Yesterday, Apple released the Mac OS X 10.5.2 update, and if you're running Leopard, you may have already downloaded it. At 180 MB, you may also be holding off for a good opportunity. Regardless, once you have it installed, what does this mean to you?

This update is mainly a collection of bug fixes, so if you've been frustrated by a bug or two, this will likely be a welcome release. I know a couple bugs listed have plagued us for the past few months since Leopard's release, so we're happy to fix those, and they've added compatibility for more networked printers and phones.

One feature they've also added, though, will likely affect all users at some point in their lives, and it's at least worth stuffing it away in the back of your head until the time comes.

The computer will now shut down if an automatic disk repair does not succeed during startup.

What does this mean? When your computer starts up, it runs certain maintenance routines, and if you didn't shut it down properly, it runs even more, particularly a disk repair check. If it can't fix any problems it finds, it will shut down. This is Apple stepping in for your own good, in typical Apple style, saying, "If your disk is bad, we should shut down to prevent further corruption." But if you don't know what's going on, all you'll know is that every time you start up, it shuts itself down.

So if your Mac starts this start and shut down activity, what should you do?

 

1. Get your Mac OS X install CD or the restore CD that shipped with your computer, whichever is newer.
2. When you start up, hold down the mouse or trackpad button until the optical drive (CD/DVD) opens. (If you have a slot loading drive, skip this step.)
3. Restart while holding down the "C" key, and once the installer screen comes up, choose "Disk Utility" from the menu.
4. Use Disk Utility to repair your hard drive. (At this point, it likely won't work, but it might, so it's worth a try.)
5. If that doesn't work, you have 2 options:
   1. Erase the disk and restore from backup. (You did back up, didn't you?)
   2. Try another more powerful utility like Alsoft DiskWarrior.

Hard drives will fail. It's only a matter of time. If you haven't backed up yet, do it now. If you have, you now know what to do when your Mac says goodbye when you say hello.