Disk maintenance: You can launch Disk Utility, which can be found in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder on your hard drive, to perform checks on your hard drive and other forms of media (floppies, Zip disks, etc.). If you suspect your hard drive has a problem, you will need to boot the computer from the original installation CD that came with it and launch the copy of Disk Utility that is located in the Utilities folder of that disk. The computer should boot automatically from the installation CD if it is restarted with the disk in the drive, however, to force the computer to boot from the CD, simply hold down the C key on the keyboard until the Mac OS splash screen appears. Once you locate the Disk Utility icon, simply double-click on it and it will launch:

Notice to the left a list of mounted drives appears: in this picture, a hard drive and an iPod mounted as a hard drive. To the right there are a selection of 5 different tabs to choose from. The Information tab gives you basic information about the drive you have selected to the left (such as size, format, and both used and available space on the drive). The Erase tab is used for erasing or reformatting drives, whether they be floppies, hard drives, or CD-RW disks. The Partition tab allows you to reformat a drive into separate partitions, so that one drive can function as multiple separate drives. The RAID tab allows you to connect several hard drives together, so that they act as one large very fast hard drive. For our purposes, above you will notice that the First Aid tab is selected. Here, you can either Verify or Repair Disk Permissions, if you’ve been having trouble deleting files or getting error messages saying that “You do not have adequate permission.” This is a useful function to perform should your system begin behaving erratically. If you have booted from some other drive besides your normal System drive, or if you select another drive besides the System drive, you will also have the option to Verify or Repair the disk. A description of the progress for any of these scans will appear in the blank white window above the buttons, complete with an announcement at the end of whether the repair was successful or if the disk was found to not be in need of repair. Should Disk Utility be unable to repair the disk, it will say so. Then you should consider either investing in a commercial program such as Norton Disk Doctor or DiskWarrior to attempt to repair the disk. Should all else fail, navigate to the Erase tab of Disk Utility (after backing up the contents of the disk, of course) and reformat the drive by selecting it in the menu to the left and choosing Erase.

Should a program freeze: Due to improved memory handling in OS X, a frozen program should not affect the rest of your computer’s stability. If a program freezes or fails to respond simply hold down on the Command+Option+Escape keys simultaneously, and the following window will appear:
Simple select the program that is not responding (normally, a program that is not responding will appear in red in the list) and click the Force Quit button to force it to quit. Usually, you can immediately re-launch the program that had frozen and continue working without any further difficulties. Simply close the Force Quit Applications window by clicking the small button in the upper left corner of the window.
For more info on troubleshooting Apple computers: Apple maintains a rather thorough list of online support information at their website: http://www.apple.com/support/
Another good place to find information on troubleshooting your Macintosh is MacFixIt: http://www.macfixit.com

Cookies
Cookies are files that some websites place on your computer to store simple data such as passwords or preferences. Many times these files are their for your convenience, however, there are times when people can use them to take important information from your hard drive.
For more ordinary hardware and software maintenance tips and updates to these, see our web site at: http://www.fordhamfrc.org/pdf/pctips.pdf