In response to my earlier post about kernel panic woes John Oswald wrote:

Do yourself a favor: get Norton's SystemWorks 2 and Disk Warrior. First install Disk Warrior on a drive and make a copy of the application itself. Take the Norton CD to a Mac with Toast and CD burner. Make a Toast image of Norton. Now double-lick the image and select mount. Open the mounted image and toss Spring Cleaning and Retrospect onto it (you'll still have them on the original disk). Next, copy Disk Warrior onto the disk and put Disk First Aid 8.6.1 on there as well. Drag the mounted disk to the Trash, double-click the icon again and burn. I know this sounds like a little bit of trouble, but after what you just did this is a can of corn. I work on Macs every day and have only had one not function after using a combo of:

1. Disk Warrior
2. Disk First Aid
3. Norton Disk Doctor
4. Speed Disk

Use them in that order. In fact run them once a month and you probably won't ever see a major on your mac for a long time. One thing: I never install Norton on any of my drives. I only run it from the CD.

There you have it. A complete regime for keeping your Mac happy.Discuss