Lee Hogan If you have been doing the track for any time, you know which you should not be into recording for computer systems to be a massive help. They help out in each other location of life, so why must your track profession — whether it’s complete-time or part-time, amateur or seasoned, making a song or drumming — be any one-of-a-kind?
Even if you’re not ready, willing, or able to try building a sub-$1000 recording studio (now not counting the value of the laptop that you already have, of the path), you can use your PC or Mac to do flyers for gigs, hold the books, tweak digital pix and even movies, pursue some (prison) email campaigns and masses of other matters. But when you have jumped off into laptop-based totally digital recording (instead of virtual recording the usage of a stand-on my own, difficult-disk-primarily based, all-in-one studios like a Roland V series or Korg D series), then the computer is greater than your bookkeeper or team of workers artist. It’s your co-manufacturer.
You’re the boss
Sometimes you might not sense like you are the boss, though, specifically when the pc freezes in the middle of a consultation, crashes during a crucial up- or download or does any variety of other ungeeky matters. It isn’t always uncommon for each mac and PC, when used as the hub of a busily spinning track manufacturing environment, to become from time to time “uncooperative.” It might not start up sooner or later; it might begin and freeze sooner or later, it might simply sit down there, or it may heave and chug and pass “spring,” too.
Let’s check what to do when the reluctant or troublemaking co-manufacturer isn’t always your human partner (for as soon as) but your pc. This time we’ll have a look at lifeless, dead, or dysfunctional Macs, and yet again, we’ll speak approximately PCs. We will deal with the maximum common situations, wherein you have got power and all of the pieces are hooked up properly (double test your cables besides). Still, you get the infamous blinking query mark, a frozen computer after start-up, or a begin-up chime observed through zipping, 0, and nada.
Work the hassle
Various startup strategies permit for purchasing around easy “admin” password safety, which is what maximum conditions contain; in other phrases, there is in all likelihood no fancy 0.33-celebration software program jogging on the way to defeat most or all of the following workarounds. None of the strategies are completely painless or free, but you have to decide how vital it’s to have the contents of that pressure at the unbootable system. Now, allow’s smash down the strategies for you one at a time.
(1) By preserving the “c” key during startup, you can boot from a CD or DVD with a valid Mac System on it. Some G4’s (silver-door tower and earlier) will boot into either OS nine or OS X so that you can get one or the opposite variations of each. You can buy the final OS 9 package (9.2) for approximately $50, or you can purchase Mac OS X with the modern-day model (10. Five), setting you to lower back $100 or so. If you do not want the most modern model of OS X, you can buy 10.3 or maybe 10.2, for you to cost you considerably much less than the present-day release. If you begin up with a Mac OS installer disk, you could go to Reset Password on the Installer or utility menu (relying on what version of OS X you get). And then you are definitely in a commercial enterprise.
(2) Another startup alternative is to do just that — which means maintain the “Option” key as you hit the electrical switch or keyboard button. This lets you select a boot volume among any connected drives, which include Firewire devices. The handiest manner this can paintings is if you have an outside Firewire pressure, with a Mac OS and a few utilities installed, attached to your computer. Although the Mac additionally has USB ports, you can not begin up from an outside USB power; don’t agree with all people who say in any other case, just appearance it up on Apple’s web page for yourself. Who is aware of why they made ’em that manner, but they did. If you could beg, borrow or steal an external Firewire power with a System and a few utilities already on it, this can really work. Then you could back up anything you want from the power earlier than reformatting it. If you can not borrow this kind of device, one would cost you approximately one hundred greenbacks, plus you’d want the OS to place on it, so this is a potentially luxurious option.
(3) A slightly extra geeky method is to keep down “Options” at the same time as set out so that OS X boots into “top-notch person mode.” No password is required to muck around with what’s known as “Root” access. Of route, you would be the use of Unix instructions at this point. If you do not know Unix at all, you could likely get sufficient help from Wikipedia and other geeky resources online to learn how to searching for out and disable the password safety scheme. If you aren’t a “pc type,” even though, this might not be a sensible choice for you. This is a unfastened option, cash-clever. However, you could do untold harm mucking around within Mac’s brain, if you may, in case you’re not certain about what you are doing.
(4) Finally, you may start up whilst conserving the “t” key down and flip the Mac right into a Firewire target disk. This indicates that you can truly plug the pc into every other Mac and that other Mac will see the first as an external force. Then you could copy all the files you need to keep to the borrowed Mac or to an external drive that you have also installed. Like #2 above, this choice requires developing with a few types of equipment from somewhere, and of the path you want to beg or borrow it (now not thieve) if money is tight. Do you’ve got any pals with a Mac computer (a 3rd millennium PowerBook, iBook, or new MacBook or MacBook Pro with the Intel chips)? Sure, you could use a more modern iMac or a Mac Pro tower, but a pc certain would be less complicated. You can even need a Firewire cable (an “A to A” one, which means each end is an equal length).
You’re not alone
If you have an unhappy (or konked out) Mac, this is what you are up towards. It can seem hopeless at times. However, it is now not. In the Old Days, Macs have been fairly smooth to troubleshoot and keep. Not so to any extent further with the Unix-based totally OS and extra sophisticated hardware. But, with a touch assist, you can do it. If you want extra technical assistance, there are actually masses of Mac-focused websites wherein all people from noobs (beginners) to energy customers can keep the pleasant Mac troubleshooting assist, and even some freeware or shareware restore utilities.
The Mac network remains supportive, so preserve requesting assistance and rendering some to others, but you can. You can be surprised by using the quantity and best assistance that other Mac parents offer you. With a little help, a little endurance, and possibly a piece of luck, your Mac’s sad startup face — and your personal — may be domestic once more to a smile.