I love computers
Apr. 24th, 2005 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ksmithIf I keep telling myself this, I will come to believe it eventually.
Ok, when last we left Our Hero, she had just reinstalled OS X 10.3.2 onto her iBook, using the discs that came with the little soldier. Afterwards. she found to her dismay that she no longer had Safari, Mac's signature browser. She had the little compass icon on the dock, and the file in Finder, but when she tried to open either she got an unresponsive menu bar and nothing else. Loss of Safari didn't really break her heart--the thing lacks a few bells and whistles she liked and anyway, she still had access to the rock-solid program that is IE for the Mac (insert sarcasm glyph here). She was concerned, however, that the absence of Safari was a sign of Deeper Issues (tm) that the disk repair and OS reinstallation had not fixed.
Never having been one to sit tight when she could fiddle about and make a bad situation even worse, Our Hero decided to go ahead and download OS X 10.3.9 Combined Update, which at 117MB does everything but edge the lawn and cure the common cold. She watched carefully as download and installation proceeded, since it was at that point the previous day that the iBook turned up its toes and refused, simply *refused* to go one step farther. But all went on as they tell you in all the manuals that it should, and after restart, Our Hero found that she once more had access to the joy and wonder that is Macintosh Safari 1.3 (v312).
We now return you to First Person...
Ok, fingers crossed that this is all settled. And our take-away lesson from this little episode is:
Just because they talk it up in MacWorld doesn't mean it's any good...at least in the hands of someone who knows just enough to be dangerous.
Last month, I downloaded a Mac clean-up program named Onyx that cleans out caches, runs repair permissions, and in general handles many tasks that keep a Mac running smoothly. I don't recall now whether installation failed or installation succeeded but subsequent attempts to use the program failed. In any event, efforts to uninstall also failed, so I simply picked up the thing bodily and dumped it into Trash. I then downloaded Macaroni, a program that leaves caches alone but does do the daily, weekly, and monthly Unix repairs as well as Repair Permissions on a regular basis. Macaroni worked a treat, but there may have been residual Onyx files left behind that set the stage for a Software Conflict. In other words, Gentle Reader, I did it to myself, it was all my fault, and if I had left it alone, none of this would have happened.
We won't discuss why Mac apparently didn't include a copy of their signature browser on the reinstallation CDs that come with a new system. Maybe it was there and just didn't install properly, which I admit is unlikely. In any case, I probably could have found an old version on one of the 8 software CDs that also came with the iBook, a moot point now that 10.3.9 has been installed.
Well, I learned how to reinstall an OS. Probably not a waste of time, although I will say that computer problems cause the ground to shift beneath my feet in a way that house/car problems don't. Concerns about not being able to write, and most especially not being able to SAVE just strike right at the heart of a writer.
Very glad i have two systems. I'm also glad that I have DSL... although the necessity of having to upgrade one's internet connection in order to be able to download massive every-other-month-or-so-it-seems software upgrades is a rant for another day.
Ok, when last we left Our Hero, she had just reinstalled OS X 10.3.2 onto her iBook, using the discs that came with the little soldier. Afterwards. she found to her dismay that she no longer had Safari, Mac's signature browser. She had the little compass icon on the dock, and the file in Finder, but when she tried to open either she got an unresponsive menu bar and nothing else. Loss of Safari didn't really break her heart--the thing lacks a few bells and whistles she liked and anyway, she still had access to the rock-solid program that is IE for the Mac (insert sarcasm glyph here). She was concerned, however, that the absence of Safari was a sign of Deeper Issues (tm) that the disk repair and OS reinstallation had not fixed.
Never having been one to sit tight when she could fiddle about and make a bad situation even worse, Our Hero decided to go ahead and download OS X 10.3.9 Combined Update, which at 117MB does everything but edge the lawn and cure the common cold. She watched carefully as download and installation proceeded, since it was at that point the previous day that the iBook turned up its toes and refused, simply *refused* to go one step farther. But all went on as they tell you in all the manuals that it should, and after restart, Our Hero found that she once more had access to the joy and wonder that is Macintosh Safari 1.3 (v312).
We now return you to First Person...
Ok, fingers crossed that this is all settled. And our take-away lesson from this little episode is:
Just because they talk it up in MacWorld doesn't mean it's any good...at least in the hands of someone who knows just enough to be dangerous.
Last month, I downloaded a Mac clean-up program named Onyx that cleans out caches, runs repair permissions, and in general handles many tasks that keep a Mac running smoothly. I don't recall now whether installation failed or installation succeeded but subsequent attempts to use the program failed. In any event, efforts to uninstall also failed, so I simply picked up the thing bodily and dumped it into Trash. I then downloaded Macaroni, a program that leaves caches alone but does do the daily, weekly, and monthly Unix repairs as well as Repair Permissions on a regular basis. Macaroni worked a treat, but there may have been residual Onyx files left behind that set the stage for a Software Conflict. In other words, Gentle Reader, I did it to myself, it was all my fault, and if I had left it alone, none of this would have happened.
We won't discuss why Mac apparently didn't include a copy of their signature browser on the reinstallation CDs that come with a new system. Maybe it was there and just didn't install properly, which I admit is unlikely. In any case, I probably could have found an old version on one of the 8 software CDs that also came with the iBook, a moot point now that 10.3.9 has been installed.
Well, I learned how to reinstall an OS. Probably not a waste of time, although I will say that computer problems cause the ground to shift beneath my feet in a way that house/car problems don't. Concerns about not being able to write, and most especially not being able to SAVE just strike right at the heart of a writer.
Very glad i have two systems. I'm also glad that I have DSL... although the necessity of having to upgrade one's internet connection in order to be able to download massive every-other-month-or-so-it-seems software upgrades is a rant for another day.
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 11:06 pm (UTC)Don't know what housekeeping you were doing -- I've been assuming I'd still need antivirus and software firewall, don't know about disk defragging and other stuff.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 11:57 pm (UTC)You can also go into Terminal on a Mac and reset the timing by hand, but I really hate digging into code innards. I'd rather detonate things from a distance.
My Macs came with their own firewalls, although I was advised to get a router. I've been using Virex antiviral that I got from the .Mac website, and I'm not happy with it. The latest version is buggy and neither Apple or Symantec have been good about communicating the issues. There are, however, other Mac antivirals out there.
You don't defrag Mac disks. The one thing I've heard should be done the most is to repair permissions at least once a week, and definitely after you install something. This is easy to do.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-25 01:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-25 02:50 am (UTC)According to Feb issue of MacWorld, "OS X uses a permissions system to determine which folders and programs a user can access," frex in order to save files or launch applications. If you install a lot of things, or update the OS, permissions can sometimes become corrupted. The first thing the Mac Help guy asked me when I told him I couldn't open Internet Connection was whether I had repaired permissions lately.
Macs have a Disk Utility. Therein lies a button that reads Repair Permissions. You hit it, permissions repair themselves, and you're good to go.
Macs have a different language, and it can be daunting when you move over from the PC side.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-25 12:27 pm (UTC)(Not as Luddite as I sound, just that my computer experience dates back to punch-card programs run as batch processing on an IBM 7090. Mechanical Teletype terminals qualified as "user friendly.")