Leo Laporte's Simple Troubleshooting Steps

[elbert]

I saw Leo on TechTV the otehr day giving this Mac OS trouble shooting tip. I thought I'd share it with you:

Leo's Tip: Troubleshooting Mac OS X
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Before you call your local Machead, follow these steps to fix crashing apps.
By Leo Laporte

If you have a problem with crashing applications on OS X, there are three steps to take before calling tech support. These steps will help you diagnose and fix almost any Mac problem.

1. Create a troubleshooting account

First, before you have a problem, create a dummy user account. Don't use this account for anything but troubleshooting.

If you can't duplicate the problem in the dummy account, then it has something to do with the way the program is configured in your real account. Deleting settings and preferences will often fix these problems.

2. Check the file permissions

Open Applications | Utilities | Disk Utility.
Click your startup drive.
Click "Verify Disk Permissions"

OS X is a Unix system with full file-permission capabilities. Unfortunately, it's easy to accidentally munge the permissions in such a way that it crashes programs.

Restoring the permissions of key system files to their defaults fixes many problems.

3. Purge problematic preferences

If the issue seems to be confined to your user account, look for and delete the application's preferences in your Home | Library | Preferences folder.

If the problem is global across the entire system, delete the relevant preference files in Library | Preferences. You may also want to delete any associated files in the Application Support folder or elsewhere on the drive.

[yapi]

Oooh quite useful! Must keep these in mind

[badaboom]

thanks for the tips elbertc... indeed something to put in mind..