Working Mac: your emergency tool kit.(Secrets)

YOUR MAC DEVELOPS A SERIOUS PROBLEM THAT CAN'T BE ignored: Perhaps it won't print your documents. Or applications keep crashing. Or the Mac itself crashes on startup. That's when you need to pull out your emergency tool kit. We've assembled a collection of essential utilities you should have on hand.

Disk Repair

You'll probably reach for a disk-repair utility most of the time. Fortunately, you already own one if you have OS X: it's Apple's Disk Utility. (For more freebies, see "Fix It for Free.") Go to Applications: Utilities, launch Disk Utility, select the problem volume, and click on the First Aid tab.

For almost any imaginable problem that you can't easily fix, click on Repair Disk Permissions. This is worth trying even if you think that permissions have nothing to do with the trouble.

If permissions problems are preventing you from launching Classic, select the Fix OS 9 Permissions command in Disk Utility's File menu.

When permissions fixes don't do the trick, click on Repair Disk to repair problems involving the hidden directory area of a drive--an area critical for tracking the name and the location of all the items on the drive.

But some situations are beyond the scope of Disk Utility. That's when you…