Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with mac and resolved

It's like a tech question and a bad sitcom plot in one!

Navelgazer — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 09:51:47 -0800

How do I either recover my Mac OS X password or else get around needing it? Several years ago, my then-girlfriend's father bought a family pack of OS_X Leopard, and gave one of them to me. A year later, she and I were broken up. About six months after that, my computer crashed, and the genius bar had to replace the hard drive and reinstall everything. This means that the update password was lost from memory, and I never knew it and can't easily find out what it might have been (ex's dad installed Leopard himself).

So now I've gone a year without updating and it's starting to drive me crazy. Not only can I not update OS_X, but I can't install any number of things I'd like to either.

Does anyone know how I can either recover what this password might have been, or work around it so that I don't need a password to update?

Much Thanks, and Happy Christmas/Hannuka/Kwanzaa/Solstice/Festivus/Holidays to you.

I just know this is possible...

nokry56 — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:58:19 -0800

How do I take an image file and mount it as a CD drive on my Mac (Snow Leopard) without using Toast. Bonus points for doing it from the command line. I have a dmg file of Age of Empires III and am really tired of carrying around the CD in my backpack. Plus it just frustrates me, because I know this has got to be possible without using Toast.

For those of you who are confused, I don't want it to mount like a Mac normally mounts a .dmg - I want it to mount as if it is a CD. Toast does this, but if I could do it from the command line then I could set up a script that first mounts the dmg as a CD then runs the app!

It can be done on Windows, surely it can be done on a Mac. I just can't find any good virtual drive software for the Mac and Google is utterly failing me.

Scrobblin on a Mac with no privileges

puritycontrol — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:34:17 -0800

Please help me install a Last.fm scrobbler for iTunes on Mac OSX 10.5.8 without administrator privileges. I'm a Windows guy, so please keep the explanation simple! This is for my iMac at work, which I've been using for a few months.

I know that you can scrobble iPod tracks, but my iPod is formatted for a PC. And my desk is tiny, so I'd rather not have to bring in an extra set of speakers and hook the iPod up to those. Thanks in advance.

What to do with a broken iMac G5?

crios — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 09:36:47 -0800

My mom has an iMac G5, 1.8 Ghz w/ superdrive and 2GB of RAM (I think). It's been a problem since they first got it with a logic board replacement and multiple power supply replacements (all free thankfully). Recently it started giving kernel panics on start up with the fans sounding like jet engines. It's a little over 4 years old and even though it's given us hardware problems, it has been a good computer and my mom likes it. What should we do with it now? I've tried all the troubelshooting suggestions (rest PRAM, remove peripherals, startup off of disk, etc...) and nothing is working. She's ready to throw in the towel with this one and get a new one. I'm thinking a mac mini, all we'll need to buy is a monitor.

My question is, what do we do with this iMac. I've tried rebooting off of the install disk and it's still panicking so it seems to be pretty broken. Should we try to sell it on ebay? Does anybody know any organizations in the Chicagoland area that would be interested in it? My other question is, what should we do about the hard drive. Since I can't even start up off of a disk I can't even format the HD. I don't think there is anything really sensitive on it but still I think it's probably a good idea to erase it before giving it away.

Any and all suggestions are appreciated.

Would like to open these documents

amethysts — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:36:41 -0800

I have some .pages documents and do not have Apple Pages to open them with. This question was asked back in 2005 but I was wondering if anyone has solved this problem yet. Already tried a bunch of online doc->PDF converters, and downloaded OpenOffice, to no avail. I'm on Windows XP.

If worse comes to worse I can just wait for the person to respond to my email. If it was an emergency I would get on the train and go to my school's computer lab, but I don't have a lot of time and it's cold and dark out.

Is there a way to do this without going outside? Thanks for your help.

Quark Problems

aburd — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:58:21 -0800

My mom is a graphic designer and uses Quark. She just switched from a PowerPC based Macbook Pro to an Intel based MacBook Pro. Using the new Macbook Pro, she can't seem to open the Quark files she created using the old MacBook pro. It produces an error saying something about the processor. Is there a nice program for converting such files? I don't know much about Quark or design software but please let me know if I am skipping some obvious detail. I want to get her this software for Christmas so I can't be too obvious but I can probably get some details out of her without being too obvious.

Slow typing in Excel 2008 and unexplained network traffic

lbergstr — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:06:18 -0800

Why would Excel 2008 cause a lot of network traffic while typing in a cell? After using Excel 2008 for a few months, recently I've experienced sluggishness when typing in cells. These are really serious slowdowns, the display can take 5 seconds to catch up to my typing. It comes and goes; haven't been able to discern a pattern here.

However I use MenuMeters and during slowdowns, I've noticed that network traffic spikes when I'm typing in Excel - say 150KB down, 33KB up.

I'm not editing a document on a network drive, or even an external drive. Happens whether or not I have any external drives connected.

I'm connected to a local network via wifi, and through that to the Internet - but our external connection tops out around 25KB down.

Any ideas?

Using Excel 2008 SP1 on 10.5.8.

Can't watch a specific channel on my computer!

mhz — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:17:06 -0800

Why can't my USB TV tuner find channel 11? I have a Hauppauge USB TV tuber (950Q, I think), and I can't get WPIX in New York. I have no idea if it's ever worked, as I've never tried it before. I've scanned repeatedly, but still nothing. This is using EyeTV, on the Mac, and I'm in Brooklyn. All other over-the-air networks work perfectly.

A couple of notes:

It's not an antenna issue; the same antenna finds 11 just fine when connected to the cheap DTV converter I have.

I tried adding it manually with the frequencies I found online, and nothing.

I've tried using a file I downloaded from TitanTV with the frequency, and nothing.

My brother just called me, and he's using Windows (Vista or 7, I'm not sure) with Media Center, and an ATI USB TV Wonder, and he's having the same problem. Neither of us ever noticed this before, because the Giants weren't on WPIX before.

Any suggestions? Again, this issue does not appear to be the antenna, and it's appearing with two different brands of USB tuners, on two different operating systems.

Is mac really better than pc? Help me buy a decent student computer.

Miss Mitz — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:27:51 -0800

I've been a happy Pc-er for the last couple years. That is, until a few months ago when my AVG failed me and my pavilion got all virused up... Twice. Ultimately I had to d-ban the poor thing. Since I was only 'mostly sure' I still had the original operating system disks, I have since been using my mom's mac. While I've been slowly getting used to the system (on a casual basis, no work yet, just internet) I still miss the windows format. My old tower is past it's prime, even with a new system. I'm about to become a student in English and am highly discouraged by previous Windows failings. Should I release the ghost and go with the more 'secure' mac? Or stick with my roots? I would like some advice on my next computer purchase. I'm looking for a laptop that can handle a students workload for the next... lets face it, many years, with minimal extras. The only thing it needs, is to be fast. I break things that go slow. I'm not looking to game (much) or download + store music (at all), I just need to research crap at high speed. All suggestions are greatly appreciated. Cheers!

USB SATA HD WTF FTW?

Admiral Haddock — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:58:09 -0800

Is my external HD enclosure killing drives? Or is it bad luck? I use a Mac.

I have this external enclosure for 2.5" drives. I put a new drive in there last year, but didn't use it until some months later (after loaning it to a friend). Drive was dead, and Disk Utility and Disk Warrior couldn't fix it. It was an extents error, and Disk Warrior alternatingly gave these errors: 2351, -36 and 2166, 2351.

My GF needed an external drive for Time Machine, and so we dropped in a new drive. Same errors, same lack of success with Disk Utility and Disk Warrior.

In each case, there has been no data on the drive, so I'm happy to pave them down to the lowest bits and bytes. A new drive is being sent by the retailer, but I don't want to kill it with the enclosure if it is at fault.

Is this an issue with the enclosure, or is this just bad luck with two different drives (by different makers)?

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?

Help with a Mac whose apps all go non-responsive?

mark7570 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:50:54 -0800

Once a week or so, all the applications running on my Mac go into "not responding" mode, one after another. The only way I can recover is to turn off the Mac using the power button. Any ideas? It always happens the same way - a usually well-behaved app, say Mail, stops responding - just shows a spinning beach ball. I force quit, but the app doesn't disappear. The beach ball keeps spinning. Then I switch to another app and it starts spinning. And so on. At that point, here's a screenshot showing what I see when I try to force quit.

This is on a MacPro (the big desktop tower), just a few months old, running 10.5.8. As you can see from the screenshot, there aren't any strange apps being run.

Anyone seen this before, or have suggestions for how to prevent this from happening? It's a really bummer when it occurs.

Ascii-art app for OS X?

Wild_Eep — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:43:45 -0800

What is the name of this obscure Mac text editor that draws ASCII art boxes and lines by dragging them out? I last used this app about three years ago, on OS X.

It was a simple text editor, that had a unique feature. You could drag a rectangle and it would create a BBS-style ASCII box. It would also do straight lines. (It may have done more).

Freely downloadable, at no cost. Ran in English.

Does this game genre even have a name?

The Winsome Parker Lewis — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:18:17 -0800

What are some great computer games for people who enjoy non-linear privateering, combat, and risky missions? I've loved the Escape Velocity games for years. I recently got into Frontier (previously) and enjoyed it a lot, but it was way too short and easy. I'd like to try Transcendence (previously) but I'm on a Mac, and I'd like to try SAIS (previously) but I can't get it to run under Snow Leopard. Finally, I just discovered Skyrates (previously) and it's fun but so very slow.

All that build-up is to ask: What other Macintosh or Flash games are like these? Specifically I'm looking for games that feature trading, fighting, upgrades and customization, and a big world to explore. I especially love games that let you choose to be good or evil (or neutral) and to become a hero, villain, or impossibly wealthy merchant. Even better if there are a bunch of different factions to choose from besides "good" and "evil," with shades of moral ambiguity. If the game is free that's also a big plus. Any suggestions?

Netgear Wireless-G Router WGR614 & AIM

twiggy32 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:30:14 -0800

How do I get my new Netgear Wireless-G Router WGR614 to play nice with AIM? I just installed a new Netgear wireless router and everything seems like it is working fine. However, I have to use AIM at home for work stuff, and I cannot connect. It tries to connect several times without success, and then AIM tells me I tried to log on too many times. I tried using AIM, iChat, and Adium, so it seems to be a problem with AIM not the chat program. I think this may have something to do with opening the right port, but I am at the limit of my technical abilities and my IT guy at work told me it was probably just because Macs suck, so no help there. Any advice?

Is 64-bit Win7/BootCamp worth some effort?

Zonker — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:25:04 -0800

Is 64-bit Win7 possible/worth the hassle on a somewhat elderly Macbook Pro? My late '06 Macbook Pro (version 2,2) won't boot the 64-bit Windows 7 installer (it hangs at "Select CD-Rom Boot Type"), but the 32-bit version installs fine through Boot Camp. It looks like there's a hack (here) that would allow me to boot the 64-bit version by burning it to DVD in a slightly different way.

Is the 64-bit version worth the effort? Is there a significant difference in compatibility with Parallels Desktop between the 32- and 64-bit versions? Any other considerations I should have in mind?

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.

Mac to PC help from far away

amethysts — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:29:33 -0800

I bought a used iMac G5 and I'm getting ready to send it to my mom as a gift. She hasn't used a mac since like 1995.What is a good program to install on here so that I can help her remotely? I'm on a PC. Free would be the best. I don't have a lot of money for this project. I'm thinking she might need a little help getting used to the whole OS X experience, and I may need to install things for her later on.

The computer is a G5 with OS X 10.4 with a PowerPC chip. I've found that this combination is nearly impossible to find software for. Neither of us has a webcam.

Any other suggestions for free software would be great. I've got iLife and iWorks 08 already.

I just accidentally broke my friend's ridiculously fragile brand new laptop. Please help me fix it.

iamkimiam — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:14:58 -0800

My good friend just purchased a $3k Apple laptop, which she received today. I spent four hours this afternoon installing software and setting it up for her. Once we were all done, and ready to go out and celebrate good times, new laptops, and Friday nights, we high fived, and I shut the laptop gently...with the tiny, clear, flexible, plastic charger cap unknowingly inside. Now the screen is completely cracked, fractalled, damaged, and very sadly colorful. What can I do? I am planning on going to the Apple store first thing tomorrow morning. What should I say? How can I make this right?

Additional info: I have been a loooong time Apple customer and purchaser. I am also currently extremely poor, but I will do whatever it takes to make sure my friend is good to go and happy. Please help me!

WHYOHWHY aren't the charger caps, A) fluorescent-colored, and B) attached to the cord!?!?

DVD Backup Frustration-Mac!

doorsfan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:00:46 -0800

Mac Filter: Backup and Burning DVDs HELP! Life was so much easier on my Windows machine - DVD Shrink + ImgBurn + about 1.5 hrs...BAM, done!

On my MacBook, not so much. I just got done wasting 3 hours with handbrake for it to spit out a 1.5 GB mp4 which with the help of google appears not to be the best way to go to DVD.

What are the best/easiest backup and burning applications out there for a MacBook? I'm not even looking for free at this point I just want something like the 2 programs mentioned above (enter DVD, backup, replace DVD with blank, burn - 4 steps). And of course any guidance for this Mac n00b would be greatly appreciated.

And lets just assume these are not home DVDs

Thank you for helping me lower my blood pressure and helping me return to some resemblance of a sane person!

Pick the Perfect Mac Laptop

misha — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:52:16 -0800

Which Mac laptop should I buy? Needs and specs inside. So I need a new laptop, and serendipity is on my side, as the Apple store has just updated! Well and good. Which model should I get, though, that's the question.

I am replacing this:

Model Name: MacBook Pro 15"
Model Identifier: MacBookPro1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 1.83 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 2 MB
Memory: 512 MB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz

What I use it for: blogging, word processing, some photoshop creation (illustrations for the blog, mostly), saving pics from the digital camera, social media, lots and lots of email, light gaming of the Flo's Diner and Tower Defense variety.

What I liked: speed, powerhouse of a laptop.
What I didn't like: heavy, bulky, heats up fast.

I'm thinking that I could go down to the 13", but are the new 15" versions significantly lighter than my version?

Is the Macbook Air a bad buy (meaning not cost-effective) because of the one-piece construction? In other words, does pretty much any repair mean the whole thing has to be taken apart, thus costing more in the end?

Is it significantly slower or less powerful than the Macbook Pro that I would notice it with my modest needs?

I DO want Apple Care, right?

Thanks in advance, hive mind!

Tell me what internal hard drive to buy for my MacPro.

Joleta — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:17:34 -0800

Tell me what internal hard drive to buy for my Mac Pro. I'd like to add a 1TB internal hard drive to my fairly new Mac Pro. I plan to use this drive for Time Machine backups. There are about a gazillion choices for internal 3.5" SATA drives. I just want to know which brand and/or model to buy. I'm interested in reliability first, price second. Personal experiences, please.

backup --> iPod

Jaltcoh — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:00:25 -0800

Trying to get my music library from my external hard drive back onto my iPod while maintaining my sanity. (Apologies in advance for the lengthy/convoluted question.) I recently started having problems with my iPod and realized I should make sure to have a perfect, up-to-date backup. I started by turning on the iPod's hidden files. If you're familiar with these hidden files, you know that they have randomly generated names like "VCKT.m4a," "BBLC.m4a," etc. (no apparent indication of which songs these are), and they're in folders called "F00," "F01," etc. (Mine go up to F49 since I have over 7,000 songs.) I copied all of these files to my external hard drive. At the time this seemed like a really smart, thorough way to do it.

Then I went to the Apple Store and got my iPod fixed, which involved them restoring my iPod. So now I need to recreate my music library in my iPod using the external hard drive.

I thought this would be pretty simple: plug in the iPod and external hard drive to my Macbook at the same time, then drag and drop all the folders -- F00 through F49 -- from the external hard drive to the iPod, right? Well, I did this, and the cryptically named files do appear in the iPod when you look at the iPod's contents in the desktop. But if you try to use the iPod as a normal music-playing device, it doesn't work -- there are no songs that show up for you to listen to (whether you're looking at it in iTunes or disconnected from the computer).

I again thought I was being smart by seeing what happens when I "open" one of the hidden files. Hey cool, a random song gets copied to iTunes! And it's a normal song -- not "VCKT.m4a" but something I can actually listen to, with a song title in English, etc. Of course, I can then drag and drop this song from iTunes into my iPod. At first I thought this would be the solution: just do the same thing for all the songs.

But there are a couple problems with that, and I'd really appreciate any help getting around them. As I said, I have over 7,000 songs, roughly 70 GB of music. My computer's hard drive has about 4 GB left. So if I were to just open all the hidden files from my iPod into iTunes at once, it'd be a disaster: at best, I'd quickly get a message telling me my computer's hard drive couldn't hold any more. (And I'd be afraid I wouldn't be so lucky -- the hard drive could get filled up and paralyzed. This happened to someone I know.)

So, should I just copy the hidden files one folder at a time? I could do that, but that would mean opening up the songs from "F00," waiting for them to get copied to iTunes, then waiting for them to get copied to the iPod, then deleting those songs from iTunes and emptying the trash, then moving on to "F01" ... and repeating that whole thing 50 times. I'd like to avoid that if I can.

So my questions are:

(1) Is there an easier way to do this? I'd love to be able to just get it started, then sit back and let the computer handle it.

(2) I already feel kind of silly for how much of a minor ordeal this has turned into as a result of my backup method that I (mistakenly?) thought was so clever. Could someone please assure me that there's a way to follow through with this that won't mess things up even further?

(In case it's relevant, my external hard drive holds about 500 GB, I have a 160 GB iPod, and I'm using Mac OS 10.4.11.)

Google, please believe me when I say this is my password.

banannafish — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:44:44 -0800

After getting a new logicboard installed on my MacBook Pro this past week, why does GoogleUpdateInstaller constantly ask for my password every few minutes? I'm only using GMail notifier and it is making me insane. Sooo, after a new logicboard (thank you cat vomiting all over computer) install this past week, I have been getting a log-in prompt every twenty or so minutes saying, "Type your password to allow GoogleUpdateInstaller to make changes" and has my computer name and blank password, but no option for "remember password" or the ability to add it to my password chain. After I type in my password and hit "OK" it brings up the Google Notifier, but there are no software updates available. I have uninstalled and reinstalled GMail notifier about five times now, and I'm still getting this error and it is driving me insane. How can I get this to disappear? As an added note, no other program has exhibited any of these problems, or even asked for my password. My Google-fu is completely busted.

I just want my stupid games to be silent

NoraReed — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 02:00:55 -0800

OSXFilter: Is there a way to mute individual programs in OS X? Vista allows you to adjust the volume of specific programs in its volume control. I switched to Mac but that's one of the features from Vista that I really miss. (If it matters, I'm using Leopard.) I want to listen to my music, not my games/browser, dang it!