Is there any danger...?

[Francine Eisner]

Hi guys,

As many of you know, I am new to Panther (1 month? 6 weeks?) and just getting to know how to maintain it. I have downloaded some of the popular free maintenance programs, like  Onyx,TinkerTool, MainMenu, MacJanitor, Preferential Treatment.

What isn't clear is this: In running any of the procedures on these programs, is there...er...any danger that something important might be deleted? I have stayed away from any of the Unix or Terminal-related procedures.

(I have a very very old version of DW and don't use it at present; I'm planning to get the newest version when I have the $).

Cheers,
Francine

(The Mac Gardener)

[Xairbusdriver]

OnyX and TinkerTool are both simply a GUI front end to what you can do in Terminal. And the tasks are actually the same things that now happen automatically since 10.4.4 ( run the periodic Unix tasks/jobs ). Or they do the same thing as Disk Utility ( repair Permissions ). Some access settings that Apple chose to hide from us for whatever reason. I use both in their Tiger iterations.

Preferential Treatment doesn't actually do anything to your prefs/plist files except read them. It checks that they are valid XML documents. Period. Even if it finds an invalid file, it will not offer any way to edit/change it. And it doesn't know what the values in the file should be so don't expect it to tell you that a program is crashing because one of its prefs has a value of 1,000 instead of 1. It's mainly for discovering that there is a corrupt pref file somewhere. I use it about once a month.

I think MacJanitor is mainly for finding/deleting duplicate files. Trouble is, there may be a reason for there being a duplicate or you may mis-read which one is not needed. I am very skeptical about these kinds of "cleaning" utilities. OTOH, I am going to need one soon to verify that one drive has all the files found on several partions so I can erase/re-use that space. I have never used it.

I have no experience with Main Menu but I use another "menu" app that allows me to have anything/everything I want in "regular", hierarchical, text ( with icons ) menus. Most of these apps don't change anything in your System, they just use and display it in different ways. They are no more dangerous than any other app.

Disk Warrior is a totally different animal. It should never destroy anything. But it does repair your main System directories and move files around to clean up wasted space. These two tasks can destroy your disk info if done incorrectly. But one of the reasons you will pay a significant price for DW is to support the developers in their quest to make sure what it does is as safe as humanly possible. Many people swear by DW. I have, so far, not had a need to buy/use it. But I do have/use other commercial utilities.

[Francine Eisner]

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Aug 5 2007, 11:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

OnyX and TinkerTool are both simply a GUI front end to what you can do in Terminal. And the tasks are actually the same things that now happen automatically since 10.4.4 ( run the periodic Unix tasks/jobs ). Or they do the same thing as Disk Utility ( repair Permissions ). Some access settings that Apple chose to hide from us for whatever reason. I use both in their Tiger iterations.

Preferential Treatment doesn't actually do anything to your prefs/plist files except read them. It checks that they are valid XML documents. Period. Even if it finds an invalid file, it will not offer any way to edit/change it. And it doesn't know what the values in the file should be so don't expect it to tell you that a program is crashing because one of its prefs has a value of 1,000 instead of 1. It's mainly for discovering that there is a corrupt pref file somewhere. I use it about once a month.

I think MacJanitor is mainly for finding/deleting duplicate files. Trouble is, there may be a reason for there being a duplicate or you may mis-read which one is not needed. I am very skeptical about these kinds of "cleaning" utilities. OTOH, I am going to need one soon to verify that one drive has all the files found on several partions so I can erase/re-use that space. I have never used it.

I have no experience with Main Menu but I use another "menu" app that allows me to have anything/everything I want in "regular", hierarchical, text ( with icons ) menus. Most of these apps don't change anything in your System, they just use and display it in different ways. They are no more dangerous than any other app.

Disk Warrior is a totally different animal. It should never destroy anything. But it does repair your main System directories and move files around to clean up wasted space. These two tasks can destroy your disk info if done incorrectly. But one of the reasons you will pay a significant price for DW is to support the developers in their quest to make sure what it does is as safe as humanly possible. Many people swear by DW. I have, so far, not had a need to buy/use it. But I do have/use other commercial utilities.

Hmm...Ya know, something did change after I ran Onyx, using it to repair permissions and to empty all of my browser caches and histories. So what happened? Double-clicking MS Word Documents causes them to be opened by TextEdit, which seems to have become their default "Open With" app. Before, if I double-clicked on a Word document Classic launched and then MS Word. I can still open them with Word, but now I have to lauch Classic first; it won't launch automatically. Funny, huh?

Cheers,
Francine

(The Mac Gardener)

[krissel]

You can change the default application associated with a specific file type by following these steps:

   1. Click to select one of the files for which you’d like to change the associated default application
   2. Press Command+I to open the Get Info window
   3. Under 'Open with' select the application you’d like to use
   4. Under 'Use this application to open all documents like this' click on Change All… and follow the prompts

[Francine Eisner]

QUOTE(krissel @ Aug 6 2007, 02:44 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You can change the default application associated with a specific file type by following these steps:

   1. Click to select one of the files for which you’d like to change the associated default application
   2. Press Command+I to open the Get Info window
   3. Under 'Open with' select the application you’d like to use
   4. Under 'Use this application to open all documents like this' click on Change All… and follow the prompts

Yeah, thanks...I had just noticed that myself. I just wondered WHY it happened...

Cheers,
Francine

(The Mac Gardener)

[zampom]

QUOTE(Francine Eisner @ Aug 6 2007, 02:58 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah, thanks...I had just noticed that myself. I just wondered WHY it happened...

Francine,

It is probably because you had Onyx set to rebuild launch services.  Frankly, I have abandoned the practice of using maintenance utilities as a preventive measure, as was often necessary pre-OS X.  The exceptions to this are making sure the periodic maintenance scripts are run, repairing permissions prior to and after an Apple update, and running DiskWarrior once every couple months.  While opinions vary .... I just don't think it is needed or worth it.  In many cases, as you have seen, running the full compliment of routines available in some of these maintenance apps can actually slow (temporarily) your computer down while it rebuilds caches and you set the desired applications to work the way you want them to.  While I keep TechTool Pro, Cocktail, MainMenu, DiskWarrior, Applejack and IceClean on hand ..... the only ones I really make use of (in addition to Disk Utility) are MainMenu (for running maintenance scripts if they get behind) and DiskWarrior.  The others are for when something goes wrong that needs a helping hand ..... and that rarely happens.