When troubleshooting, performing maintenance, or otherwise starting up your Mac OSX computer in an abnormal fashion, there are a few keyboard shortcuts that you may or may not know about that can help you. Below is a list of them with an explanation of what they do:
- X = Force Mac OS X startup
- Option = Brings up a screen with startup volume choices (slow process, may take a while)
- Option+Command+Shift+Delete = Bypass primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume (such as a CD or external disk)
- C = Start up from a CD that has a system folder
- N = Attempt to start up from a compatible network server (NetBoot)
- T = Start up in FireWire Target Disk mode (very handy for plugging your Mac into another as an external hard drive)
- Shift = start up in Safe Boot mode and temporarily disable login items and non-essential kernel extension files (Mac OS X 10.2 and later)
- Command+V = Start up in Verbose mode.
- Command+S = Start up in Single-User mode
- Command+Option+p+r = Zap PRAM. Hold down until second chime.
- Command+Option+n+v = Clear NV RAM. Similar to reset-all in Open Firmware.
- Command+Option+o+f = Boot into open firmware
- Hold mouse button down = Force eject a CD/DVD
It took me a while to figure out why all the active controls were being highlighted. A visit to OSX System Preferences>Keyboard and Mouse Preferences>Keyboard Shortcuts got me on the right track. As seen in the graphic above, you have two options. The first option titled Text boxes and lists only seems like the obvious choice to select if you only want to tab to text input fields. However, my results were just the opposite, every time I hit tab the buttons in the browser bar and on the page were highlighted. By selecting the second option, All controls, I got what I wanted which was just tabbing to text fields. Perhaps I have a ghost in the system, but if you’re having the same problem, you may want to take a look at this workaround.
