What about special keys to use at startup?
Holding down the following keys while starting up your Mac will allow you to troubleshoot. If you're unsure which key on your keyboard is the option or command key, see the pictures on "What are keyboard shortcuts that I can use?"
| Function | Key Combination |
|---|---|
| Startup Manager | Option while booting (Allows you to choose which volume to start-up from if you have more than one startup partition on your hard drive or CD) |
| Start Up from Recovery Partition | Command-R while booting for Macs with OS 10.7+ installed (Boots to your recovery partition, which allows you to repair your drive, restore from a backup, or browse Safari for help) |
| Start Up from Optical Disc | “C” while starting up (This tells the computer to start from a CD or DVD, like a system or utility disc, instead of the hard drive) |
| FireWire or ThunderBolt Target Mode | "T” while starting up (This temporarily turns a Mac into an external drive that you can mount on the desktop of a second Mac to copy data or even run utilities. When you are done, eject the “disk” and press the power button on the Target Mode Mac to shut it down.) |
| Ignore internal hard disk drive | Command - Option - Shift - Delete while booting (some Macs ignore selected startup device) |
| Eject all removable media | Press and hold mouse button, while starting up (left button if you have more than one) |
| Safe boot | Shift key while starting up, (only loads essential extensions at boot and disables login (startup) items; try this if you just installed a new extension or driver and got a kernel panic) |
| Verbose Startup Mode | Command - V (shows what’s going on during startup) |
| Single User Startup Mode | Command - S (brings you to Unix style text prompt) |
| Zap PRAM | Command - Option - R - R |
| Software reboot (lose all unsaved work) | Command - Control - Power on (to restart after a crash on some Macs) |
Published March 24, 2009 12:00 PM
Last modified on November 29, 2011 10:38 AM
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