Have you been experiencing stability issues with Safari? Has safari been crashing, leaving you high and dry? I had used Safari without issue for months before it suddenly started crashing on me. When I started to consider the applications I had recently installed, I started to become suspicious. The only new app I had installed was the update to Internet Explorer 5.2.3.
Given this revelation, I thought I should examine the permissions on my boot drive. OS X is prone to permission issues when some software packages are installed. I had heard rumors indicating that poorly written installers had been munging permissions that affected other software packages. With that in mind, I decided to have a look at my drives.
If you are experiencing similar problems, try booting from your OS X install CD (or DVD). Pop the CD into your computer, and reboot. About half way through the startup chime (the bong sound), hold down the c key on the keyboard. That forces the computer to boot from the CD. Wait for the first screen of the installer to come up, and then choose Open Disk Utility from the Installer menu.
From the Disk Utility, click once on your hard drive’s volume name in the list at the left. Next, click on the First Aid tab, and then click Verify Disk Permissions. The utility will begin scanning your drive and display a list of all files that have permissions that are set contrary to Apple’s specifications.
When the scan is done, you will likely have some kind of list of issues with your drive. In many cases, that list is extensive. Just click the Repair Disk Permissions button and the utility will take care of the rest. While you are here, I recommend running the Verify Disk scan as well. You might be able to repair small problems with your drive before they become larger ones. Verify Disk will examine your drive for file system issues like corruption or file mapping issues.
When it is finished, reboot. You will likely notice that Safari is much more stable, but you may find your system a bit more responsive over all. That was certainly the case for me.
To be fair, I am not blaming my Safari issues solely on Microsoft. Any installer could cause problems that affect other parts of the hard drive. In fact, that was the case with the initial release of iTunes 2.0. The installer Apple originally released actually wreaked havoc on users hard drives and corrupted data. Apple quickly resolved that issue, but the point was proven that damage could be done.
The Disk Utility can be found in the Utilities directory of your Applications folder typically located on your boot volume. In order to repair most issues with your boot drive, it is a good idea to boot from the installer CD and run the utility from the CD. This gives the utility the ability to fix files that are normally locked on an operational drive.
The problem I had been experiencing— the crashing of Safari, could simply have been a bug in the software. But looking more closely, I realized that it might just be the tip of the iceberg. The problems I experienced in one application could have been effecting other applications. Rather than crashing, other software was just running less efficiently. This issue simply proved to me that proper disc maintenance is essential if I want to keep my Mac running at peek efficiency.
Check out this link for more info on how to maintain your Mac. And, if you are interesting in general troubleshooting, be sure to checkout MacFixit.com!
