Hi Cathy, In most cases you can repair permissions or repair a disk by running Disk Utility from the Applications folder. However, repairs cannot be made on any files that are open at the time you run the repair operation, so for really bad problems running a Disk repair from the same system volume that is open and currently giving you problems may not work to fix things. So the convention, from back in the days when we used install CDs or DVDs for the operating system, was to run Disk Utility from the install DVD or CD, on the chance that one of the files that is open when your system is running and booted from your hard drive is the one that needs repairing. James translated the action for the current operating systems that do not use install DVDs or CDs to running the repair operation from the recovery partition.
What I usually do for instances that require extensive trouble-shooting is to attach a hard drive with a bootable clone or a USB memory stick on which I have created a bootable version of the operating system (with Carbon Copy Cloner or Lion Diskmaker), then boot from there. This is also the usual procedure that I adopt if really heavy-duty repair and diagnosis tools, such as Alsoft's Disk Warrior, are needed. I have a copy of the software on the cloned disk drive, and run it from there. You can read a summary of good Maintenance practices, that includes periodically running Disk Utility to repair permissions, at this OS X Daily web site: • OS X Daily: 4 Simple Mac Maintenance Tips http://osxdaily.com/2012/03/04/mac-maintenance-tips/ (For new Mac users, remember to use Command-Shift-R to bring up Safari Reader, so you can focus on reading the article without viewing any of the other page content.) If you want a (much) more extensive description of maintenance practices, this old Mac Attorney page on Mac OS X Routine Maintenance hits all the conceptual highlights, even if it was written for systems 10.2 through 10.6, and includes details about older systems: http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html Cleaning out caches, and corrupted preference files, both discussed on the Mac Attorney page, are much lower down on the trouble-shooting list, but are situations you may eventually encounter if you run your Mac long enough. HTH. Cheers, Esther On Mar 15, 2013, at 4:19 AM, Cathy wrote > hello, > the update is various security and bug fixes. details are on the ap store > site when you download and install. > > I wanted to thank James for explaining how to repair a disk, this is a handy > thing to know. however, in this instance, my husband found an easy fix. > instead of opening the program from my desktop, he suggested I open it from > the application window. sure enough it worked like a charm. so I sent the old > mail program to trash and copied the mail from the applications window to my > desktop and now I am in business. > > Cathy > <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> As the Mac Access Dot Net administrators, we do our very best to ensure that the Mac-Access E-Mal list remains malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free. However, this should in no way replace your own security strategy. We assume neither liability nor responsibility should something unpredictable happen. Please remember to update your membership preferences periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>