MacFixIt Forums on Mac OS X: startup problems solved; Black background glitch; Privileges problem solved

Startup hang solution This MacFixIt Forums thread (Solution for hanging loginwindow) describes a hang at startup (the login window never appears) that was also ultimately fixed by deleting preferences (plist) files in the Home directory. In this case, the entire folder was dumped. Another solution, involving a remote login, was also given.

Startup problem solved A posting in this MacFixIt Forums thread (Solution for startup disk problem) suggests some startup problems may be resolved by switching from FWB's HDT to Apple's Disk Utility.

Fixing black background glitch This MacFixIt Forums thread (Backgrounds that should be white are black) describes a problem where normally white background is black, making text unreadable. The solution is to delete the com.apple.ColorSyncDeviceList.localhost.plist file from the Library/Preferences folder in your Home directory, log out and then log back in. The thread has more details.

Privileges problem solved The initial posting in this MacFixIt Forums thread (Solution found to Privileges problem) describes a situation where the privileges for a folder would mysteriously change to an incorrect owner and/or incorrect group. Whatever the cause, he describes a solution (using the chown and chgrp commands in Terminal) that fixes it. Another reader suggested that GetInfo might also be able to do this.

Sharing documents: a problem with privileges? On a related note, Daniel Timoldi was sharing an Office 2001 document with another user running a Windows PC. Prior to upgrading to Mac OS X, this caused no problems. However, from Mac OS X, after the Windows user saved the document, Daniel could no longer open it. It appeared that saving the document in Windows modified the privileges such that OS X believed it did not have permission to open it. A similar problem may exist even between two Macs; Daniel is not yet sure. In any case, there may well be an easy solution to this problem, possibly via the "Ignore privileges on this volume" option in the Get Info window. We are still investigating this.