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Keep Your Mac Humming

by Jon Chase on October 23, 2009 at 06:28 AM



As stable as Macs tend to be, they still have their hiccups. There's one bit of housecleaning you should do before and after you install any system software, and whenever your Mac starts acting funky (programs stall, or crash, or lock up): "repair permissions." First, quit out of all applications, go to Applications/Utilities, and then start up Disk Utility. In the left panel, select your system hard drive, and then, on the bottom of the window, click "repair permissions." Depending on the speed of your Mac, and how long it's been since you last performed the operation, it could take 15 minutes or so. Power users may want to check out the free utility Onyx, which lets you repair permissions as well as perform a host of other fun maintenance jobs.

Tags: apple, disk utility, DiskUtility, mac, onyx, permissions, permissions repair, PermissionsRepair, techtip

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