Disabling System Extensions When Starting Up in Mac OS X
Unlike earlier versions of the Mac OS, OS X does not have control panels and extensions. Therefore, it is not possible to disable extensions by holding Shift or Space Bar when starting in OS X.
However, it is possible to do a Safe Boot which allows users to boot their system into Safe Mode. Safe Booting takes longer than a normal boot and restricts what users can do after the system has restarted. However, it does three important things:
- It forces the system to do a directory check at startup, hence the reason it takes longer to start up doing a Safe Boot
- It loads only required kernel extensions
- It runs only Apple-installed startup items
This allows users who are having system problems to start up in a relatively clean enviroment in order to identify and remove 3rd party products that may be causing problems with the system.
To perform a Safe Boot in Mac OS X:
- Shut down your computer. Be sure the computer is turned off.
- Press the power button to turn on the computer.
- After you hear the startup chime, press and hold the Shift key on your keyboard.
- Release the Shift key when you see the startup screen with the Apple logo and the progress indicator. During the startup, you will see "Safe Boot" on the Mac OS X startup screen.
To get out of the Safe Boot, restart your computer without holding down any additional keys.
Note: In Mac OS 10.4.x and Mac OS 10.5.x doing a Safe Boot will also delete the font cache and forces the system to rebuild the font cache at the end of the start up process. This can fix problems where a corrupt cache can cause applications to crash. Microsoft Office, for example, has been known to crash due to bad fonts or a bad font cache.
Current Record: 1142
Create Date: 02-14-2003
Last Reviewed: 02-22-2008
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