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Yesterday, I received a phone call from the editor of a small newspaper I write for. On my recommendation, she had recently purchased a new iBook to add to the paper’s small fleet of Macs,. “I like the iBook,” she told me, “but right now it’s not working. The little thing just keeps spinning.” I inferred that meant the OS X beach ball of death. She was not sure which OS version she was using. Now I should mention here that this person is not a Mac newbie. She has been doing newspaper layout on Macs in Quark XPress for at least a decade, and the fact that she, as a seasoned professional Mac user, was hazy about whether she was using OS X or not, gives us some perspective on the degree of importance probably a substantial proportion of the working Mac user community places on system upgrades. They want things to just work. Anyway, Tuesday is production day at her weekly paper, she was in a great hurry, and wanted to know what to do. I couldn’t recall offhand whether the iBook has a dedicated reset button (I think not) or where to tell her to look for it, and figuring that she would have tried all the obvious things first, I suggested unplugging the iBook and pulling the battery to kill all processes, but added, I thought redundantly: “You have tried pressing Command + Control + Power Key?” “No.” A few seconds of silence, followed by the sound of the iBook startup chime over the telephone. “You’re a miracle-worker.” “Not really.” Something Apple needs to address in the basic documentation that comes with new Macs is providing a prominent statement on how to restart the machine if the system hangs and you can't get at the Finder controls. Most desktop Macs and some laptops have mechanical reset buttons, but location has been erratic from model to model. My Pismo PowerBook has a reset button on the back panel; my WallStreet PowerBook has none at all. On the early iMacs, you had to poke a straightened paper clip into a hole after removing a plastic panel. If there is a reset button, and it’s visible, it will be marked with a left-pointing triangle symbol. Command + Control + Power Key also works in most cases, and is the default option for resetting machines with no reset button (it doesn’t work with early iMacs, however). If all else fails, unplug the computer, and with laptops also remove the battery for a minute or two, and then restore power and restart. If the machine still refuses to boot, or hangs on the restart, you will need to start up from the system CD that came with the computer and run Disk First Aid, or Disk Utility. To diagnose and (hopefully) repair the problem. In some cases, a third party, heavy-duty, disk repair application may be required, such as Norton Utilities, Tech Tool Pro, or Drive Ten. However, in the vast majority of cases, a simple reset or force restart will do the trick and get your Mac humming again. Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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