Periodic Maintenance for Mac OS X (10.5 and 10.6) Computers

To perform periodic maintenance on a Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) computer, follow these steps:

1. On your hard drive, click Applications.
2. Click the Utilities folder. The Utilities window should look similar to the following:

3. Double-click the Disk Utility application. You will see a window that should look similar to the following:

   

4. In the left-hand column, click the name of your hard drive (e.g., Macintosh HD in this example).
5. Click the First Aid tab on the right-hand side of the window.
6. Click the Repair Disk Permissions button in the lower-left area of the window.
7. When the process is complete, close the window.
8. You should run Disk Utility after installing new software to ensure that the installation did not affect your computer in any adverse way.