“Macs are nice computers, but they’re not without their issues that can spur up at random times,” Anthony Bouchard writes for iDowloadBlog. “Fortunately, troubleshooting problems on a Mac isn’t incredibly difficult and there are tons of simple steps you can take as a Mac user before calling AppleCare for support.”
“One of the easiest troubleshooting steps is resetting your Mac’s NVRAM, a step which can solve an array of problems,” Bouchard writes. “Your Mac’s NVRAM (non-volatile random access memory) is a type of non-volatile memory, which means that even when power is no longer being supplied to it, it can retain its memory contents. This is different from volatile memory, which loses all of its memory contents whenever the power supply is cut off from it.”
“NVRAM is present on all Intel-based Macs and is responsible for storing information related to a variety of software functions on your Mac that are essential to the user experience in the OS X operating system,” Bouchard writes. “f you are experiencing any issues with your system’s speaker volume, screen resolution, system time, or start-up disk, and there doesn’t appear to be any simple way of fixing the issues from OS X, you may be due for resetting the NVRAM, as it’s possible it’s not doing its job properly due to memory corruption.”
How to reset your Mac’s NVRAM and what happens when you do here.
Before you reset the PRAM you might want to repair permissions.
No longer an option in Disk Utility on El Capitan!
They are repaired on reboot.
Who boots a Mac. Turn it on and let her run. You have automatic reboots on certain updates.
Use Onyx
Actually, it is an option. It just isn’t called “Repair Disk Permissions” any longer. By running Disk First Aid, it runs through a disk permission fix routine. Even better, boot into recovery mode, launch Disk Utility, and run Disk First Aid. You’ll be able to solve more issues then if you run Disk Utility just as an application in regular boot while signed in as your OS X user.