stopping Classic from starting

[meancode]

Hi,

I am about to install OS X on our eMacs and iMacs used for Student Publications. I am sure I am going to have my share of "how do i" questions.

first one is how do i prevent classic from starting in OS X. is there some sort of AppleScript to do this? or some freeware? thanks.

[yellow]

Easiest way.. don't install it. If you don't think you need it you don't have to have it. If you think you will need it but don't want them to start it, try setting the permissions on the System Folder to not allow others to read/write/execute. Then they won't be able to start Classic because they won't have the proper permissions.

[lerkfish]

or, is meancode's request even simpler? Do you just mean you don't want it to load at startup?
It doesn't by default. It usually only loads when a classic app is launched.
Therefore, if you are still going to want classic apps available for use, you will probably WANT it launch at startup so that its already available and you don't have to wait when first opening various apps.

If you don't intend on using any classic apps, you can just not install classic, or restrict permissions on the classic apps or don't install them. Because if you HAVE classic apps and they try to launch them, you've lost time to dialogs looking and failing to access classic. In other words, classic is not even going to launch unless you are trying to utilize classic apps.
But it seems to me that if you WANT or need the users to use classic apps at some point, you'd want classic to launch at startup.

to do that:
system prefs/classic/ and check "launch at startup"

[Phil St. Romain]

Maybe even simpler response (just to be sure this base is covered) is to go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Classic and be sure the "Start Classic when you log in" box is unchecked. . . just completing the idea lerk shared.

[meancode]

wow got the entire gang here. hya fellas. here is the sitiation:

quark has not yet released the lab pack for xpress 6. i just called them and the lady i talked to said maybe august. so i do need os 9 on the drives.

im not talking about not having it start on startup, controlled in the classic system pref pane.

im talking about changing the permisisions so it wont start, and i think yellow hit that on the head.

i dont want them running classic. these are journalists that are new to OS X, and the last thing i need to do is complicate their lives any more :p

i just yesterday ordered 12 eMac's 800 Mhz G4 with 512 MB RAM. they will come with OS 9 and OS X on them, the one problem is our University IT department likes to put U. images on all machines they get. This is really annoying as they are always missing something on these images. This gives me the destinct pleasure of whiping them and reinstalling the OS's.

the existing iMacs we have i am doing the same thing to, whiping and installing both 9 and X. we are getting rid of all the beige boxes! those being 7300/200's and beige G3/233 desktops.

the nice thing i have learned about installing an entire lab is Carbon Copy Cloner is your friend.

but to get back to the topic at hand I just want to force them to reboot into OS 9 if they want to use it, in the most user friendly way possable.

[lerkfish]

well, that explains your situation a bit more completely, but I still have a few questions:
why, in order to SAVE confusion, you're wanting them to reboot to 9 every time they have to use quark? Quark runs fine in classic, as far as I can tell. or, let me turn the question around, is there some reason you need to have them use OSX at all, if you're saying they're more familiar with 9? Just don't give them an OSX login. Make them work in 9 all the time. Do you have apps that are only in OSX? This is really confusing. It almost seems like you'd want to avoid having them use OSX, if you're being that restrictive and concerned about their learning curve.

or, I could just be confused in general. If yellow's suggestion works for you, go for it.
I just don't see how having them constantly reboot makes things any easier for you.

[meancode]

oh, heh. no.

they are not gonna be rebooting to use quark. we will be using quark 4 in os 9 till we get the lab pack for 6, when we do that we will also be getting the updates to photoshop, illustrator etc, and moving to X completely. im just thinking ahead and planning things right now. i have a iMac G4 here that i am using as my "default" install. once i get it set i can image the all the others.

i dont want documents opening in Classic. and if they try and open a classic app i dont want that opening classic. when we switch to OS X there will be no reason to use OS 9, all the software needed will be in X. but that does not stop people from doing crazy things, as i am sure u r well aware.

heh sorry for the confusion. i dont want to have them constantly rebooting at all. i just dont want them running classic when it is uneeded. and if they see the dialog boxes about starting classic mode etc, they are gonna do one thing, and that is scream bloody murder to me "what the hell is this." i am just thinking ahead.

yes we could stay in OS 9, but it would be nice to move everything to OS X. all the new machines now are OS X only and we plan to upgrade the key yearbook and Unigraphics sometime in the future. and Unigraphics upgrades will be G5's. Im looking ahead to having the entirety of Student Publications running in OS X. i, for one, am getting tired of supporting OS 9.

it was suggested, and it would be nice, to not even have to install OS 9 on these machines. but at this point that is not an option, its a quark (:p) in the plan.

[lerkfish]

ok, a little clearer.

However, it still seems to me it only takes one minute to tell students that classic documents will open in classic. Once classic launches, there's no perceptive difference in working in the emulated environment.
True, you try to idiotproof things as much as possible, but it seems the hoops you're trying to jump through are more convoluted than simply telling new students: classic documents will open classic apps.

Of course, I tend to think MORE education is in the long run easier on you than keeping people in the dark and trying to corrall them in a certain direction. but that's a philosophical difference.

and, you're only doing this for Quark? If you're investing all this capital in new hardware, why not use Indesign which can open legacy quark documents and avoid the problem altogether?
Or, just accept that the quark situation is temporary and make temporary concessions.


sorry about my confusion.

[meancode]

ha ha. thats funny. indesign. all new ball of wax there! we rely on software from a company called Baseview, like a lot of newspapers do. we would have to purchase all new software that worked with indesign, which would be a rather substantian amount of money, even considering what we will have invested in 13 computers and edu upgrades on existing software.

also educating the students on indesign would be a fate worse then death. some of them already have used OS X, and educating the rest on OS X will be a lot easier then switching publishing systems.

thats not to say that we have't bounced around the idea to use indesign. but we use quark for all our publications, and the one that would suffer the most going to indesign would be the paper, as it is daily. i dont see us switching to an indesign workflow anytime soon. Unigraphics now uses indesign but still uses quark for projects. id say their split is about 50/50 now indesign/quark.

i think we are beating a dead horse with this classic and os 9 issue, but yea. lets just leave it at that. i dont want them to open the classic enviroment. i dont want to explain to them the classic enviroment vs. booting into OS 9. and there will be no documents need OS 9 to be opened. i just remember from experience when i still have OS 9 on my TiBook that OS X would launch classic even though the file could be opened in OS X.

[meancode]

in related news i found some apple scripts here (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20020201002705542&query=stop+classic) (imagine that) but this first script that set the permissions does not seem to work in 10.2 like it did in 10.1 when i remember using this script last. i never get the "classic is disabled" option in the conditional.

[mervTormel]

yeah, i was just going to suggest disabling the launch of /System/Library/CoreServices/Classic Startup.app

seems easiest

[rusto]

Maybe just make a Stuffit archive out of it.