<b>b. Half minute startup slow-downs in Mac OS 7.6.1

Many users confirmed this as well. Bill Fox (on his For Mac Users Only web site) was the first to point out a likely solution. Joe Sponn offered similar advice. What seems to be happening is that the startup disk selection in the Startup Disk control panel somehow gets lost (Apple System Profiler will list your startup disk as "unknown"). This means that the Mac does not know what you intend the startup disk to be and thus it spends time spinning its wheels until it finally defaults back to the first available startup drive it can find (this takes about a half minute). The simple solution is to go to the Startup Disk control panel and select your desired icon.

Bill claims this same solution may also fix the blinking question mark problem alluded to yesterday in "And yet more problems."

c. Mac OS 7.6.1 general startup delay Yesterday, we also mentioned more general long startup time problems and the possible Disk Cache reset issue as a solution. Robert Levy suggested that, for users that normally have AppleTalk off, it may be due to Mac OS 7.6.1 installation turning AppleTalk on - which in turn can slow down a startup.

d. Power Mac 6500 and video out problem John Leadley had this problem on a 6500/225 and claimed it completely vanished when he had his logic board replaced (it was being replaced for another unrelated problem). So maybe more than a software fix is needed.

e. Photoshop problem when saving GIF files: Adobe says a fix is on the way! Several people confirmed this and offered work-arounds. One general suggestion was to save the file first in Photoshop format and then in GIF format. Joshua Burgin said to reinstall GIF filters and delete the Photoshop Preferences file. Anton Futselaar linked the problem to having Default Folder installed.

However, the definitive word came from Marc Pawliger of Adobe: "There is a known bug in Photoshop 4.0 when saving as CompuServe GIF format from File> Save As. It is not easily repeatable but can happen. The good news is the bug is fixed and will be released as part of the upcoming fix release for 4.0 The fix is being QA'd and tested as we speak and may have even gone to manufacturing, so look for news of it on the Adobe web site."

Update: Marc notes: "There is no definitive workaround - the bug happens when the Mac memory manager decides to move around memory the plugin should have locked. Since the list of things that can cause memory to move is enormous, any proposed workaround is flawed from the start."

f. "Recent Servers" freeze Todd Bangerter had this problem and eventually gave up and went back to using the Chooser to access his servers. Willie Alberty claims he solved this problem by updating the AppleShare client to version 3.6.5.

Also note that I mentioned this server freeze issue here before in reference to problems with PPP Menu. A similar freeze issue was also reported last November in relation to Acrobat Reader 3.0.