While it is possible to both rebuild your desktop file and zap your PRAM during the startup process of your Mac, TechTool from Micromat Computing Services offers a far better interface and added features at a very good price — free. Oh, it also allows you to do both without having to startup twice.
The Desktop file is a file on all Mac-formatted disks that the Macintosh operating system uses to store information about how to display files. Things like the appropriate icon to display, position of the windows and other similar information is all stored in the desktop file. As you can see, this file gets an extreme amount of use, and Apple recommends that you rebuild it every month or so to keep the information contained in this file current and correct.
To allow you to do this, Apple provides a set of keys that you hold down when starting up your computer so that it knows to rebuild the file. In TechTool, a button click achieves this. TechTool also provides the ability to rebuild desktop files for drives other then the startup disk. TechTool in addition has a save feature so that you can save the old desktop files before you start, allowing you to go back to them if there is a problem though you probably should not do this if you have already changed files on the drive.
In addition to working with desktop file, TechTool allows you to do the same things with the PRAM. PRAM (Parameter Random Access Memory) is a special part of the computers memory that is connected to the computers battery (so that while the PRAM can be written to and read from in exactly the same way as normal RAM, it stores the information even when the computer is turned off as the battery keeps up its power supply). PRAM is used to store user preferences for the system software, preferences that the operating system need to know while it is starting up and before it can access the hard drive. Things like the background pattern, menu fonts, highlight colours and the like. When your Mac shows the default grey desktop pattern and error message that the time and date are wrong, its a safe bet that your PRAM battery is dead.
So, why would you want to zap (delete) your PRAM? I'm sure some of you who have just finished installing MacOS 8 already know this, but when Apple rewrites it operating system, it does not always keep the order in which PRAM information is stored exactly the same, causing all sorts of problems that are only fixed by clearing out the PRAM, and resetting all the preferences as you would like them. Also, power spikes, strong magnets, gremlins and the like can also cause the PRAM to become corrupted and otherwise unstable, so that the only option is to zap the PRAM and start again, which leads us to the PRAM save option of TechTool. If you've just had the PRAM battery replaced, or the gremlins have taken a liking to the PRAM chip, restoring your PRAM from a saved file is a much better option then manually going through all your control panels and reconfiguring the preferences. I don't know about you, but I would prefer to spend the afternoon blasting away at Marathon, rather then reconfiguring my control panels, especially since I don't like the default Mac green, and it is so hard to set up my favourite green using the colour wheel.
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