I. Viruses 1. Help! I have a virus! 2. I think I've found a new virus. What should I do? II. Printing and PostScript 1. How do I make a PostScript file? 2. How do I print a PostScript file? 3. Why won't my PostScript file print on my mainframe's printer? 4. Why are my PostScript files so big? 5. How can I print PostScript on a non-PostScript printer? 6. How do I make my ImageWriter II print in color? 7. Why doesn't PrintMonitor work with the ImageWriter? 8. Why did my document change when I printed it? 9. How can I preview a PostScript file? 10. How do I edit a PostScript file? III. DOS and the Mac 1. How can I move files between a Mac and a PC? 2. How can I translate files to a DOS format? 3. Should I buy SoftPC or a real PC? IV. Security 1. How can I prevent users from changing the contents of a folder? 2. How can I password protect my Mac? V. No particular place to go (Miscellaneous Miscellanea) 1. Are there any good books about the Mac? 2. How do I take a picture of the screen? 3. How do I use a picture for my desktop? 4. Can I Replace the "Welcome to Macintosh" box with a picture? 5. What is AutoDoubler? SpaceSaver? More Disk Space? DiskDoubler? Are they safe? 6. How do they compare to TimesTwo, Stacker, and eDisk? 7. Where did my icons go? This work is Copyright 1993 by Elliotte M. Harold Permission is hereby granted to distribute this unmodified document provided that no fee in excess of normal on-line charges is required for such distribution. Portions of this document may be extracted and quoted free of charge and without necessity of citation in normal on-line communication provided only that said quotes are not represented as the correspondent's original work. Permission for quotation of this document in printed material and edited on-line communication (such as the Info-Mac Digest and TidBITS) is given subject to normal citation procedures (i.e. you have to say where you got it). This is the THIRD part of the this FAQ. The first part is also posted to this newsgroup under the subject heading "Introductory Macintosh frequently asked questions (FAQ)" and includes a complete table of contents for the entire document as well as information on where to post, ftp, file decompression, trouble-shooting, and preventive maintenance. The second part is posted to comp.sys.mac.system and features many questions about system software that often erroneously appear in comp.sys.mac.misc as well. Please familiarize yourself with all three sections of this document before posting. All pieces are available for anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu (18.172.1.27) in the directory pub/usenet/news.answers/macintosh. Except for this introductory FAQ which appears in multiple newsgroups and is stored as general-faq.Z, the name of each file has the format of the last part of the group name followed by "-faq.Z", e.g the FAQ for comp.sys.mac.system is stored as system-faq.Z and the FAQ for comp.sys.mac.misc is stored as misc-faq.Z. RTFM stores files as compressed (.Z) BINARY files. If you leave off the .Z at the end of the file name when "getting" the file, rtfm will automatically decompress the file before sending it to you. You can also have these files mailed to you by sending an E-mail message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the line: send pub/usenet/news.answers/macintosh/"name" in the body text where "name" is the name of the file you want as specified above (e.g. general-faq). You can also send this server a message with the subject "help" for more detailed instructions. ======== VIRUSES (1.0) ======== HELP! I HAVE A VIRUS. (1.1) 90% of all problems reportedly caused by viruses are actually due to mundane bugs in software (and 90% of all statistics are made up :-) ). Check your system with the latest version of Disinfectant, 3.0 as of this writing, by the excellent John Norstad and friends from Northwestern University. Disinfectant is absolutely free and is available from sumex-aim and all the other usual suspects. It's easy to use and can completely protect your system from currently known Macintosh viruses. Releases to protect from new viruses are normally made within a day or two of the first confirmed sighting and capture of a new virus, and make their merry way around the electronic highways faster than any Macintosh virus ever has. I THINK I'VE FOUND A NEW VIRUS. WHAT DO I DO? (1.2) DON'T post a report to any comp.sys.mac.* newsgroup. 99% of all suspected new viruses are merely mundane bugs in the system or applications being used; and even if you really have found a new virus, there's nothing we can do about it anyway. You'll only succeed in generating a lot of panicked, follow-up reports from people who'll blame every crash of QuarkXPress on the new virus. If your system is protected against known viruses by Disinfectant or one of the other anti-virus packages and you suspect a new virus is causing you trouble, first consult with the most knowledgeable local guru about your problem. Nine times out of ten, he or she will identify it as a boring, ordinary, known bug in the software. If you are the local guru and still think you may have found a new virus, and have thoroughly checked out all other possibilities, then, and only then, send a detailed description of your problem to j-norstad@nwu.edu. Check the Disinfectant manual for procedures to follow before reporting a new virus. Please remember that it is very unlikely you have actually found a new virus. Around the world in all of 1992 only four new Macintoshes viruses were discovered. Of all the suspected Macintosh viruses which were reported to Usenet before being isolated by a recognized virus expert, exactly none were eventually confirmed. One recent public virus report, the so-called M virus, turned out to be the result of a boring, ordinary bug in a common extension. The report which received the most attention, the so-called Aliens virus, remains unconfirmed and was probably the result of corrupt system software. ======================== PRINTING AND POSTSCRIPT (2.0) ======================== HOW DO I MAKE A POSTSCRIPT FILE? (2.1) First make sure a LaserWriter driver is in your System Folder. It doesn't really matter which one although the driver from the System 7 Tuneup disk is the best. You don't need System 7 to use the System 7 LaserWriter driver. If you're using the System 6 driver, you'll need a Laser Prep file in your System Folder as well as the LaserWriter driver and will also need to turn off background printing. Once you've verified that there is indeed a LaserWriter driver in the System Folder, select LaserWriter in the Chooser. A dialog box will probably pop up informing you that the LaserWriter requires Appletalk and asking if you want to turn Appletalk on. Whether you have AppleTalk or not click OK. Then select Page Setup... from the File menu to format your document for the LaserWriter. Next select Print... from the File menu. If you're using the System 7 LaserWriter driver, the Print dialog box that appears will have a radio button for Destination near the bottom. Click PostScript File. The Print button at the top should change to a Save button. Click it and you'll get a standard file dialog asking you what to name and where to save the PostScript file. If you're using LaserWriter driver 6.0.x or 5.2, the procedure is more complicated. When the Print dialog box pops up, position the cursor over the Print button and hold the mouse button down and keep it down like you're going to click and drag. Then, with your other hand, press and hold the K key. If you'll eventually print the file on a non- Apple PostScript printer, especially one not designed with the Macintosh in mind, also hold down the Command key. Using Command-K instead of plain K includes some Mac specific information non-Apple-oriented PostScript printers need to know about. Now let the mouse button up. When you see a message box that says "Creating PostScript file," take your finger off the K key. After you've gotten the message "Creating PostScript file" you should find a file called PostScript0 in the same folder as the application you were printing from. This is the file you just printed. Rename it before you forget what it is. If you print to disk (what this whole process is officially called) more than once, the second file will be called PostScript1, the third PostScript2, and so on. It really is much easier to use the System 7 LaserWriter driver. HOW DO I PRINT A POSTSCRIPT FILE? (2.2) On a Macintosh you'll need the LaserWriter Font Utility available on the high density TidBits disk from System 7 or the More TidBits disk from the 800K distribution. A more feature-rich version called simply LaserWriter Utility is available for anonymous ftp from ftp.apple.com in /dts/mac/sys.soft/imaging. Both utilities allows you to send files to the LaserWriter in such a way that PostScript commands get interpreted as PostScript rather than as text to be printed. If you're printing to a PostScript printer connected to something other than a Macintosh, you'll need to consult your local system gurus. A simple "lpr filename.ps" works on my Sparc, but your mileage may vary. WHY WON'T MY POSTSCRIPT FILE PRINT ON MY MAINFRAME'S PRINTER? (2.3) Moving PostScript files between the Macintosh and other platforms is as dark an art as exists in the Macintosh universe. You need to experiment with your combination of application software, LaserWriter driver, and printer to see what works best. If you're using the System 6 LaserWriter driver, try using Command-K instead of K to create the PostScript file so that the Laser Prep header is included. The System 7 LaserWriter drivers includes this header automatically though Hugo Ayala's shareware Control Panel device Trimmer will leave it out. More importantly Trimmer also lets you select which fonts to include in your PostScript file. Try using only genuine PostScript fonts, no TrueType or bitmapped fonts; and don't include any fonts in your document that already reside in the printer or on the host system. The freeware DMM- LaserWriter Stuff can customize your LaserWriter driver in several different, useful ways. Among other possibilities this package can modify a LaserWriter driver so that the PostScript files it creates are more compatible with non-Apple printers and printing to disk is the default. The upload to the mainframe from which the PostScript file will be printed may also make a difference. Normally you need to transfer the file in pure Binary format, neither MacBinary nor ASCII. WHY ARE MY POSTSCRIPT FILES SO BIG? (2.4) The System 7 LaserWriter driver automatically includes all the fonts you use in your document plus the LaserPrep information plus the TrueType engine (if you're using any TrueType fonts) in the PostScript file. Thus a 3K document formatted in 90K worth of fonts can easily produce a 300K PostScript file. If these fonts are present on the system you'll be printing from, they don't need to be included in the document. You can remove them with the shareware control panel Trimmer or the free utility StripFonts. HOW CAN I PRINT POSTSCRIPT ON A NON-POSTSCRIPT PRINTER? (2.5) You need one of the payware applications Freedom of the Press or TScript. For most users who only want to print to common printers like DeskWriters, StyleWriters, or Personal LaserWriter LS's, the Light version of Freedom of the Press or the Basic version of TScript will suffice. ($55 street for either). More expensive versions of both products are available that work with more esoteric printers, particularly very-high-end color printers and imagesetters. HOW DO I MAKE MY IMAGEWRITER II PRINT IN COLOR? (2.6) Applications such as SuperPaint 2.0 and MacWrite II that support the original eight-color model for QuickDraw graphics only need a color ribbon to print in color. The shareware GIFConverter can open and print a variety of graphics file types in excellent dithered color. Jeff Skaitsis's $1 shareware CheapColor can also dither PixelPaint and PICT2 files on an ImageWriter II. If you have a Macintosh with a 68020 or better CPU, the payware MacPalette II provides general purpose color printing from any application that prints on a QuickDraw printer (e.g. NOT Illustrator). MacPalette II is about $45 street. If you need more information the publisher, Microspot, can be contacted at (800) 622-7568. WHY DOESN'T PRINTMONITOR WORK WITH THE IMAGEWRITER? (2.7) Ask the Apple Customer Assistance Center (20525 Mariani Avenue, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA, (800) 776-2333) this one. Meanwhile the only way to print spool to an ImageWriter under System 7 is with SuperLaserSpool 3.0 from Fifth Generation Systems. This is a fully commercial product. There are NO freeware, shareware, or other FTPable solutions that work under System 7 so get out your credit cards. At $98 street price for SuperLaserSpool and only $300 for the vastly superior DeskWriter or StyleWriter you may want to forgo SuperLaserSpool and buy a better printer instead. If you're still using System 6 and have no plans to move to System 7, there is a shareware product called MultiSpool from Italy; but it is not System 7 compatible and prints only under MultiFinder. WHY DID MY PERFECTLY FORMATTED DOCUMENT LOOK LIKE GARBAGE WHEN I TOOK IT TO SOMEONE ELSE'S COMPUTER TO PRINT? (2.8) There are many different reasons this can happen. Far and away the most common problem is using the wrong printer driver. BEFORE you start formatting your document, make sure you have a printer driver for the printer you'll use for the final draft in your system folder and have selected that printer in the Chooser. Then choose Page Setup... from the File menu to let the application know what sort of output it should try to match the display to. The second most common problem is font confusion. Make sure you know exactly which fonts are in your document; and, if you're printing to a PostScript printer, make sure PostScript versions of these fonts are available to that printer. On newer printers you might also be able to use TrueType fonts; but PostScript is still the standard, especially if you're eventually going to Lino for camera ready output. The third most common source of trouble is poor formatting, especially in Microsoft Word. The Mac is not a typewriter, and you shouldn't use it as one. Don't use tabs as a substitute for indentation; don't force a page break with carriage returns; and NEVER use spaces to position anything. If you're writing a resume (by far the most common source of formatting problems for Word users), give serious thought to using the well-formatted resume template that comes with Word to help you avoid problems with your final printout. IS THERE A UTILITY TO PREVIEW POSTSCRIPT FILES ON THE MAC? (2.9) Net godhood awaits the first person to write a working shareware or freeware PostScript previewer for the Mac. The payware products Canvas 3.0 and TScript allow viewing PostScript files on the Mac, but both are large packages with other purposes and cost over $50 each. CAN I ATTACH A LASERJET OR OTHER PC PRINTER TO MY MAC? (2.11) If your printer isn't a PostScript printer with an AppleTalk interface, you need either PowerPrint from GDT Softworks or the Grappler from Orange Micro. Both include the necessary printer drivers and serial to parallel cable to connect a macintosh with any common PC printer including HP LaserJets and DeskJets and Canon BubbleJets. If your printer is uncommon you can always ask the vendors before ordering. Both packages have street prices around $95. ================ DOS AND THE MAC (3.0) ================ HOW CAN I MOVE FILES BETWEEN A MAC AND A PC? (3.1) The simplest way to move files between a PC and a Mac is with a null-modem cable and a reliable communications program. You can get a null-modem cable from any good electronics store. Make sure the cable you buy has the appropriate connectors for the Mac and PC you'll be connecting. Hook one end of the cable to the printer or modem port on your Mac and the other to a serial port on the PC. This should work just like a very high speed (57,600 bps) modem connection except that you'll probably need to turn on local echo in your communications program. If the computers aren't within cabling distance, you can either upload the files to an intermediary mainframe or put them on a floppy disk. The Superdrive sold since the introduction of the IIx is capable of formatting and writing to 3.5 inch PC floppies. Apple includes Apple File Exchange, a minimal program capable of doing this as part of the system software. Apple File Exchange is difficult to use and violates at least half of Apple's user interface guidelines. (Can anyone explain why no other software company violates as many of Apple's user interface guidelines as Apple itself does?) For details on its use please Read the Friendly Manual. If you frequently need to use DOS floppies and you have a Superdrive, you may want to invest in a more transparent solution. The three currently available are AccessPC from Insignia Solutions, DOS Mounter from Dayna, and Macintosh PC Exchange from Apple, all of which automatically mount and format 3.5 inch DOS floppies in a Superdrive without requiring you to run a separate program before you insert the disk. MacPC File Exchange requires System 7. If you use DOS Mounter be sure to increase your RAM cache (Disk cache in System 7) to at least 256K. This will substantially improve its performance. HOW CAN I TRANSLATE FILES TO A DIFFERENT PLATFORM? (3.2) With the increasing popularity of cross-platform development, many Macintosh programs like Adobe Illustrator 3.0, Adobe PhotoShop, and Microsoft Word 5.0 are able to save directly to a format readable by DOS or Windows programs. You'll still need to mount the DOS floppies in the Mac drive using one of the products discussed above or do a default translation from within Apple File Exchange. Although translators for Apple File Exchange could theoretically be designed to translate files made by applications without these capabilities, AFE has never really caught on. The best solution is a payware product by DataViz called MacLink Plus. MacLink Plus, about $100 street price, can translate over 400 DOS, Windows, Macintosh, and NeXT formats back and forth. As an added bonus it comes bundled with a copy of DOS Mounter. SHOULD I BUY SOFTPC OR A REAL PC? (3.3) The various versions of SoftPC will run most PC software on a Macintosh as advertised; but even on the fastest Macs, SoftAT will be slower than an original AT. On any Mac slower than a IIci or with any version of SoftPC other than SoftAT, you'll likely get performance at best of twice the speed of an original XT. More likely you'll only have the speed of an original XT. For today's software like WordPerfect 5.1 that's S...L...O...W. Of course slow is relative. I've seen an AMIGA running a Mac emulator running SoftPC running a CP/M emulator. That's slow! As part of testing the 486 chip design, Intel ran DOS on a simulation of the 486 chip running on an IBM 3090 mainframe. It took them TWO WEEKS to get to the C> prompt! That's slow. SoftPC on a Classic is actually about as fast as the original IBM PC from ten years ago. Furthermore SoftPC is known to have problems with certain peripherals, both for the PC and the Mac. If you need to use any external peripherals besides a floppy drive, you should get a real PC. Moreover SoftPC's graphics are currently limited to at best EGA. If you need VGA you need a real PC. Considering that SoftAT has a street price only slightly less than a new AT clone complete with its own small hard disk, floppy drive, and monitor, you're almost certainly better off buying a real PC if you need to run any but the most trivial DOS software. ======== SECURITY (4.0) ======== HOW DO I PREVENT PEOPLE FROM CHANGING THE CONTENTS OF FOLDERS IN A PUBLIC MAC LAB? (4.1) A first line of defense would be to use ResEdit, DiskTop, or a similar tool to set the invisible, locked, and nocopy (bozo) bits on the folders, applications, and documents you want to protect. This won't stop a knowledgeable or determined hacker, and protecting the system folder in this fashion may cause problems under System 7; but it will cure 90% of your random-user-moving-things-around problems. If you want to lock out more sophisticated users, a number of payware utilities are available that allow you to password protect individual folders. They include FolderBolt from Kent Marsh ($75 street) and Empower II from Magna ($155 street). The registered version of Art Schumer's MacPassword ($35 shareware) is also capable of this although the FTPable demo version is not. You might also consider Brian Bechtel's freeware LockDisk 1.0, a cdev that makes the boot disk read only. However this can cause problems with some applications that can't run from a read-only disk. HOW CAN I PASSWORD-PROTECT A MAC? (4.2) Dr. Ralph Martin's shareware Password 1.3 provides a minimal level of protection for your hard disk, but can be bypassed by the simple expedient of booting from an unprotected floppy. Art Schumer's shareware MacPassword cannot be bypassed that easily, but the demo version available by FTP expires after sixty days. Some hard disk formatters also offer optional password protection. Notable in this category is FWB's Hard Disk Toolkit, about $125 mail-order. A number of more powerful payware utilities are capable of this and a lot more though with great security comes great danger. The more secure a product is the more chance you have of accidentally locking your hard disk so tight that you yourself can't recover your data. Notable commercial products in this category are DiskLock from Fifth Generation ($127 street) and Empower I from Magna ($90 street). ====================================================== NO PARTICULAR PLACE TO GO (MISCELLANEOUS MISCELLANEA) (5.0) ====================================================== ARE THERE ANY GOOD BOOKS ABOUT THE MAC? (5.1) While there are a number of excellent books covering specific software packages, there are not many books that are generally useful to someone familiar with the net. The Mac is Not a TypeWriter by Robin Williams and The Macintosh Bible, by Arthur Naiman, Sharon Zardetto Aker and a cast of hundreds are two exceptions. Both are published by PeachPit Press and are available in finer and seedier bookstores everywhere. The Mac is Not a TypeWriter should be required reading for anyone using a Macintosh to produce printed matter. It teaches the differences between typing and typography and shows you how to avoid looking like a moron in print. The Macintosh Bible is a reference book that's surprisingly enjoyable reading. It's comprehensive enough to cover most questions that appear in this newsgroup including the not so frequent ones. It also includes lots of information you probably need but didn't know to ask. HOW CAN I TAKE A PICTURE OF THE SCREEN? (5.2) The Command-Shift-3 FKey that's built into all Macs will take a picture of the entire screen. This won't work while a menu is pulled down and always includes the cursor in the picture. In System 6 Command-Shift-3 only works with black and white monitors on compact Macs. The results are stored in a PICT file on the root level of your System disk. Nobu Toge's Flash-It, $15 shareware, will handle almost all your screen capture needs. It works in black and white and color under both System 6 and System 7, exports images to the clipboard or to PICT files, captures pictures when menus are down, and can capture either a user- selectable rectangle or the entire screen. Baseline Publishing's Exposure Pro ($78 street) covers all the basics and throws in a host of editing tools besides. Sebastian Software offers Image Grabber ($35 street) whose features include timed capture, capture of the entire screen, one window, or a particular rectangle, and scaling of the captured image. If you order Image Grabber please note the spelling. It's two words, spelled correctly. Apparently a grammatical product name is so unusual that three out of three mail-order companies were unable to find Image Grabber in their database until I spelled it out for them including the space between Image and Grabber. CAN I REPLACE THE "WELCOME TO MACINTOSH" BOX WITH A PICTURE? (5.3) First you need an application capable of saving documents in Startup Screen format such as the freeware XLateGraf or the shareware GIFConverter. Open the graphics file you want to turn into a startup screen and select Save As... from the File menu. Then select Startup Screen as the format to save into. Name the new document "StartupScreen" (no space between Startup and Screen, both S's capitalized) and put it in the System Folder. The next time the Mac starts up you should see the happy Mac, followed by the picture. HOW DO I USE A PICTURE FOR MY DESKTOP? (5.4) If you have a Macintosh with Color QuickDraw in ROM (Mac II and later machines) get the init DeskPict, available from the usual FTP sites. A slightly improved and less buggy version called DeskPicture is part of the payware Now Utilities. Users of compact Macs (Plus's, SE's, and Classics) can pick up BackDrop from sumex-aim instead. All of these will replace the normal Macintosh desktop pattern with a picture of your choosing saved in startup screen format. (See the previous question.) Before saving your picture in startup screen format be sure to convert it to the default application palette, or your Mac may display color combinations distorted enough to induce flashbacks to that Grateful Dead concert in 1976. WHAT IS AUTODOUBLER? MORE DISK SPACE? SPACESAVER? DISK DOUBLER? (5.5) Fifth Generation Systems' AutoDoubler is a transparent file compression utility that compresses most files on your hard disk and decompresses them automatically when they're opened so that your hard disk appears to be much larger than it really is. Ideally you won't know it's present once you've installed it. The consensus of the net seems to be that AutoDoubler is fast and safe. The only common, known conflicts are with GateKeeper, the Find File function in Microsoft Word 5.0, and A/UX. The latter problem has been fixed in Word 5.1. However, GateKeeper is pretty much incompatible with AutoDoubler 2.0. If you use AutoDoubler, use Disinfectant rather than GateKeeper. AutoDoubler is completely incompatible with A/UX. Don't use AutoDoubler on an A/UX formatted partition. DiskDoubler, also from Fifth Generation, is a cross between AutoDoubler and Compact Pro. Like AutoDoubler DiskDoubler can automatically decompress files when needed, but the decompression isn't nearly as transparent as AutoDoubler's. Like Compact Pro it only compresses when and what you tell it to compress and can make archives for transmission via floppy or modem. (Please don't use it for files you submit to the net though. Instead use the tighter and more standard StuffIt 3.0 format.) Alysis Software's More Disk Space is a competing product similar in functionality to AutoDoubler. As well as transparently compressing files More Disk Space can also make self-extracting and segmented archives for transmission via modem or floppy disk. More Disk Space has several unique features that make it more suitable for use on a network than competing products such as a freeware init that allows all Macs to use files previously compressed by More Disk Space as transparently as if More Disk Space itself were installed and the ability to create a "compression server" that can compress files for all Macs on the network on demand. Thus a network of several dozen Macs could use one $42 copy of More Disk Space. More Disk Space uses the fastest compressor/decompressor on the market, but MDS also saves substantially less space than the other products. StuffIt SpaceSaver from Aladdin Systems is the latest, cheapest ($35) entry into the file-level, transparent compression field. Unlike AutoDoubler and More Disk Space, StuffIt SpaceSaver decompresses onto disk rather than into RAM. This is a two-edged sword which improves compatibility with some programs but slows decompression and contributes to file fragmentation, especially on very full disks. StuffIt SpaceSaver has by far the most convenient interface of all the transparent compression packages. It's the only one-piece transparent compression utility that offers a choice of either individually selecting the files to be compressed or compressing almost everything on a disk automatically. It's also the only transparent compression utility that creates and decompresses net standard .sit files. SpaceSaver's only known major incompatibilities are with Norton Utilities' Directory Assistance II and with SuperATM. Symantec has promised to fix the former in the next upgrade to the Norton Utilities and a ResEdit fix is available on request from Aladdin. The incompatibility with SuperATM can be cured merely by renaming SpaceSaver ~SpaceSaver so it loads after SuperATM. Which transparent compression software to use depends mainly on your interface preference. For paranoids like myself who've seen one too many irreversibly corrupted archive to ever fully trust compression software, SpaceSaver's ability to individually choose which files to compress is an invaluable feature since it allows me to only compress files for which several backups exist. The combination of AutoDoubler and DiskDoubler can also act like this but costs more than three times as much. However if, unlike me, you do want everything on your disk compressed automatically, AutoDoubler's extra speed decompressing files and better performance on full disks makes it the obvious choice. HOW DO THEY COMPARE TO TIMESTWO, STACKER, AND eDISK? (5.6) Golden Triangle's TimesTwo is a unique hard disk driver backed by a misleading advertising campaign. Unlike the transparent compressors discussed in the previous section TimesTwo is not an init that hooks into the file system. Rather it is a hard disk driver vaguely similar in purpose to Drive7 or HardDisk Toolkit. After installing TimesTwo the Finder will report the disk as being twice the size it actually is, e.g. a forty megabyte disk will seem to be an eighty megabyte disk. TimesTwo then uses compression to try to fit eighty megabytes of data into the forty megabytes that's really there. If it can't compress well enough to fit the eighty megabytes of data it promises (and it generally can't), it creates a phantom file to take up the space it overestimated. All data written to the disk will be automatically compressed. This is the exact opposite of the marketdroid promises that TimesTwo works without compressing anything. In fact it compresses everything. File level compressors improve speed by excluding certain frequently accessed files like the desktop file, most things in the System Folder, and the hard disk data structures from compression. Since every file needs to be decompressed when read or written, a Mac with TimesTwo is noticeably slower than the same Mac with a non-compressed disk or even a Mac whose disk has been compressed with a file level compressor. As one Apple VAR put it, "installing TimesTwo is like dipping your drive in molasses." Using a file-level compressor on a disk already compressed by TimesTwo will gain little if any space and will probably cut your disk access speed in half again so you should use either TimesTwo or a file-level compressor, not both. All the transparent compression programs have had a number of bugs and incompatibilities in their initial releases, and TimesTwo is no exception. Unlike the other programs, however, there have been a number of reports that the first release of TimesTwo has caused data loss and even corruption of entire hard disks. It is as yet unknown whether these bugs are fixed in version 1.0.1. I recommend that you do not use TimesTwo at this time. Stac Electronics' Stacker and Alysis's eDisk are similar to TimesTwo. Since Stacker is added in addition to your current hard disk driver rather than in place of it, you don't need to give up your partitions or other features of your current formatter. Neither Stacker nor eDisk has yet been publicly released so their performance and reliability are unknown. WHERE DID MY ICONS GO? (5.7) Your icons have passed on to a better place, but with a little magic it's normally possible to resurrect them. Several utilities including Norton Utilities for the Mac and the freeware drag-and-drop utility Save-A-BNDL should retrieve your icons. Rebuilding the desktop (Question 6.3) should also restore your icons. .