How to Fix Your Mac

Mac machines are generally stable, but there are always times when any computer is seemingly a little under the weather. If you’re normally a Windows user though, you probably have no idea how to diagnose or begin to fix any problem that Macs may experience. So what can you do if your computer starts causing you trouble? This article will list a few pieces of general advice that will have your machine up and running at one-hundred percent again.

1. Restart- While this may sound like ‘duh’ advice, many times you can solve most of your problems by just restarting your computer. A fresh restart can make your computer fix itself instead of causing further headache.

2. Force Quit- Similarly to Windows, sometimes an application may become ‘stuck’ and unable to shut down. In Windows at this point you’d hit ctl-alt-delete and try to force the program to quit, but what do you do on a Mac? It works almost the same way on your Mac! All you need to do is bring up the force quit menu by pressing command-alt-escape and choosing what application to shut down. If you’re unable to relaunch the application after causing it to force quit simply try to restart your computer.

3. Delete Preferences File- The preferences file keeps track of your particular preferences for a certain application. Sounds great right? Well it is, until it causes your application to repeatedly crash that is! Don’t fear though, because there is a very easy way to fix this problem, delete your preferences! To delete preferences: open the finder and select your username, open the library folder and select preferences, work through the folder and find the preference files associated with your application, when found control click them to delete. Preference files will have the extension .plist and it should be noted that you should NEVER deleted a preference file if you can’t figure out what it’s used for.

4. Support- If all else fails, never be afraid to ask for support for your problems. Your first step should be going to your favorite search engine and asking for help to your problem. If that fails you don’t hesitate to call Apple or go to your closest Mac store. This may cause you to have to lose your computer for a short time, but at least it will work again, right?

Macs seem to have a totally different realm of problems than PC’s. That can be very scary for a new Mac user who understands nothing of how the OS works. Remember never to delete anything that you can’t identify and don’t be afraid of asking for help.

Photo Credits: kyz

This post involves:

crash, fear, headache, library folder, mac machines, plist, preference, weather, windows user

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Computer

Posted by Fix Handyman on October 14, 2009 in Computer. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.