Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with leopard

Sharing Is Caring?

murtagh — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:54:25 -0800

Sharing a printer between an iMac (with printer driver installed) and a Windows laptop without installing any drivers on the laptop: can it be done? I have an iMac running OS X Leopard. My sister is using her work laptop. Unfortunately, her company has disallowed (blocked) installation of any new software on the laptop, which includes printer drivers. We need to share the printer between the iMac and the laptop. The iMac, to which the printer is connected, has the printer drivers installed.

Can the printer be shared between the iMac and the laptop without installing any drivers on the laptop?

The printer is a Canon Pixma MP145.

Please tell me this is possible (or any possible alternatives). Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Formatting Differences in MS Word on Windows vs Mac

spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:35:47 -0800

How consistent is MS Office between Windows and OSX? Will using MS Office on my Mac solve this formatting problem I'm having? I'm have a MacBook Pro running Leopard,and I've been using Open Office to write my papers. It's great. I love Open Office (and love that it's free). When I need to turn something in, I just save it in PDF format, e-mail it to myself, then go to a computer lab, check my e-mail, and print off the PDF document. Perfect.

The problem is that I have a professor who needs some documents turned in via e-mail, and they use MS Word. I can save an Open Office document as a Word file (.doc or .docx), and for plain text formatting that's fine, but as soon as an outline or numbered list is created, things look crazy. It seems fine when I save it in Open Office, and it's fine when I then open that document using Open Office, but if the document is opened with MS Word, the formatting is horrible.

I can buy the MS Office suite for Mac at school using my student discount (it's around $35 I think). If I install that, and use Word to create these documents, will they appear the same when my professor opens them using Word, on her Windows computer?

If there will still be differences then I'll skip the $35 and just keep going to the computer lab to tweak things.

If I save a document in MS Word on a Mac and send it to a person using MS Word on a PC, are there formatting differences?

How do I clean up Spotlight search results

jeffreyclong — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:43:47 -0800

How do I clean up search results in Mac OS X Spotlight Shell scripts, Objective C source files, html document files, c header source files all pollute my search results in Spotlight. Is there any way to tell spotlight to stop giving me those results?

I'm writing a terrible novel and it would be a huge loss if it disappeared

tylerfulltilt — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:31:48 -0800

Help me come up with some sort of automated way of sending a file to myself in gmail. Writing a novel. Paranoid about losing it. Currently backing it up to two different ipods and a thumb drive after each writing session, in addition to saving it on the laptop drive.

I'm also sending the file to myself in gmail after each session. However, this process gets annoying. Is there any way to create some sort of script or macro or something that I can click with one button to automatically open safari, navigate to my gmail account, fill in the fields, attach the file and and send it to myself?

If I'm asking for something ridiculous feel free to say so.
Using an iBook g4 with leopard installed.

How do I eject the Snow Leopard install DVD on a Mac Mini?

keijo — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:42:54 -0800

How do I eject the Snow Leopard install DVD on a Mac Mini? I tried to install Snow Leopard on an older Mac Mini but foolishly did not realise that it required 1GB of memory. The install program informs me of this and then gives options to either "Restore From Backup" or "Restart". There is no time machine backup and if I restart it boots again (and again) from the install disc.

I have tried rebooting with holding down the eject button on the keyboard or the left mouse button to no avail. Thanks for any help in getting the big cat out.

upgraded to snow leopard, or should that be slow leopard?

nunoidia — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:19:18 -0800

Help! I upgraded to snow leopard and now my internet is painfully slow. A quick google search shows i'm not the only one, but the only fix I can find (to do with the firewall) doesn't help me as I don't have firewall on. There seems to be no difference between Safari and Firefox. I'm seriously considering using time machine to get back to Leopard days. As an example, pre snow leopard, a speed test measured at 1.83mb/s download, 0.16mb/s upload and 41ms latency, speed test just now says 0.46mb/s, 0.24mb/s upload and 51ms latency. Therefore it looks like my upload speed has improved by my download has taken a dial up style kicking. As I don't upload anything very often, I don't care about any improvement in this area. Can anyone assist? I'm running a January 2009 macbook if that helps.

Mac problems with password resetting and broken screens

wile e — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:37:07 -0800

Calling all Mac experts out there. I have a tricky one. This is a long one, but if you do have the time I would appreciate taking a look. There is a summary on the bottom for those that are less inclined to read through.

Ok, I have in my possession a Powerbook G4 in my possession. Original owner ran it over with a car. Laptop survived, screen did not. Original owner left it for dead. About a year later, I took it off his hands to work with on an external display. Works great, no irregular functionality.

The catch. I have to use the guest account as the original owner doesn't remember the admin password. So I borrowed a copy of Leopard from a friend and tried to reset the password from there. However since the install disk won't recognize the second monitor, I have to get lucky to pick the correct option to get to the Mac OSX Installer screen. From here I chose the password reset popup, reset the password for the admin account I wanted, and I restarted.

Now heres the fun part, when it rebooted, there no longer is any admin accounts. Only the guest account is available. I go back to the installer page and in the reset passwords dialog, no more accounts show for me to reset the password.

So my only option now is to do a complete reinstall of the OS. Except I do not see how from the installer page, and I without being able to use the external as the primary display I am stuck.

So as a summary:

Powerbook G4 with tiger and a broken screen that has no admin accounts anymore.

Need to either be able to make the external monitor as the primary not in the OS, but permanently.

or

To be able to do a complete clean install of Leopard on the system, with the catch of being done from an external monitor.

Now as a bonus question, if I were to disconnect the laptop screen, unplug it, would the computer default to the external display?

How do I get rid of a Mac user acct w/o losing files?

Piscean — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:35:54 -0800

I have a MacBook Pro running Leopard. It has two admin accounts. Some time ago I stopped using account "A" in favor of new account "B" (the reason behind the creation of account B isn't relevant to this question, however). If I delete user account "A," what precautions must I take to ensure the preservation of the files created under "user A," and what automatically happens to the ownership of those files?

I think I got a bug from a torrent

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:04:31 -0800

I've tried illegally downloading an application, and I'm pretty sure it is intent on messing up my computer and/or stealing my infos. Here's the catch- I'm runny the latest version of Leopard OS_X. In an effort to get a pretty expensive application that I've wanted for a long time, I downloaded a torrent containing said application. After the cracking program opened and didn't do anything, I became immediately suspiscious. So, long story short, I opened up good old terminal (which I'm somewhat familiar with) and my command line prompt addressed me as a user I don't recognize. This kind of scared the crap out of me, as it seems like something a trojan-esque virus might do. Since the incident I haven't used any passwords or done anything that requires authentication, and I don't plan on doing so until I've got this figured out.

I'm not sure this would be such a predicament for me if I weren't running Leopard, since there are plenty of anti-virus tools for Windows. But
I've been googling about virus scanners for leopard, or virus removal for leopard and can't really find anything.

So, hive mind OS_X experts- How can I diagnose whether I really do have a problem on my shameful hands, and if so, how can I fix it? Are there any good generic diagnosis / removal tools I should look into purchasing (legally, of course!) ?

Is it possible that the cracking program I used did something to my root user so that it could perform its crack, and that it was not malicious at all?
Also, should I be concerned that the damage has already been done? perhaps my hard drive has already been scanned for information which has been sent to whomever wants it?

I've created a follow up email here: ithinkihaveabadbug@gmail.com which I will be glad to follow up on. please hope me with whatever suggestions you may have!

Trouble with Logitech USB 350 headset under OSX 10.5.7

oxidizer — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:27:41 -0800

I've just upgraded a G5 tower from 10.2.x to 10.5.7. The upgrade went off without a hitch... but... i do have a problem using my Logitech USB 350 headset with the system now. When making a call with Skype, for example, the headset will typically work for a while (several minutes) before suddenly throwing out massive amounts of horrible noise via the mike channel. When this happens, I can hear the other side of the conversation just fine, they however can't hear anything except an aneurysm-inducing noise. If I hang-up and restart the connection, the game repeats. Sometime the noise sets in sooner, sometimes later - however, it always sets in. Facts: 1.) This headset worked without a hitch before the upgrade (from 10.2.x). 2.) Audio settings on a system level and within Skype are correct. Does anyone have any clue as to what is going on and what might remedy the situation?

Why won't all my DVDs play as they should?

hippybear — Sun, 03 May 2009 11:29:37 -0800

How do I burn VIDEO_TS folders to DVD Video discs that work on standalone players? I'm using an iMac, Leopard 10.5.6, internal SuperDrive for DVD burning. These are not copies of for-sale DVDs; they are fan-generated content or abandonware porting of 1970s quadraphonic recordings to modern surround systems.

I found a Terminal command line using hdiutil which is supposed to work... [hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name VOLNAME \ -o MY_DVD.iso /Volumes/File/Location]. I've tried using both BURN and Disk Utility to burn the resulting disk image. This doesn't seem to be doing the job, however.

I've tried using Disk Utility to make disk image DVD/CD Master of the VIDEO_TS folder and burning that, doesn't work...

The confusing thing is, the disks seem to be recognized by the iMac's DVD Player software and will boot that up and run just fine, but the discs won't play in my standalone Panasonic DMR-EZ17.

Even more confusing -- sometimes the DVDs I make using the above methods play in the standalone, sometimes not. This seems to be based on the VIDEO_TS folder I am using, as if I cannot get it to convert / burn / play under one system, it is unlikely I will get it to work at all.

(Complicating this even more, ALL of the VIDEO_TS folders that I mount using the File -> Open DVD Media... menu selection inside DVD Player work. This seems to have no bearing on whether the files will burn into a standalone DVD Video disk.)

Does anyone have any suggestions for me, short of $pending to get Toast or some other non-free solution?

control-clicky wiki

artdrectr — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:00:56 -0800

OSX (Tiger): Using Control-Click > Quick Search, I want to add Wikipedia to the list. How?

Help me rescue my fonts!

zardoz — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:31:52 -0800

I have a font issue with my Leopard 10.5 iMac. This problem is completely my fault, the computer had nothing to do with it! A few months ago I got overzealous upon finding and downloading a big set of free fonts for mac. I installed the fonts--I forget exactly how many, there were several hundred at least. Since then, though, on random websites and with random programs the font becomes unreadable. There's obviously a conflict but now I don't know what fonts are original and what fonts I added later. Faceslap, I know...

So now I don't care about the new font set, I just want the default fonts only so that I don't have this conflict problem. Is there a way to "revert to original fonts" or something similar?

Cross-Platform Crashing on a Macbook Pro

N2O1138 — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:04:43 -0800

I have Leopard and Windows 7 (7057) installed on my Late 2007 (possibly older, I got it refurbished) Macbook Pro 15". My problem is, every time I boot into either OS, I get a kernel panic or BSOD respectively. The fact that it happens in 2 different operating systems makes me almost positive that it's a hardware problem. Unfortunately, I don't know very much about computer hardware, so I don't really know what to troubleshoot first, and I don't want to void the warranty by opening the case (I plan to take it to the Apple Store if nobody here can solve the problem). Specifically, either operating system will crash about a minute into booting up. I don't think the problem can be too serious because everything graphically looks fine and all my files are intact. This leads me to think that maybe it's a RAM problem, and that it runs out of memory and crashes during bootup. Safe Mode in Windows works fine (I'm using it now), and still reports the correct 2gb of RAM. I haven't done safe boot to OS X yet.

The Blue Screen says
"Uncorrectable Hardware Error" and below it gives the code
*** STOP: 0x00000124 (0x00000000,0x85BAE024,0xF2000000,0x00060151)

If it were just what I'm experiencing on Windows, I might think it was something to do with drivers, but it's on both operating systems.

Mac OSX right click/context menus and "create new document"

jmd82 — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 08:52:02 -0800

How do I make Mac OSX right click/context menus show "create new document" and other awesome options. I love and miss the Windows feature to create a new document from the context menu now that I use OSX. Is there any way to make OSX context menus within Finder utilize this useful feature? Or how can I customize the context menu in general?

Baby got too much back

lukemeister — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:53:41 -0800

How can I consolidate all my pictures, music, pdf files, etc. from multiple drives? I have about 10 external drives containing photos and so forth. Different drives contain some duplicates, but the individual drives do not. Say I want to copy the files from DRIVE1, DRIVE2, etc. to UBERDRIVE, which has room for everything. My first thought was

cd /Volumes/DRIVE1; find . -name "*.jpg" -exec cp {} /Volumes/UBERDRIVE/Pictures/ \;

and then repeating the process for DRIVE2 and so on.

I tried this for DRIVE1, and it seems to be really slow. (It's taken 10 hours thus far to find 100,000 jpgs on a new MacBook Pro.) Also, I think my current procedure will overwrite files with the same name, even if they're different files.

Does anyone have a better approach? Thanks!

I'm running Leopard, but I also have machines running Vista, XP, and Fedora 10.

Why is my Mac saying "Segmentation fault" when all I want to do is SSH?

razorfrog — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:03:46 -0800

Running 10.5.6, my mac refuses to SSH to anything and gives the error "Segmentation fault" in Terminal. My Google-Fu has been very unsuccessful so far. Sadly, I have no idea what could have caused it, as I can't tie it to a specific installation of anything. All I do know is that it's very annoying, and my only solution is to restart my computer, and then SSH works for a little while.

I've tried re-installing the 10.5.6 update, as a few searches showed a similar problem happening a few years ago due to an OS update. That didn't do anything.

I'd really love to not re-install Leopard. Any ideas?

Looking for a Countdown Timer That'll Go Higher Than 99 Hours

interrobang — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:55:41 -0800

I'm looking for an OSX application, widget, or menubar item that will display a countdown to a date. Ideally, I'd be able to set it for, say, May 14th, and it'll show me how many months, days, hours, and seconds are left until the date. It'd be even better if I could run more than one of these timers at a time. I need this to work on Tiger, but Leopard stuff could be useful, too. Thank you!

How do I turn off mouse snapping with 'Enable access for assistive devices' in Leopard off?

chrisWhite — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 15:04:40 -0800

I recently installed Text Expander and Slife and they both ask me to 'Enable access for assistive devices,' when I do so my mouse starts snapping to dialog boxes whenever a prompt comes up. This is driving me nuts! Any idea how I turn it off?
Here's what it's doing: http://screencast.com/t/RdmNv8Hf6

I checked with another Mac user who's been using Text Expander for years and he's never seen this when he turns the option on. I've been all through the options in Universal Access, Keyboard and Mouse, Trackpad and Steer Mouse and I can't figure out which option turns it off! Google isn't being too helpful either, at least with the search terms I've tried.

Along the way I managed to change something that's making my screensavor go on semi-randomly while I'm working. It's disabled in the preferences and it's not hot corners, usually seems to happen when I'm moving the mouse around. Any ideas what I changed?

Thanks!

nu-Quicksilver

low affect — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 20:06:20 -0800

Where do I find newer builds of Quicksilver? I know there are some newer, non-blacktree versions of Quicksilver getting made. I don't have the time or will to go hunting through forums for them, or to figure which one is most stable and best. What have you found? Is it more snappier than B56? I'm on Intel Leopard.

Can Automator Do This

crapples — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:26:35 -0800

I want Leopard's Automator to do something seemingly simple, but can't get it to work. Can anyone help? When I used Office 2004 I had a simple VBA script that typed the current date, hit [return], hit [tab], then typed the current time. I used this script every time I started notes for a meeting, or other types of entries.

Can Automator do this? Again, the steps:

Add Current Date
Return Character
Tab Character
Add Current Time
Add a ":" character

Pretty simple, but I can't get it to work.

Help me keep the riffraff out of the (SSH) tunnel

COBRA! — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:54:48 -0800

Please help an idiot lock down SSH access to a Leopard machine. In simple terms, how would I go about restricting SSH access to a Mac running Leopard so that it will only accept connections from a known location (specifically, a co-worker's house, where she logs in using Timbuktu)? I'm a database guy working outside of my sphere of knowledge here, so simple is good.

Why can't my Macbook remember preferences settings?

4ster — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 06:39:26 -0800

I recently had to do an Archive and Install of Leopard on my Macbook, due to the fact that it suddenly got stuck on a blue screen (the irony) on boot. Now, everything seems fine, except for the fact that some of my preferences don't "stick," so, for example, each time I tell the OS to open .doc files with Pages, it works for a day or so, but then, .doc files start automatically opening with TextEdit. Thee are more examples inside. I also notice that no matter how many times I tell Pages to not show the ruler when it opens, the ruler keeps coming back.

All my MailTags keywords are gone, but I think that's a separate issue.

No matter how many times I tell Finder to always show folders as icons and not as a list, eventually, it shows them as a list.

In my MacintoshHD folder, I have a folder called Previous Systems from the Archive and Install, which I was considering deleting, but I'm wondering if the solution to my problems could be in that folder somewhere.

I have repaired permissions several times, and this has not solved the problem.

[BTW, I haven't meant to try to post a number of questions as one question, but I do think that all of these are somehow interconnected.]

Thanks for any insight you can offer.

La Cie external drive failure

gen — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:27:01 -0800

Mac, Leopard, La Cie external hard disk drive spins but does not mount. What's my best option for getting data off this drive? I've got an external La Cie drive that won't mount. I've tried 3 of the 4 interfaces (USB 2.0, FW400, FW800) but cannot get this disk to mount. What are my best options for getting this data before retiring this drive?

Is there a good folders comparison tool for Mac?

Leech — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:06:43 -0800

I need a good and fast tool to compare two folders side by side, with the ability of exclude .SVN and other useless files. I've found some ones like Compare Folders and DeltaWalker but I haven't tried these yet. Do you recommend them?