Reader Simon Hansen finds his Mac slow to do his bidding. He writes: My Mac has been running very slowly lately and I wanted to see how much faster it would be if I disabled its startup items. But ...

Safe mode is an important troubleshooting tool. It boots the OS in such a way that it uses the bare minimum files and apps to start and run. This can help you isolate issues, figure out where problems ...

Apple includes a Safe mode in its Mac startup options that can help you work out if a problem is being caused by software that loads as your Mac boots up. It's particularly useful for resolving issues ...

It’s an unhappy day when you go to turn your MacBook on after an update or blissful recharging sleep — and something goes wrong. Maybe nothing happens at all. Maybe your Mac tries to turn on but doesn ...

Macs are basically reliable beasts, but every so often, they behave badly. When they are good, they’re very, very good, but when they misbehave, they can be horrid. And when that happens, you need to ...

Safe Mode in OS X is a great troubleshooting option, but on rare occasions, a system might always boot to Safe Mode. Topher, an avid Mac user for the past 15 years, has been a contributing author to ...

Clues to the causes of Mac startup problems can be found by analyzing when in the boot process the system fails. Problems may be related to the power supply, battery, hard drive, logic board, OS ...

When your MacBook hangs at startup, it could indicate a hardware- or software-related issue. Hardware-related issues can be detected by running Disk Utility. If your hard drive is failing, you should ...

One of the minor but relatively long-standing bugs in OS X Mavericks has been an inability to boot to Safe Mode on some systems after upgrading. When attempting, the Safe Mode progress bar may display ...

While MacBooks that run OS X are known for their stability and dependability, they can still suffer a crash from time to time. You can tell your MacBook has crashed if your cursor appears as a ...