Today we follow up on the second most responded to topic from last week's inSync: the slow starting Mac (see inSync 11/24/00).

The most obvious question that was omitted from the tip concerned the importance of the RAM test and what is at risk by not letting the computer do it. Bad or failed memory is much less common these days than it was back when these kinds of safeguards were first implemented. So right off the bat you can assume the likelihood of bad RAM is pretty low. In most cases bad RAM that goes unchecked will keep the computer from functioning properly in very obvious ways: crashes while booting, etc. The specific behavior triggered by bad RAM is hard to predict because it depends a lot on how much RAM is affected and where the bad addresses are. It is remotely possible for bad RAM to cause minor corruption in your files that could go undetected until too late. "Too late" meaning you've saved your work to disk and now you've discovered you can't retrieve it all. If you'd really like to operate your Mac without this test taking place at every start up, you could turn it on once per week or something just to check things out. There are also software utilities such as Tech Tool you can run that do RAM tests.

Also omitted from that previous tip were two other methods for speeding up Mac start times. Rebuild your desktop. This is a good practice from time to time for improving general Mac behavior. Just hold down the Command (Apple) and Option keys while the computer is starting up. It will eventually ask you if you would like to rebuild the desktop file. Click the yes box. It will take a few minutes depending on the size of the drive(s), and then the computer will continue to start up as usual.

Another reader suggested there are utilities available that speed boot times. We mention it just to cover the bases, but in general we do not recommend very many third party utilities for use in systems doing MIDI and audio recording. In our experience, they are hard enough to keep working productively without introducing all kinds of unknown variables in the way of extensions and control panels. We strongly recommend you keep these to a minimum in your system for best overall performance, including start up times.