Emac software

Hi there!

Norton Utilities of yester-year was essentially a series of maintenance utilities to keep your Mac running smooth.  These days (and for some years now), I have so far seen little more than trouble from Norton when it comes to their Mac software... I would advise against Norton products as a general rule (on the Mac... it may be better for Windows machines, but that's not my area of expertise).

The best product I've seen for repairing the directory structure on your Mac's hard drive is called Disk Warrior, by Alsoft (http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/).  This is a $99 program, and worth every penny.  I recommend folks use this on the order of once every month or two for significant maintenance.

That being said, there are also some free maintenance utilities that do a tremendous job, especially if/when your computer just seems a bit slow, or if odd little issues have started appearing.

One is called Onyx, and they have a version for Tiger (10.4.x), but also for Panther (10.3.x) as well, available at http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english.html (again, for free!).

Another is an absolutely wonderful tool called Applejack, available at http://applejack.sourceforge.net/.  This tool is for use in what is called "Single User Mode":

1. First download & install Applejack, using the link above.
2. Reboot your computer, holding down command-s.
3. When the screen turns black with white text scrolling down you can release command-s.
4. Type "applejack auto restart" for a full suite of maintenance to run, or "applejack AUTO restart" for a truly deep cleansing of the system.
5. Expect the maintenance to scroll by, task after task, for about 15 minutes, and then your machine will reboot automatically.

Between these 3 tools, you should be very well taken care of!

Enjoy!