OnyX - does anyone use this?

[RainDog]

I did use it to delete some things on my mac.

but it ran a verification of the start up disk and said I needed to start up my computer from my disks because there was a problem.

uh, what?

can someone explain what this thing wants to do?

if I start up from my installation disks, wouldn't that totally erase everything that is currently on my hd?

[realisticphish]

1. no

if you boot from your installation disk, you can use disk doctor, things like that. OSX will be running, but you won't have access to your hard drive. It's like the computer pretends the HD doesn't exist, and uses the CD-ROM as a temporary HD.

There might be some permissions that need repaired, or something like that. Run the disk utilites and see what happens. Unless you deliberately click "reformat," nothing should happen.

Of course, I'm not a licensed Apple repair person, so you can't blame me if something goes wrong ;)

[RainDog]

2. the reason I asked about booting from

- is that the only time I ever had to do this I lost all my existing data - on an older computer many OS's ago.

I've had so few problems with macs - but when I have had a problem, it's been a massive one.

my browser(s) have been really unstable lately - crashing a lot.

I upgraded firefox and lost all my bookmarks - cannot import from old saved ones, cannot create new ones. I've uninstalled and reinstalled firefox a few times and it's the same thing.

I read that I was missing some... tor button or some such, tried to download, and nothing. I tried to go back to an earlier version of ff too - and nothing.

so, at this point firefox is useless to me, except when I want to use it as a browser to work off something I have as my start page.

I'm using a powerbook G4 - which is old in computer world terms - not intel so I can't switch to chrome, for instance.

I really miss firefox as a browser.

anyway, I back up lots of stuff yesterday. need to put some other stuff online in storage to save.... and then I'll see if I'm brave enough to do the start up disk thing.

thank you for your reply.

[realisticphish]

3. I recommend Camino

It's a free browser built on the Mozilla platform, like Firefox. It's simple and fast, and my main browser (though I keep Safari around due to compatibility with one or two sites)

I've lost two hard drives without warning; it's NOT a fun experience... be glad you had enough warning to back stuff up. Again, as long as the only thing you do is repair permissions, and run disk doctor (or whatever it's called, it has been a while) nothing should happen. But it sounds like there are definitely some problems with something

[RainDog]

5. thank you for the replies

I've been looking at new computers but am holding off as long as possible before upgrading. in the meantime - backup, backup, backup.

[struggle4progress]

4. I tried it for a while about two years ago and then promptly stopped using it

There was something about it I didn't like

[RainDog]

6. anything in particular?

have you ever used macleanse?

there are some others - trying to remember the names - that I've used on a trial basis before to get rid of stuff no longer needed.

seems like it can be useful just for the "clean up" part. if you've had your computer for while - who knows what old stuff is still hanging around on logs, etc. just taking up space.

[Elwood P Dowd]

7. I use AppleJack.

It's worked great for years on my old G4 iBook. Still waiting on the new version for my Snow Leopard MacBook.

[struggle4progress]

8. It was probably something like what you mentioned: onyx telling me there was a problem

with my hard drive when disk utility was telling me everything was a-ok. I don't much like that sort of thing

I haven't been removing old log files, but my hard drive's not very full yet

[klook]

9. Just started using it today

I found about it when I came across this series of slides from a talk about how to maintain your Mac:
Running Your Mac Lean, Clean, and Mean.

It seems great so far. Titanium has some other free Mac apps, which I also downloaded and installed. All good stuff, based on my initial day of use. :)