This can be particularly troublesome when you realize that you've recently been installing some new software and it updated some system files to give special functionality to its application. Screen savers, desktop background utilities, sound utilities, CD-ROM and hard disk drive utilities... in short, many of the bells and whistles that make your Mac so much fun to use can lead to just these sorts of potential problems.

To make things worse, it's not your screen saver that crashed, but your word processor, or spreadsheet, or financial manager, or favorite game... applications that worked perfectly the last time you used them. You know you've upgraded a few things over the past few months, but can't remember the specifics. You may even have only updated the System software from say, 7.5.1 to 7.5.3 to 7.5.5. System software is supposed to be stable, isn't it? But which of those bells and whistles you like so much might not be behaving so well with the upgraded System software?

Solving this sort of problem, running down the software files that are conflicting with one another, can be extremely tedious. You can always turn to a professional and pay them $50/hour to fix your machine (I'm game!). But there's a cheaper way, one that automates the check of your machine (and one that the "specialist" will probably use to fix it anyway!)... Conflict Catcher 3.

This little gem is indispensable and a "must have" for every Mac user. I've been using Conflict Catcher's various versions for years, and wouldn't dream of starting my Mac without it.

Conflict Catcher 3 is a startup manager that controls and records all of your startup Extensions, Control Panels, and Fonts (it actually checks for corrupt fonts), and allows you to create a name for each different startup set you use. So, if you only have eight megabytes of RAM (memory) and need to startup with one set of files to maximize your Mac's memory to run CD-ROM games one time, or perhaps a different set to configure your Mac for Internet use during a different work session, or perhaps a third for day-to-day word processing and financial management programs, Conflict Catcher's invaluable.

Yes, Apple does include an Extensions Manager with System 7.5. And it does allow you to create startup sets, just as Conflict Catcher 3 does. But it DOES NOT automate any diagnosis of the conflicts that will crop up. It merely gives you a means more convenient than opening the System Folder's Extensions Folder, or Control Panels Folder, and manually moving the files one at a time to a "(Disabled)" Folder, and then restarting the machine to see if it worked.

So, how does Conflict Catcher 3 work? After you install it, every time you start up your Mac it controls the loading process, including the order the files are loaded (the Mac loads files alphabetically by default). If your Mac crashes during startup, Conflict Catcher 3 will tell you exactly which startup file caused the crash, and ask if you want to disable the file that was loading during the crash, or whether you'd like to conduct a Conflict Test. This consists of a serious of restarts with different configurations of startup files to see what's necessary to get your Mac to startup cleanly. Since Conflict Catcher 3 is keeping track of the files being loaded each time, and their order, you don't have to. Once the Mac makes it all the way to the desktop, you go about your business.

If the crash occurs after you've normally started, right out of the blue, Conflict Catcher 3 can still help you. But you must note what you were doing when the crash occurred. Were you printing? Had you just selected a particular font? Were you attempting to reconfigure your screen saver? Whatever...but you must be able to recreate the crash consistently, or Conflict Catcher 3 may not be able to help you.

Once you know what you were doing that crashed the Mac, you're home free, because you'll be rebooting (albeit involuntarily) immediately. As soon as you hear the startup chimes, hold down your space bar on the keyboard. Conflict Catcher 3 will interrupt the startup process and give you the opportunity to switch to a different startup set, change the load order of startup files, group files into subsets that must always load together (or must NEVER load together), or to run a Conflict Test. After selecting Conflict Test, Conflict Catcher will ask you to describe the problem, which it will record with the ultimate solution for later review, should the problem crop up later on another machine. It will also ask you to guess which files might be involved in the conflict. This can be very useful, because it helps Conflict Catcher 3 to reduce the number of restarts that may be necessary to isolate the problem. If you just installed a modem, those strange new icons loading at startup have the highest likelihood of being in conflict with some previously running startup files. Conflict Catcher will then ask you if there are any files that MUST be loaded during each test (e.g., ordinary System Files, or external device drivers, or any other files you REALLY depend on and insist on using) and begin a series of restarts with different combinations of startup files.

If all goes well and you make it to the desktop normally, you will then try to recreate the problem that previously crashed your machine. If you can't crash it, you can go about whatever you want to do, and shutdown as normally, or restart and continue the Conflict Test. It's your call. Conflict Catcher 3 will remember the test was going on, and continue setting different startup configurations each time you restart the machine until the problem is resolved. But assuming you want to solve the problem immediately, and not sometime next month when you've forgotten all the useful relevant details, you'll want to immediately restart the Mac and continue the test.

When the Mac next starts up, Conflict Catcher 3 will interrupt the startup process and ask if the problem occurred during your last work session. You answer either "Yes, the Mac crashed you dummy, why do you think I'm sitting here!!!" or, "No, everything went normally." Depending on your response, Conflict Catcher 3 will decide whether to include files in the last configuration in a future test, or eliminate them as part of the problem. It will then select the next test configuration, and restart the Mac.

This cycle continues until all possible combinations of startup files have been tested, and you've checked to see if the problem occurred during each startup cycle. When no additional startup configurations remain, Conflict Catcher 3 will give you the results of the testing and ask what you'd like to keep using, what you want to give up, or if you'd rather do nothing at all and live with the resolved conflict (remembering yourself, of course, to avoid those processes that might lead to future crashes).

You could do all of this manually, of course, but tracking all the tested combinations and whether they worked or not might drive you batty, not to mention all the paper you'd use up deciding what to test each restart. So it all comes down to this. As you use your Mac and install new software over time, sooner or later you're going to crash your system because of some software conflict. You can (1) do nothing and live with it, (2) be really aggressive and pull out the notepad, a pencil sharpener, and begin moving files manually from the active Extensions and Control Panel Folders to their Extensions (Disabled) and Control Panels (Disabled) counterparts in different combinations until you solve the problem, (3) semi-automate by using Apple's Extensions Manager and let it move the files itself to their "disabled" folders (after you manually decide which files to have Extensions Manager move each startup cycle), or (4) invest $69 in Conflict Catcher 3 and get some sleep. You decide... - Dave Marsh