Tutorials/Minecraft help FAQ

General Information
Before anyone can help you in the IRC channel, please make sure that the following has been performed so that we can eliminate these as possibilities. You would be surprised how many problems these simple suggestions fix.
 * Make sure you machine meets the specifications in this forum post.
 * Make sure you are running the latest version of Java. On Linux, OpenJDK works as well but is not supported by Mojang.
 * If you are experiencing weird behavior and are using the most recent Java, try Reinstalling Minecraft (see below)
 * Some graphical issues may be related to old or outdated graphical drivers, make sure these are up to date
 * Make sure that your OS in general is up to date.
 * Windows: Windows Update
 * Mac OS X: Software Update
 * Ubuntu Linux: Update Manager
 * Debian based Linux distributions: apt-get update;apt-get upgrade
 * RedHat based Linux distributions: yum update

If you still have issues after this point, and none of the basic answers below can solve your problem, the make sure you do the following:
 * If the game is crashing, copy and paste the crash log into Pastebin and copy the link into the channel with a description of your problem.
 * Please be patient, the people the help in this channel are volunteering their expertise. Also all help in the channel is considered "best effort"

Reinstalling Minecraft
One of the common ways to fix an ailing Minecraft installation of various bugs is to simply re-install it. Removing the launcher itself (the file you downloaded) however will not remove Minecraft. The steps below should work for most people.

Important step: Be sure to do a forced update if you still have issues.

Windows

 * 1) Navigate to your Application Data Folder: %AppData%
 * 2) Double Click the .minecraft folder
 * 3) Copy out the saves folder to a different location
 * 4) Go back one directory (to where you can see .minecraft)
 * 5) Drag the .minecraft folder into the trash
 * 6) Start the Minecraft.exe file to re-download Minecraft
 * 7) Close Minecraft when you reach the title screen
 * 8) Copy the saves folder back into the new .minecraft folder.  You can safely overwrite any data that's currently in this folder

Linux

 * 1) Open a terminal
 * 2) Copy and Paste the following into the terminal to delete the current minecraft installation and retain the current saved worlds: mv ~/.minecraft/saves /tmp/mc-save-tmp;rm -rf ~/.minecraft/*;mv /tmp/mc-save-tmp ~/.minecraft
 * 3) Start Minecraft like you normally would.  Your saves should be intact and the Minecraft client will re-download itself for you.

Mac OSX

 * 1) Open a Finder window
 * 2) Click the Go Menu item and Click Go to Folder
 * 3) Type ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft into the text field and click Go
 * 4) Drag the saves folder to your desktop
 * 5) Drag everything else in the minecraft folder to the trash
 * 6) Drag the saves folder back into the minecraft folder
 * 7) Close the Finder window and launch the Minecraft App just like you would normally.

Forced Updates
If you are having issues after a reinstall, or are having other client issues, you can try doing a forced update.
 * 1) Open the Minecraft client
 * 2) Click on options (directly above Login)
 * 3) Click on "Force Update!"
 * 4) Click on "Done"
 * 5) Log in to the game, and the client will re-download the game files

Reinstalling/Updating Java

 * If Minecraft is not working due to an issue with Java, your Java install may be corrupt and/or out of date. To remedy a corrupt install, begin by uninstalling Java. After the uninstall is complete, you can then try reinstalling.
 * For Windows users, it's recommended to use an uninstaller program, such as Revo Uninstaller (free) to remove Java. Revo will search in-depth for all things Java, and remove the files.
 * To re-download/update Java, visit Java's download page here. Download the correct version for your machine, based on what operating system you have.

Updating video drivers ("Bad video card drivers!".. etcetera)

 * If Minecraft has poor performance, has graphics that are distorted, or is simply not working, it's possible that you need a driver or an updated driver installed.
 * Some graphics cards only accept drivers from the manufacturer of the computer (i.e Dell, HP, Toshiba). Visit the support site of the company that affects you, if that ends up being the case for you.
 * Windows Update is not a good method for updating video drivers. If a generic driver is installed, you should remove it before installing a new driver. Create a system restore point, or perform a driver rollback if you experience issues after installing a new driver.

NVIDIA Drivers

 * Visit here using Internet Explorer or Firefox to automatically detect video driver updates for NVIDIA graphics chips. If you cannot use the auto detection method, visit this link for manual driver downloads.
 * Integrated video cards are a hit or miss.

ATI/AMD Drivers

 * Visit here for ATI/AMD drivers. There is currently no auto detection application.
 * Integrated video cards are a hit or miss.

Intel

 * Visit here to automatically detect video driver updates for Intel graphics chips. If you cannot use the auto detection method, visit this link for manual driver downloads.
 * All of Intel's video cards are integrated. Expect varying rates of success.

Setting up a Server on Windows/Linux/OSX
Go here for information on setting up a server.

Installing Client on Ubuntu Linux
Download this script and run the following commands in a terminal: chmod 755 ~/Downloads/minecraft_installer.sh sudo ~/Downloads/minecraft_installer.sh --install-client

Syncing Your Single Player Worlds Across Multiple Machines
All of your single-player worlds for Alpha is stored in the saves folder within .minecraft. The folders are World1, World2, World3, etc. There are several ways you can backup/archive or copy worlds across different machines.

Manual Syncing
If you want to simply manually back them up for later use, you can either copy out the whole saves folder, or just the world folder that  you want to backup. If you want to move the order to the worlds in the saved menu, just change the number at the end of the world folder name  to adjust the order as you would like.

Automatic Syncing via Dropbox
If you want all world saves to automatically synced and backed up across multiple systems (and revision controlled), The easiest way to do this would be to use Dropbox. First thing you need to do is sign up for an account on Dropbox.com and download the client on all of your systems.

Linking Minecraft to Dropbox on Linux
This process will link the saves folder for minecraft into Dropbox for Linux. We will be assuming that you have setup Dropbox to use the default folder (HOME/Dropbox) for your client.


 * 1) Close Minecraft
 * 2) Open a terminal
 * 3) Copy and paste the following into your terminal: mv ~/.minecraft/saves ~/Dropbox/Minecraft;ln -s $HOME/Dropbox/Minecraft $HOME/.minecraft/saves
 * 4) Close the terminal

Linking Minecraft to Dropbox on Mac OSX
This process will link the saves folder for minecraft into Dropbox for Mac OSX. For you Mac users, I'm sorry there isn't a more "Mac-Friendly" way of handling this, however we are taking advantage of some of the UNIX underpinnings of the OS. We will be assuming that you have setup Dropbox to use the default folder (HOME/Dropbox) for your client.
 * 1) Close Minecraft
 * 2) Open a terminal
 * 3) Copy and paste the following into your terminal: mv ~/Library/"Application Support"/minecraft/saves ~/Dropbox/Minecraft;ln -s $HOME/Dropbox/Minecraft $HOME/Library/"Application Support"/minecraft/saves
 * 4) Close the terminal

Linking Minecraft to Dropbox on Windows Vista & 7
This process will link the saves folder for minecraft into Dropbox for Windows Vista and 7. We will be using symbolic links so we will need to get under the hood a little bit. We will be assuming that you have setup Dropbox to use the default folder (%HomePath%\Dropbox) for your client.
 * 1) Close Minecraft
 * 2) Open a new Explorer window
 * 3) Go to %AppData%\.minecraft
 * 4) Open a second Explorer window with the My Dropbox folder open
 * 5) Move the saves Folder in the .minecraft window to the My Dropbox window
 * 6) Rename the saves Folder to Minecraft
 * 7) Close both windows
 * 8) Go to Start → Run and type CMD and hit enter
 * 9) Type the following: mklink /d  %AppData%\.minecraft\saves %HomePath%\Dropbox\Minecraft
 * 10) Close the Command Prompt and enjoy Minecraft on multiple PCs

Linking Minecraft to Dropbox on Windows 2000 and XP
This process will link the saves folder for minecraft into Dropbox for  Windows 2000 and XP. We will be using the Windows equivalent of symbolic links so we will need to get under the hood a little bit. We will be assuming that you have setup Dropbox to use the default folder (%HomePath%\My Documents\Dropbox) for your client.
 * 1) Close Minecraft
 * 2) Download Junction from Microsoft's site and install it.
 * 3) Open a new Explorer window
 * 4) Go to %AppData%\.minecraft
 * 5) Open a second Explorer window with the Dropbox folder open
 * 6) Move the saves Folder in the .minecraft window to the Dropbox window
 * 7) Rename the saves Folder to Minecraft
 * 8) Close both windows
 * 9) Go to Start → Run and enter CMD and hit return.
 * 10) Type the following: junction -d %AppData%\.minecraft\saves "%HomePath%\My Documents\Dropbox\Minecraft"
 * 11) Close the Command Prompt