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Tutorial reminder: Try making a new user

An often-forgotten analytical technique that should be first on your list when things go wrong.

CNET staff
2 min read

[Published Tuesday, June 10th]

There are two main levels at which software problems can occur: the user level and the system level.

Recall that Mac OS X, with its Unix roots, is user-based. Each user has a home directory (with its own Documents, Music, Library, Preferences, and other built-in folders), and permissions are supposed to guarantee that users cannot trespass on one another's territory. It's easy to forget about this, though, because most of us have just one user - ourselves. (And that user is usually the computer's administrator as well.)

When problems occur, one of the first questions that should occur in logical analysis should be: Is this a user-level problem or a system-level problem? And it's easy to find out. Make a new user (as described in this tutorial). Now log out, and log in as the new user. Work for a while and see if the problem occurs. If it does, the problem is system-level: it's happening for all users. But if it doesn't, you know that the problem is confined to your original user.

Now, this tip is intended primarily as an analysis tool, and the analysis, at this point, is effectively over: you've isolated the problem. So, having answered the question you set out to answer, you could just log out, log back in as the old user, and delete the new user.

But if the problem is confined to the old user, then the problem is effectively solved. Since the problem doesn't occur in the new user, you should simple become that user. Give the new user administrative privileges and migrate into it (as described in the same tutorial). Try not to migrate whatever it was that was causing the problem.

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