Boot You Bastard

Welcome to Boot, You Bastard!™ v. 1.0fc1. What Is It? Boot, You Bastard!™ is a utility application written in AppleScript that is designed to quickly fix some problems that seem to be prevalent in OS8 and OS8.1 for the Macintosh. Specifically, it will help eliminate wacky behavior by the Finder and/or System files that appears to result from corruption on a fairly regular basis. When Do I Need To Run Boot, You Bastard!™? You may need to run Boot, You Bastard!™ when you encounter any of the following behaviors: 1. On booting up with non-Apple extensions loaded, the Finder begins cycling on and off before all of your drives are mounted on the desktop. 2. On shutdown or restart, the Finder begins cycling on and off and you may have to force a restart from the keyboard. 3. Finder operations become inexplicably slow. 4. Applications start to crash as they load, usually just as the menu bars are being drawn. 5. Other odd things happen and you suspect that your System or Finder files may be damaged (N.B.: Prior to OS8, it was easy to get a clue about this by looking at the modification dates of these files. With OS8, it's become apparent that modification dates do not reliably update and the OS8.1 Finder can be horribly mangled, yet still claim to be untouched since it's creation on Dec 16, 1997). The strange part is that the machine will generally boot okay with extensions turned off or with only Apple extensions turned on. While this generally suggests problems with third-party extensions, replacing them doesn't help and it is the Finder and/or System files that actually have to be replaced to achieve a fix. What Do I Need To Run Boot, You Bastard!™? Boot, You Bastard!™ is intended to run under OS8 or later and requires that AppleScript be loaded. It is based 100% on the idea that you have a problem with your normal boot drive and have a mounted alternate disk of some kind that has good copies of the Finder and System files for the same system version. If you do not have a more or less virgin copy of your system software on an alternate disk, you will regret it whether you care to use Boot, You Bastard!™ or not, so bite the bullet and create one from the CD installer. To run Boot, You Bastard!™, start up from the troubled boot drive with the "OS8[8.1] All" extensions set selected in the Extensions Manager Control Panel. Make sure that the drive with your alternate system software is mounted on the desktop, then double click the Boot, You Bastard!™ application icon. You will be prompted to select the System Folder of the alternate drive that contains the fresh copies of the Finder and System files that you want to use to replace the busted ones. After you've told Boot, You Bastard!™ where to look for these, it will continue execution and will inform you when it's done (generally, 30-60 seconds later). You then need to restart in order to load the new software and, ideally, see your Mac return to -1…