Give your Mac a health check
QUICKLY TEST YOUR HARDWARE AND DIAGNOSE ERRORS WITH MACCHECK.
WHENEVER AN APP quits unexpectedly or your Mac restarts a er freezing, you would probably like to run a quick check to reassure yourself that there’s nothing more serious wrong with it. You could restart and run Apple Diagnostics or start up OS X Recovery to run Disk Utility’s First Aid feature, but by then, it’ll be lunchtime and you’ll have got nothing else done.
ese are ideal situations to run a quick and lightweight check, so that you can get back on with what you were doing with the minimum of fuss. To this end, it’s time for MacCheck from — when you rst open this app, it’ll ask you to register for a free serial number; there’s no price attached.
MacCheck is much like a health screening for your computer. It performs a quick run through the most important indicators of signi cant problems with a Mac’s hardware. It checks the results of the last power-on self-test (POST), memory and several kinds of storage error, as well as the battery on portable Macs.
If you get a set of green lights at the end of the tests, you can be happy that, whatever it was that happened, your Mac remains in ne fettle. If any test returns a red light, you need a strategy and the tools to follow it up.
Most errors found during the power-on self-test are likely to be with memory, and should have attracted your attention at that time as you would have experienced problems during your most recent startup. Battery problems tend to be straightforward, and are typically xed by replacing the failing battery.
DEAL WITH THE PROGNOSIS
MacCheck only tests internal drives, so it won’t recognise an external RAID drive even if it was set up using OS X’s so ware-based RAID tech. Drives with a hardware-based RAID controller normally have their own maintenance tools to check and report their status. Use Disk Utility to check so warebased RAID drives.
If you suspect a hardware fault, Apple Diagnostics ( tinyurl.com/tla55-apple) is the ultimate check. Power on your Mac and hold ‘D’ until it appears. (If you have trouble with this, use the Recovery system to remove any rmware password you’ve set, or try a wired keyboard and mouse.) You may get a choice of regular or extended checks; in the rst instance, pick the former. Note any error code to quote to AppleCare or a Genius Bar.