cleaning a mac with fcp 5 installed
 

Hi there,
Iv'e read in the past that installing Norton Utilities on your mac when fcp is installed is a surefire disaster.... Is this still the case? I really need to do some house keeping on my mac..... ( if it were a house it would be a hovel of junk)..... and i am too scared of stuffing up my fcp projects.

Is this still the case with Norton or what can i use? I am on a g4 imac runnning fcp5....

Thanks for any advice

Craig D

What exactly do you need Norton Utilities for? I do my housekeeping with MacJanitor (freeware), Disk Utility (included) and FCP Rescue (freeware). If something really went bad, you could rebuild the directory with DiskWarrior. That's not free, but it's effective. There's not too much you need to do with Mac OS besides trashing preference files, running the cron scripts and repairing the file permissions. Is there something specific you need from Norton?

No not really iv'e just used it in the past and dont really know much else about it all. But, i will look into mac janitor.... Thanks for that
Basically my computer keeps freezing, programs quittig unexpectedly and a disc stuck in the drive, doesnt even recognise it...... it's a few years old and going senile i think...

Personally I've s stayed away from Norton ever since OS X came out. It always seemed buggy to me, but I can't point to anything specific so maybe I'm just prejudiced.

I've never had the need to "clean" one of my Macs on a regular basis. What verson of OS X are you on? If you're having problems and want to invest a little time, you might want to start all over again with a clean install of the latest version (10.4.6 I think?). You will need an external hard drive at least as large as your internal drive. Use one of the many utillity programs out there to clone your internal drive for starters. Then reformat the internal drive and install OS X from scratch. If you're really having a lot of strange problems then reinstall each of your applications from the original disks. Finally you can migrate your files using the OSX utility. It's time consuming but probably the best way to make sure everything is where it should be. If you have problems with the new install you can always boot of your external clone until you resolve them.

i think a lobotomy may be the only answer for this imac