Maybe the heartache begins with errors when you try to save or open a file. Or, you find yourself staring at an unchanging gray screen. El Capitan comes equipped with the tools you need to face everyday troubleshooting problems ①. Here’s the least you need to know.
① Using El Capitan’s Disk Utility, you can now repair your disk even if it’s the active startup volume.
Zap a Frozen App
Is your problem an endlessly spinning beach ball? Try these tricks first:
Force Quit: First see if the problem is limited to one app. Try to switch to another by clicking its Dock icon or pressing Command-Tab to use the Application Switcher.
If other apps respond, you’ll want to force the offending one to quit. Choose Apple > Force Quit (or press Command-Option-Esc) ②. Select the bad app in the list, and then click Force Quit. Usually an app will behave once relaunched.
② Stalled app? Press Command-Option-Esc, select the offender, and then click Force Quit.
Restart your Mac: If you can’t force-quit, choose Apple > Restart. If that fails, press Command-Control-Power button to force a restart (with the opportunity to save unsaved work first). If that doesn’t work, press and hold your Mac’s Power button until the Mac shuts down (unfortunately, losing any unsaved work), and then press it again to restart.
Log in with your troubleshooting account: Still having trouble? Log out of your current account, if logged in, and then log in with the troubleshooting account to find out whether the problem is limited to your user account. (See Create a Troubleshooting Account, in the previous chapter, for details.)
Solve Slowdowns
If force-quitting apps and restarting your Mac doesn’t stop a slowdown problem, you might need to do more:
Update your software: If your problem is a software bug, a software update may help. Go to Apple > App Store and click Updates to check for, and then install, new versions of software from the App store. (If you don’t see an update you expect, Press Command-R to refresh the view.) Check vendor Web sites for apps you got elsewhere.
Free up disk space: If your disk is nearly full, your Mac may run slowly—and apps may even crash. El Capitan’s version of Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) gives you an overview of the types of files that are hogging your megabytes ③. To home in further on oversized files, try an app like Id-design’s WhatSize.
③ El Capitan’s Disk Utility gives you a visual overview of what types of files fill your disk.
Add RAM: OS X and your apps can demand a lot of RAM; if everything is running slowly, and it’s not due to a full drive, you might need more.
To see how much you have, choose Apple > About This Mac and click Memory ④. (You won’t see a Memory button if it’s impossible to upgrade the Mac’s RAM.)
④ Choose Apple > About This Mac and click Memory to see how much RAM you have and whether you can add more. If you can’t upgrade your Mac’s RAM, you won’t see the Memory section.
If it’s possible to add more RAM, click the Memory Upgrade Instructions link. Or, see Crucial’s step-by-step guides.
Tame Troubled Startups
For problems with startups—say, your Mac gets stuck on the gray startup screen or you hear the boot up chime again and again, but your Mac doesn’t boot up—try these tricks first:
Unplug peripherals: Sometimes peripherals—keyboards, trackpads, webcams, microphones, external drives—are to blame. Unplug everything and restart to see what happens.
If your Mac starts up without a problem, test peripherals one by one. If the evidence points to a device, check its cables, update its software, or contact the manufacturer for help.
Try Safe Boot: Other startup problems might be solved by a Safe Boot. Restart your Mac and as soon as you hear the startup chime, press and hold the Shift key until you see the grey Apple logo. The startup process may take much longer than usual, but once it’s done you should see the words “Safe Boot” in red in the menu bar).
Log in and you’ll see a progress bar as OS X performs diagnostics and runs clean-up processes. (It also disables software that loads at startup and login.) If the problem goes away, restart again normally.
Try Disk Utility’s First Aid
If none of the tricks so far work, turn to Disk Utility’s First Aid. In El Capitan, you no longer need to boot into OS X Recovery, or from a different volume, to repair your startup drive. Just launch Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities), select your startup drive in the list on the left, click First Aid, and click Run ⑤.
⑤ In Disk Utility, select your startup drive, click First Aid, and then click Run.
When Disk Utility finishes, check its Details list for a report on what it did and then click Done.
If Disk Utility repairs your drive—or can’t find problems to repair—but the problem still occurs, try reinstalling OS X using OS X Recovery (discussed next) or using a bootable installer disk.
You might need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X using a bootable installer disk or OS X Recovery. (Make sure you’ve backed up your data first, and have a plan for restoring it!).
You might need to replace the drive and then restore from a Time Machine backup using OS X Recovery (or another type of backup, during the first startup after reinstalling OS X).
When you install El Capitan, it creates a hidden partition (or updates the existing hidden partition) to help you in times of woe. Hold down Command-R at startup until the Apple logo appears to see this emergency mode.
OS X Recovery gives you four choices; here’s where to start and how to proceed:
Get Help Online
If you’re not sure what to do after reading the rest of this chapter, start here.
First, make sure you’re connected to the Internet by clicking the Wi-Fi icon at the top right of the screen and choosing a network ⑥. Enter the network’s password, if necessary.
⑥ Click the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar to connect to the Internet.
From the OS X Utilities window, choose Get Help Online and click Continue.
Safari opens to a description of how to use OS X Recovery. For additional help, you can click the link to the general Apple Support site, click the Mac category, and then browse help topics. Or, click the search icon and type a description of your problem to see if fixes turn up. You may also want to do a more general Google search.
Repair with Disk Utility
If you’re in Recovery mode because of disk problems, Disk Utility is the option you’ll choose first. Select it in the OS X Utilities window and click Continue. For more on using Disk Utility, flip back a page or so in this chapter to Try Disk Utility’s First Aid.
Reinstall OS X
If your copy of OS X is the problem, you’ll need to install it anew. You can do this without harming your files and settings.
For this to work in OS X Recovery, you must be connected to the Internet. Click the Wi-Fi icon at the top right of the screen and choose a network. Enter the network’s password, if necessary.
Select Reinstall OS X, and then click the Continue button. The OS X installer data—all 6+ GB of it—downloads over the Internet from Apple’s servers; once the download is finished, installation proceeds. Be prepared for the download to take anywhere from 20 minutes to several hours, depending on your connection; installation will then take another 15 to 30 minutes.
Restore from a Time Machine Backup
Say the worst has happened and you must wipe your drive and start fresh (or install a new drive). If you’ve backed up your data using OS X’s Time Machine feature, you can restore your system—files, settings, and all—using the Restore from Time Machine option ⑦.
⑦ If you have complete Time Machine backups, the Restore From Time Machine option may save your bacon.
If you have a complete Time Machine backup (see warning), and you want to wipe your drive clean and restore your backup to that drive, select Restore from Time Machine Backup and then click Continue. On the next screen, select your Time Machine drive, the particular backup you want to restore from, and the destination drive.
Erase and Reinstall OS X
If you’re sure that you don’t need a new drive, but you want to start from scratch, you can erase the disk and reinstall a fresh copy of OS X. (Make sure you’ve backed up your data and you know how to restore it!)
Boot into OS X Recovery, select Disk Utility, and click Continue.
After the utility launches, select your startup drive’s name in the list on the left. Click the Erase button. In the Format pop-up menu, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled), name your disk if you like, and click…(you’re sure, right?)… Erase.
Once this process is done, go back to Reinstall OS X, earlier in this chapter, and follow the directions there—or, if you have a bootable installer disk available, now is the time to use it.
