Repair Permissions

One the most important things you can do, if you are a Mac owner/user, using OS X, (and assuming you have admin permissions, is to Repair Permissions every few weeks. You will need to do this more often under any of these circumstances:

• You install any new application or software
• You use Apple's Update to install anything new
• You just want to keep things running nicely

Since it doesn't hurt anything to do it, do it often. Little insignificant things get messed up along the way, and installations (even from Apple) can tweak some important things out of whack (and you want them in whack).

Find Disk Utility in Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Drag it to your Dock as a visual reminder to use it often.