OS X Forums Today: Blue Screen of Death; Slow TCP/IP connections in Classic; Uninstalling OS X

Blue Screen of Death This MacFixIt Forums thread (OS X Startup Issue) describes the "blue screen of death" startup failure. It typically happens after one or more successful startups in Mac OS X. One reader offered this potential solution: "The access privileges for my OS 9.1 partition had defaulted to the root user. All I had to do was login as root and disable access privileges for the partition and reboot. Everything is back how it was. Even my desktop picture (from the OS 9.1 disk) came back."

Slow TCP connections in Classic: a solution? A reader was having problems with Classic TCP/IP operations slowing down or failing completely. Pinging a web site indicated very slow response times in Classic while much faster times in OS X itself. He found the solution in a MacFixIt Forums thread (Email Hangs in Classic): Select OS X's Network System Preferences and Configure for Internal Modem. Then select the PPP tab and click the "PPP Options..." button. From here, uncheck "Use TCP header compression." See also this related thread (Classic internet apps and OS X).

Uninstalling OS X Several threads in the Forums query if there is an easy way to uninstall Mac OS X - short of erasing the partition it is on (see this thread as an example). The answer appears to be no. This seems only to be a problem if you have installed OS X and Classic on the same partition. If OS X is on its own partition, there is probably no downside to erasing it. This is another reason to keep OS X on its own partition!

Uninstalling non-English lprog items On a related uninstall note, Mac OS X automatically installs .lprog "files" for multiple languages. In theory, if you know you only intend to use English, you could delete all of the foreign language files, thereby reclaiming some disk space (which could be especially relevant for those with smaller hard drives). This MacFixIt Forums thread (Automated removal of non-English.lproj) explains how to do it. It appears to work (one reader eliminated 235MB of data this way without ill effect). But, as always, try at your own risk.