Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Try a different port.
If you're using a USB mouse or keyboard with a USB hub, disconnect the device and
plug it into a different USB port on the hub. If the device works now, your USB port may be faulty.
Connect directly to the MacBook Air.
If you're using a USB mouse or keyboard and the device is attached
to a USB hub, disconnect it from the hub and connect it to the USB port on MacBook Air. If the device works
now, your USB hub might be wonky.
Try another device.
If you have a spare mouse or keyboard lying around, try connecting it to MacBook Air.
If it works, the original mouse or keyboard is broken.
Restart.
Rebooting MacBook Air might just solve the problem.
Your Display Is Garbled
If your display suddenly goes haywire, a number of things could be the problem, but the following four are the
most common:
It's a temporary glitch.
This is the usual cause of a wonky display, and you solve it by restarting MacBook
Air. Because you can't see the Mac desktop, the trackpad is no good to you, so you need to use the keyboard.
First, press Shift+ +Q to log out. If that doesn't work, press and hold the Control and keys and then press
the power button to force MacBook Air to shut down.
For an external display, there's a loose connection.
If MacBook Air is connected to an external display,
check the connection on the MacBook Air, on the monitor, and on both ends of the display adapter, if you're us-
ing one. If any connector is loose, plugging it in properly should fix the problem right away. If not, turn the
monitor off and then back on.
The display is using improper settings.
If your display somehow gets set to a resolution that it can't
handle, you see a distorted screen image. To solve this problem, restart MacBook Air in Safe Mode and click
System Preferences in the Dock. Click the Displays icon, and then click an item in the Resolutions list.
The display shows white on black instead of the usual black on white.
This is actually a feature of the
Mac's Accessibility preferences. You (or another user) may have turned it on accidentally. Click System Prefer-
ences in the Dock and click the Accessibility icon. Click Display and then deselect the Invert Colors check box.
The external display's driver software is corrupted.
In this case, you either need to reinstall the driver
software from the disc that came with the display or you need to download the driver from the display manufac-
turer's website and install it. In either case, you need to restart MacBook Air in Safe Mode.
Your MacBook Air SuperDrive Won't Work
The lack of an optical drive in the original MacBook Air was a scandalous omission at the time, with many pun-
dits seeing this as a critical flaw that would doom the new machine's prospects in the marketplace. Wrong!
We're now several generations into the era of the MacBook Air, and now nobody even
mentions
the lack of an
optical drive, much less grumbles about it. However, an optical drive is still an occasionally useful tool, and the
made-for-MacBook Air SuperDrive is an excellent choice. This section presents a couple fixes for some fortu-
nately rare SuperDrive woes.
SuperDrive won't accept a disc
When you insert a disc into your MacBook Air SuperDrive, it normally grabs the disc and seats it inside the
drive. MacBook Air then shows a desktop icon for the drive a few seconds later. However, you may find that
