Q I have recently replaced my old Mac with a new iMac. Every time that I start it up, I see the message: Insecure Startup Item Disabled. “/Library/StartupItems/Executor” has not been started because it does not have the proper security settings. How can I remove that?

A You are seeing this message because OS X is now much more finicky about Startup Items and other low-level software. It is thus taking exception to the file at that location, and automatically deciding not to start it.

Sometimes this is because the file has insecure permission settings, which can usually be corrected by repairing permissions.

In this particular case, Executor is a venerable Classic Mac emulator system that allowed you to run old 68K Mac software on Intel Macs, and was last maintained in 2005. It is completely incompatible with modern versions of OS X, and will not work. The chances are that it came across when you migrated files from your old Mac, and the best thing is to remove it from the StartupItems folder. The warnings should then disappear.

Other troublesome startup items may need updating to work properly with Lion and later, but Executor is sadly long past that.

Updated from the original, which was first published in MacUser volume 28 issue 06, 2012.