Odds and Ends: "Flashing globe" at Mac OS X startup and its meaning; Extra icons in System Preferences

"Flashing globe" at Mac OS X startup and its meaning We received an e-mail recently from a reader who was presented with a "flashing globe" at startup, disallowing the boot procedure to continue.

If this icon appears, it means that the system is attempting to NetBoot (startup from a remote volume), is failing doing so, and for some reason is not automatically moving to your valid Mac OS X installation. Try holding down the option key at startup to select the boot volume. If you are still having problems, press and hold the Command-Option-O-F keys during startup, and reset the computer's open firmware settings by typing reset-nvram, press return and then reset-all, and press return to continue the boot process.

Extra icons in System Preferences Another reader e-mail notes extra appearances of some buttons in Mac OS X's System Preferences usually under the category "Other." This problem is usually resolved by deleting the file com.apple.preferencepanes.cache in Username/Library/Caches.

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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