There are more tricks for booting up your Mac than you may know. I, for example, saved a trip down to the genius at the Apple Store thanks to some troubleshooting that helped breathe new life into my Mac. But it’s not just troubleshooting commands — there are startup commands for every task and occasion.
“Shift”. To boot into Safe Boot mode during startup. For when your Mac’s misbehaving.
“C”. To boot from the disc inserted in the optical drive during startup. This one’s great for when dealing with the OS X install DVD.
“Option”. To find all bootable drives during startup — then you may choose one to boot into. Switching between OS X and Windows is now a breeze.
“N”. To attempt a boot from a compatible networked server during startup. As mentioned in Apple’s support docs.
“Option + N”. To start from a compatible networked server during startup — but this time from the default boot image. Once more, as mentioned in Apple’s support docs.
“Command + S”. To boot into Single User mode during startup. Also, as mentioned in Apple’s support docs.
“Command + V”. To boot into Verbose mode during startup. Yet again, as mentioned in Apple’s support docs.
“T”. To boot in FireWire Target Disk mode during startup. As the name suggests, your Mac becomes an external FireWire HD for other computers to access.
Left mouse button, “Eject”, or “F12″. To eject any removable media during startup. Works best for ejecting a disc from the optical drive.
“Option + Command + P + R”. Until you hear two beeps — this one will reset either the PRAM or NVRAM. It should be noted that this one should be used as a last resource for a misbehaving Mac. Don’t know what these are? More Apple docs to the rescue.
Apple Remote. Don’t worry about finding a key labeled as such, since this is the actual Apple remote that we’re talking about — the one that comes packaged with most Macs nowadays. If you hold the “Menu” button on the remote during your Mac’s startup, this will work the same as “Option” for selecting a bootable drive. You can even click your way through the drives to select one, or press “+” when you select a disc to eject it.
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