Troubleshooting a Mac is different from troubleshooting a PC, but not all that different.
Did you know that Mac’s have a built-in startup options to test your hardware, boot
in safe mode, reinstall Mac OS X, and perform other system tasks.
To access one of these tools, you’ll first have to shut down or restart your Mac.
You’ll then have to press and hold the appropriate key or key combination before the gray startup
screen appears.
This is how you use the Mac’s hidden startup options.
Startup Manager Allows you to boot from a specific device
Press and hold the Option key while booting into your Mac
From here, you can choose to boot into different hard drives, USB drives, and network drives
If you want to skip the startup manager and boot straight into a removable device you
can press and hold C for network drives you can press and hold N
Apple Diagnostics / Hardware Test The diagnostic tests your Mac’s hardware
and ensure that everything is working properly.
To access this tool, just press and hold the D key while booting into your mac
Safe Boot / Safe Mode Believe it or not the Mac offers a Safe Mode,
but it’s called in the mac world “Safe Boot”.
In this mode, the Mac will check its startup volume, load only necessary kernel extensions
and disable third-party fonts and startup options.
During Safe boot, you can use this time to fix any problems if you Mac isn’t working
or booting correctly.
Loading you Mac into Safe boot is simple.
Just press and hold the Shift key.
To leave Safe Mode, just reboot your Mac without holding the Shift key
Single-User Mode If you are into command prompt style troubleshooting
– single-user mode is a text-mode terminal which allows you to enter commands and find
the issue on your Mac Press Command + S to boot into this mode.
To leave this mode just type in ‘reboot’ at the prompt and hit enter
Verbose Mode If you Mac computer is freezing, especially
during the boot process, the message within this mode can help you identify and get help
with the problem Pressing Command + V while booting will take
you to Verbose Mode.
If everything is okay with the machine it will do its thing and restart itself.
Recovery Mode Recovery Mode provides a nice graphical tool
on your mac.
From here, you can reinstall operating system Restore the machine from a Time Machine backup
Use the Disk Utility to repair, wipe and partition your Hard drive
Pressing Command + R allows you enter into recovery mode.
One of the nice things about a Mac computer is that all these features are built-in.
There is no downloading, boot to a USB or purchasing software to find out what’s going
on with your Mac.