OK...I'm baffled...One of my son's friends gave me an iMac...

[rasputin1952]

I have no experience w/Macs. I plugged it in and turned it on last night...so far so good...:D

A box came up in the left upper corner that says, "Creating index of 'uuuy'", and says "Time remaining: About 99 hours", (this changes and varies from 101 to 79 hrs so far). The progress bar is about 1/5 of the way across, and I'm just leaving it alone at this point.

My question: What is going on?

Also, the date/time has 5:17 PM, (it is 12:14 PM local) and the date is 1/10/4.

I tried to change the date, no go, error msg comes up about possible backup battery problem, (no idea how to find battery in this thing).

Tag on outside a has specs:

512 Mhz 512MB RAM
19GB BD CD R/W OS 10.3

Can someone w/experience in Macs please tell me something about this thing...I don't even know about the mouse on this thing...:D

Thanks for whatever help/info you can give me...:hi:

[alfredo]

1. It's creating an index for spotlight.

[rasputin1952]

2. OK...next question...what is a spotlight?

I've gotten to the point of hooking up the3 ethernet cable, but has no idea how to shar3e anything from the pc...you know, draw off the folders and what-not...:hi:

[alfredo]

3. That spyglass on the top right is spotlight. Use it to search your hard drive.

It's indexing so it knows where everything is located. The first index takes a long time on slower machines.

[rasputin1952]

4. Thanks!

:hi:

[alfredo]

5. Welcomed. Look at this site

http://www.macnn.com/ They have good forums.

For software:

http://www.macupdate.com/

Under the "Apple" on your desktop is Software Update. Give it a try. You might have a lot of updates to do.

Go to Applications/Utilities/Terminal. Open the terminal and type

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

hit return

It will ask for your password. Enter it and hit return Wait until the prompt to return. It takes a few minutes

Do this every few weeks.

A tip: Open up the terminal and hit the up arrow. It should reveal the command you used to do periodic maintenance.

The above scripts run automatically during the wee hours of the night. If you shut down your computer, it is a good idea to run them in the terminal as shown above.

Of course if you'd rather not get into the UNIX underpinnings, just download this:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/5856/macjanitor

[Born_A_Truman]

19. Question...

Can the updates be programmed for a certain time of day (ie 11pm)?

[glinda]

6. ONCE YOU HAVE A MAC YOU NEVER GO BACK. WELCOME!

[cbayer]

7. You are going to love it, Ras!

And, hopefully, the C & P works.

:rofl:

[rasputin1952]

9. ...

:rofl:

[Grey]

8. I just never got used to the MacMouse so

I got a Logitech wireless mouse, plugged it in and was good to go.

".I don't even know about the mouse on this thing... "

Enjoy your Mac.

[rasputin1952]

10. Sopunds good to me...

I'm still trying to figure out how to go online w/this thing...says some folders or some such just didn't "load". I can't transfer anything from my pc either...:shrug:

Any idea on how I can get this thing to "repair" or check itself...:D

[Grey]

11. I like Maintenance 3.8 or

Macjanitor but I'm so clueless with computers I hope someone else speaks up here.

I also have an expensive disk called Disk Warrior that I run now and again.

I think it's about $100 but some people swear by it. good luck

[rasputin1952]

12. I'm having all kinds of problems...

some programs didn't load, some just won't come up...:(

I think that when it was going through it's paces, and my son unplugged it part way through, things got messed up...I don't know how to go about fixing anything, or how to shut it down to the point where it will load the OS again.

[cbayer]

13. Do you know anyone else who uses mac? I would have them take a look.

You can restart it either by using the apple drop down in the upper left corner or force it to quit by just pressing and holding the start button (not recommended, but sometimes necessary if it has frozen for some reason).

:hi:

[rasputin1952]

14. It's not frozen...

I just keep getting bubbles telling me that some processes are not available.

When I go to some of the things in the menus and click on them, they go balck, but nothing happens, i have to figure out how to manually install some of this stuff, but this thing doesn't act like a pc...:shrug:

I'm going to have check and see if there is a Mac geek around...:eyes:..:D

[cbayer]

15. Do you have the original start up disks? You may need to reinstall the OS.

:shrug:

[rasputin1952]

16. No...this came from one of my son's friends...

:(

[cbayer]

17. I sure wish I could take a look at it. It's hard to tell you what to do without seeing it.

:hug:

[rasputin1952]

18. Yeah...

it's a hit/miss situation...:(

[Adelante]

20. How are you doing with this, Ras?