October 2000 || Volume 01, Issue 03

Some Mojo from the Medicine Man
Jumping into the Extensions Manager

Greetings fellow Mac users. It was a pretty quiet month on the help@macosjournal.com line. I guess that's a good thing, right? Well I did get a couple of letters that pretty much dealt with the same thing that had the same fix. It's time to belly up and become good friends with the Extensions Manager.

When I first got seriously into the Mac scene it was back when OS 7.5 was first emerging. And with it came Extensions Manager. Prior to its advent I had become quite adept and managing my own extensions, thank you very much Apple just the same. And for a long time, at least on my own system. I manually adjusted my extension set to keep my Mac running smoothly. Then I got into tech support. The forced me to reexamine what I had abandoned so long ago. Believe me, it's much easier to tell someone to take the "x" out of the box than to drag it around in their System Folder, then try to find it again when they lose it. So my friends, here are some simple steps to take to troubleshoot general system strangeness and all-of-a-sudden crashing.

I'm going to use OS 8.6 as an example from here on out. When you notice your system behaving strangely all of a sudden after downloading and/or installing some new software or a font, if things just aren't generally behaving as they should, (or used to!) start here.

1. Open your Extensions Manager Control Panel. I generally prefer the sorting to be done by Name. This actually sorts them by in groups and those groups are alphabetically sorted. Control Panels first, then extensions, Shutdown Items, Startup Items, lastly System Folder. Most of what you will be working with will be in the Control Panel and Extensions area.
2. At the top of the window you will see a pull-down menu labeled Selected Set. Click on that menu. At the very least you will see three options. Mac OS 8.6 All, Mac OS 8.6 Base (these first two will have a little lock next to them), lastly My Settings. Currently there is probably a check mark next to My Settings in your list. In the list select Mac OS 8.6 Base (if you have a different OS version than 8.6 chose whatever version you have).
3. Click on the Restart button towards the bottom of the window.
4. Try your computer out for a while and see if the odd behavior has gone away. Depending on your system and peripherals you have some things might not work anymore such as printers, Palm Pilots, or external drives. Don't worry, we will get those back right now.
5. Open the Extensions Manager again. We are going to build off of this base set of extensions. We know that at least these work so it's a safe starting place. Go through your list and start turning on control panels and extensions you recognize (things like your printer, etc.). When you try to turn the first thing in your list back on the Mac will squawk at you saying that you can't modify this set because it is locked, do you want to copy it. Chose to copy it and name it something like "Test" or "Alternate." Then you will be able to add away. Only add a small number of things at a time. Our goal is to find the one who isn't playing well with others.
6. Keep adding a few, restarting, working with it for a while (trying to make it break again) until you restart and it breaks again. Go back and uncheck the ones you recently added in and see what happens. This process should help you eliminate the bad egg as it were.

If this sounds scary and dangerous, it can be if you aren't careful. As Bill Murray says over and over again in one of my favorite movies (but my wife hates it) "What About Bob?", baby steps. Just take it slow. It could take some time but it could also save you from a lot of headache in the future. I can hear some of you saying, "But isn't this what Conflict Catcher is for?" That's true, it can serve this same exact function. But it also can conflict with software you need to use on a regular basis. By doing it yourself you learn a great deal about your own system and maybe you can help someone out someday who is having the same problem and tell them to get rid of the ObjectSupportLib [Legal Department: We are not actually saying to remove the ObjectSupportLib, no matter how much it makes sense] extension and their problems will be solved.

Happy hunting! And if you have any questions, just use the new Medicine Man Help Form.

Corby Stephens - corby@macosjournal.com
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