boot

Boot Camp is a Mac OS X utility that lets you run Windows on your Mac without relying on virtual machines or crippled emulators. Boot Camp supports Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 (with OS X 10.6 or later). Boot Camp creates a Windows partition on your hard drive, along with the Mac OS partition. This means that none of your Mac content is touched at all, and Boot Camp has no effect on the operation of Mac OS.

The process of running Boot Camp to install a Windows partition includes running a preparation utility on Mac OS (… Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week, readers wrote in with questions about Mac systems not booting to the installation DVD or any other alternate volume, iTunes not printing some information columns displayed onscreen, and how to print individual pictures from a collection in Preview. I welcome views from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in the comments!

Question: System will not boot to installation DVD MacFixIt reader Grady asks:

If you have a Windows 7 PC but aren't sure you're ready to upgrade to Windows 8 yet, a dual-boot system might be a good way to ease into it. This will let you use both operating systems, side-by-side, until you're comfortable enough with Windows 8 to go all in. To configure your PC for dual-boot, all you have to do is create a new partition for Windows 8, then install it.

Caution: Before you begin, make sure to back up your system. This is a simple procedure, but there's always a risk of data loss … Read more

OS X will automatically attempt to mount an attached volume when the system is started, and if successful the volume will appear in the Finder either in the sidebar or on your desktop if you have these options enabled. However, there may be instances such as in multi-boot environments when you might want a specific volume to remain unmounted.

With multiple boot volumes in a system, when loaded in one operating system it is relatively easy to access and edit important files on the boot disk of other operating systems. Therefore, keeping the unused boot drive unmounted may be a … Read more

To help troubleshoot problems in OS X, Apple supports several alternative boot modes, the most common of which is safe mode. There's also a verbose mode that displays what background processes are being loaded, and a single-user mode to avoid user accounts and the OS X graphical interface. While these various modes can be useful, there are times that a system gets stuck loading them and won't boot normally.

These modes are triggered by a boot argument that is passed to the OS X kernel, which can be done in one of two ways. The first is to … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- One way Samsung hopes to show a jury that its products differ from Apple's is something as simple as turning them on.

The devices, that is.

In the fifth day of trial here today, Samsung spent some time booting up three different devices -- two phones and one tablet -- to make the case that consumers know what they're getting before they even start using a gadget.

That's an important consideration given claims by Apple, brought out in its opening statements and in its complaint at large, which says Samsung's devices are … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week readers wrote in with questions on how to back up to an internal partition or drive in a Mac, what to do about files not opening in the appropriate application when double-clicked in the Finder, and whether or not the Mountain Lion upgrade will affect Boot Camp partitions. We welcome views from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, post them in the comments!

Question: Backing up to an internal drive or partition MacFixIt reader Curtis asks:… Read more

Mozilla's browser-based smartphone operating system has grown up a notch, winning over partners such as Sprint and ZTE and picking up the marketing-friendly name of Firefox OS.

In addition, Mozilla has announced several partners, a necessity for making a bunch of software into something people actually use: only a very small number of people have the skills and interest to install a mobile-phone OS.

Carrier Telefonica and chipmaker Qualcomm already were partners that emerged when Mozilla announced B2G at Mobile World Congress earlier this year. They'd said to expect phones by the end of 2012 then, but now … Read more

Really fast boot times on Windows 8 hardly sounds like a problem. But it is. Here's why.

Startup can be so fast that you whiz by familiar sign posts that prompt for input, wrote Chris Clark, a program manager in the Windows User Experience team, today in a Building Windows 8 blog post.

"When you turn on a Windows 8 PC, there's no longer [enough time] to detect keystrokes like F2 or F8, much less time to read a message such as 'Press F2 for Setup'," Clark said.

On a solid-state drive-equipped ultrabook, for example, Windows … Read more