop.

Question: Boot Camp drivers not installing on MacBook

MacFixIt reader "Michelle" asks:

I have a Core duo first-generation MacBook (one of the black ones). I have recently decided to put Windows on my Mac for software incompatibility … Read more

While full system crashes that result in a nonfunctional system are relatively rare these days, they do periodically happen. If not the result from a direct crash, sometimes corruption can appear and suddenly cause an otherwise healthy system to no longer boot.

MacFixIt reader "sparkyrom" writes in with such a problem:

"My Macbook does not boot. It starts, the apple sign appears, the rotating sign appears, it stays like that for minutes and then restarts itself. What should I do? I tried resetting the SMC and PRAM but nothing happened. I did the Apple Hardware Test and … Read more