The Dynamic Duo

I will begin writing on this site regularly again at some point, probably when I once again have distinct days and nights, and something resembling regular working hours again. Right now I am working fairly constantly with brief naps in between, and it hurts one’s desire to write. So anyway, enjoy the respite while it lasts.

In the meantime I just want to put out a tip for any Mac OS X users out there who find that the Mac takes a long time to reboot or boot up. If you get a world icon (the same as the system preferences network icon) that blinks for a long time, and then a folder icon that blinks for a long time before you get the grey apple logo screen then you suffer from the affliction I was suffering from. Your Mac is trying to boot from a network connection, when there obviously isn’t one there for it to boot from. I just assumed this was the normal state of things because my iMac was like this from the first moment I turned it on, but 5 minute start up times were really making me unhappy.

Imagine my joy, and exclamation of “Doh!” when I discovered the problem. My system now boots in about a minute, and I am much happier. Note however, that even with the incredibly long start up times I loved the machine, and it has made me decide to switch to Mac. On that note I’d like to remind you that my iMac is on sale to help fund my purchase of a new G5 system. Please e-mail me at mac AT t4ac DOT com for more details.

Now without further ado, here is how to set your Mac to boot from it’s own disk be default (and speed up the boot process):

1) Open System Preferences
2) Click on Startup Disk (the hard drive icon with a question mark on it)
3) Notice that Network Startup is highlighted, and that there is another option (currently on my machine it is Mac OS X, 10.2.6 on Macintosh HD)
4) Click on that other option
5) close system preferences
6) reboot your machine and enjoy the speed