What's Hot and Cool about Restarting
Hot
estarting the computer is a common occurrence for anyone who likes to do funny things to the computer's system file or finder with ResEdit or trying to make maps with Phorte for Marathon, or simply have a persistent error. It is helpful to know how to reduce the computer's restarting time.
f the computer is restarted by the Restart from the Finder's Special menu, then Boot-Up should take a smaller time than normal, this is called a warm start. It is similar to starting a car that has already been driven a way and already has a hot engine. There are only a very few other ways of getting a warm restart apart from this and mostly involve the use of additional software. One way is the restart option that comes with an error message that is accompanied by a bomb (presuming it successfully restarts). Other inventive/ingenious/stupid ways are listed at a page accessible here.
Cool
n the other side are cold starts. These are achieved after a crash, or on first turning power on to the computer. These take a good deal longer as the computer has to verify that its load up drivers are ok and everything is ready for launch. The symptoms of this are a longer time spent with just a 'happy Mac' icon before the "Welcome to Macintosh" message or simply longer with the "Welcome to Macintosh" but before the extensions are loaded.
Frozen
orst of all are when there is a crash during load by due to a virus/extension conflict/booting off a defective floppy and various other reasons. The Mac will then spend time rebuilding its drivers before doing anything else!
Advice
ever restart when a disk is being written to. For more info on this, click here.
bviously, continual restarting can be a problem, speaking from personal experience where, during shadow work, one computer would insist on taking 3.5 minutes to restart warm and it was usually cold, 5 minutes. Not funny when the error that is trying to be caught refuses to be so. Here are a few pointers to help with speeding the time up:
- Start without Extensions on by pressing [Shift] at startup.
- Use a program like Symbionts, Extensions Manager, or Conflict Catcher to put on a minimal amount of extensions.
- If you have enough RAM put the system of a RAM disk and set it as the Startup Disk (keep a backup on the drive). 16+MB of RAM is advised for this but it can be done with as little as 8 with RAM free still. Even if you only have 8MB, it is worth doing it once in your life simply to see the awesome boot up speed. For more info on how to do this, click here.
- Get hold of a copy of Desktop/Control Strip and the "Terminator Strip" module. This can force quit any application at almost any time, (including the finder, for those techy experts), and also do force restarts/shutdowns, enabling warm boots from otherwise difficult situations.
Back to: Errors, Crashes, etc.
