New Mac user - a few questions

[raygungirl]

Hey guys, I just got my first Mac earlier this evening (iMac) and I'm loving it so far. I just had some questions that I hoped one of you might be able to help me answer if you're bored.

I already got my iMac to completely freeze up (minus the cursor) by trying to delete 400 "Thumbs.db" files off my external hard drive in one go. The Mac may have been trying to read from the hard drive at the time; I'd just migrated all my music into iTunes. But I thought it was done reading from the HDD, because earlier it gave me a warning message, and this time it didn't. It simply said it was preparing the files for deleting, and then the Mac froze.

I tried to Force Quit, but nothing worked and I had to hard restart. Should I be concerned to have a problem with my Mac so soon, or was I asking for it to crash by deleting so much junk?

That leads me to my next question: I ordered AppleCare when I bought my iMac (online store), but there was nothing that said AppleCare anywhere in my iMac box. I double-checked the order on the Apple online store and we were charged for it, so I should have it. I thought something might be tucked in under my iWork disc, but there was nothing there.

I'm just wondering, am I looking for a phantom thing? Is the proof of my AppleCare simply a registration number next to my account name in Apple's computers, or is there physical proof that I bought AppleCare? Might it just be on its way in another shipment? I'm a bit confused and want to make sure I'm not missing something. I'm just not quite sure what to look for or where.

Thanks in advance for your help. I've been lurking here for a while and learned all sorts of stuff about Mac's in the weeks leading up to this purchase. It's made the transition super easy so far.

 

[xparaparafreakx]

They register you computer for applecare already. Use this to check if you have applecare.

https://selfsolve.apple.com/GetWarranty.do

For the Thumbs.db, just leave them alone. They do not do anything.

 

[JediMeister]

It took me a couple of weeks to get the material for the AppleCare I bought simultaneously with my Mac. You should receive a Techtools Deluxe diagnostics disc, along with a Getting Started booklet and a certificate listing the agreement number, the product description, serial number, and the coverage end date. If you don't receive it in that expected timeframe, you can contact AppleCare phone support and request another proof of coverage letter be sent to your address.

 

[raygungirl]

It took me a couple of weeks to get the material for the AppleCare I bought simultaneously with my Mac. You should receive a Techtools Deluxe diagnostics disc, along with a Getting Started booklet and a certificate listing the agreement number, the product description, serial number, and the coverage end date. If you don't receive it in that expected timeframe, you can contact AppleCare phone support and request another proof of coverage letter be sent to your address.

Awesome, thank you.

They register you computer for applecare already. Use this to check if you have applecare.

https://selfsolve.apple.com/GetWarranty.do

For the Thumbs.db, just leave them alone. They do not do anything.

I know the Thumbs.db don't do anything, I just wanted to get rid of them because I'm anal and they were bugging me. Thanks for that link, I bookmarked it.

 

[shwc]

My guess is your computer was not frozen. Rather, it was very busy indexing your external hard drive (making the drive searchable by spotlight). Your internal hard drive was also likely being indexed—being as you set up your mac only hours ago. Indexing a hard drive can take several hours and consume 80-100% of your cpu cycles. Let your computer do its thing for a few hours. The good news is that the heavy indexing happens only first time. After the initial indexing, only the changes are taken into account. Changes to the hard drive are quickly indexed.

By the way, you can tell spotlight not to index a specific hard drive (System preferences>spotlight>privacy).

 

[raygungirl]

My guess is your computer was not frozen. Rather, it was very busy indexing your external hard drive (making the drive searchable by spotlight). Your internal hard drive was also likely being indexed—being as you set up your mac only hours ago. Indexing a hard drive can take several hours and consume 80-100% of your cpu cycles. Let your computer do its thing for a few hours. The good news is that the heavy indexing happens only first time. After the initial indexing, only the changes are taken into account. Changes to the hard drive are quickly indexed.

By the way, you can tell spotlight not to index a specific hard drive (System preferences>spotlight>privacy).

Interesting, thanks. I saw that Spotlight wasn't immediately ready when I turned on the Mac, so I let it do its thing for a while and then the little dot on the magnifying glass icon went away and it seemed to be done. I didn't think to do the same with the hard drive, though, cause I didn't realize at first it would be indexed, too. (I was so impressed when I did a search in finder for all images and saw the stuff on my external hard drive, even though I hadn't copied it over yet. Awesome!)

I did notice later that the trash had some of those .db files I tried to delete, but not all of them. So maybe if I'd waited longer it would have unfroze, but I was impatient, I guess.