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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1575
X-quest: Safe mode, booting without extensions
By ron carlson, Insanely Great Mac
January 23rd 2003
A pair of Knowledge Base articles describe an old standard of Mac OS troubleshooting
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Evidence of this comes to us in
the form of a pair Apple Knowledge Base articles that explain the how's and why's of
booting into "Safe Mode," which is described as: "[T]he state Mac OS X is in after a
Safe Boot. A Safe Boot is a special way to start Mac OS X when troubleshooting."
According to the article, starting up into Safe Mode does three things to simplify the
startup and operation of your computer:
? It forces a directory check of the startup (boot) volume;
? It loads only required kernel extensions (some of the items in
/System/Library/Extensions); and
? It runs only Apple-installed startup items (some of the items in /Library/Startup
Items and /System/Library/Startup items - and different than login items).
Taken together, these changes can temporarily resolve issues caused by startup volume
software or directory damage.
If this description gives you a feeling of deja vu, you're not alone. Moreover,
getting your Mac into Safe Mode should be equally familiar: hold down the "Shift" key
during boot up.
A second Knowledge Base article describes the particulars of booting into Safe Mode
under X. Specifically, users shouldn't press the Shift key until after the start up
chime sounds.
Instead of OS 9's "Extensions Off" message, X will indicate it is starting in Safe
Mode by displaying a gray apple and a spinning gear instead of the usual progress bar.
When these appear the user should release the Shift key.
As with Classic, leaving Safe Mode requires a reboot.
Now that we know how to do it, the only thing we need to know just why we'd need to
start in Safe Mode in the first place -- only one of my three Macs has ever crashed
running X and that involved several "adult" CDs of dubious (Vietnamese) provenance
;>...
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