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Today we are looking at some Mac OS X troubleshooting techniques.

I want to cover Safe Boot and Safe Mode.

Safe Boot is a way of starting your Mac for troubleshooting issues that you are having during startup.

Safe Mode is the where you are after you started your Mac in Safe Boot.

Starting up your Mac into Safe Mode does many things to simplify the startup and operation of your Mac:

NOTE Ð (Safe Booting into Mac OS X takes longer than a normal startup. It can be quite a long time. This will depend based on how long it takes to check and repair the directory of your hard drive.)

Safe Boot mode forces a directory check of your MacÕs hard drive. This is identical to using Disk Utility's Repair Disk or the fsck Ðfy command in the terminal.

It loads only the required kernel extensions (some of the items are located in /System/Library/Extensions).

The cache of kernel extensions used to speed startup during normal use is ignored. (The cache file is located in /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache)

Safe Boot only runs the Apple installed startup items (these items are in the /Library/Startup Items and /System/Library/Startup items - and these are DIFFERENT than the login items).

Safe Boot can work around issues caused by your software or directory damage on the startup volume.

This is how you Start Up in Safe Mode:

Be sure the computer is turned off.

Now press the power button.

Just after you hear the startup tone (NOT BEFORE), press and hold the down the shift key.

Now release the shift key when you see the start up screen whit the gray background with the Apple logo and the progress indicator.

During the startup, you will see "Safe Boot" on the Mac OS X startup screen.

To leave the Mac OS X Safe Mode just restart you Mac normally, without holding any keys during the startup period.

If you do this every so often it will keep your Mac happy and healthy.

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