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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.

Possibly the most specific -filter in recent memory

The Lurkers Support Me in Email — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:14:58 -0800

GUIDPartitionTableFilter: How can I non-destructively change a partition's filesystem type ID in OS X? For some reason (which I'll add at the end so I can get to the point) a partition on my external USB drive is mistakenly flagged as 'Microsoft Basic Data' and not 'Apple_HFS', as shown by diskutil:

$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0

   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1

   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            402.5 GB   disk0s2

   3:       Microsoft Basic Data Boot Camp               97.1 GB    disk0s3

/dev/disk3


   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk3

   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk3s1

   2:       Microsoft Basic Data                         999.9 GB   disk3s2

            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Wrong!

When I plug the disk in or boot up, Snow Leopard complains about not being able to recognize the disk and asking if I want to initialize it. However, if I do mount_hfs /dev/disk3s2 /Volumes/Test the drive is mounted and I can access the filesystem just fine.

How can I change the type back to Apple_HFS? I've looked at the gpt and diskutil man pages but only found info pertaining to creating new partitions, not modifying existing ones.

Help me bring back my wifi!

COBRA! — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:02 -0800

I'm having wifi troubles with my MacBook, and the lack of connectivity for the weekend gave me the shakes. Help me before the withdrawal gets worse! The gist: WPA2 Personal network, running on a Netgear router. Been up for a while, played nice with my MacBook (running Snow Leopard) and my wife's XP laptop. Over the weekend, the router rebooted during the setup of a new Roku, and my MacBook abruptly dropped the network; since then, I haven't been able to reconnect, just getting the standard "There was an error trying to join the network [SSID]. Please try again later."

My wife's XP machine still connects with no trouble.

As nearly as I can tell, it seems like my laptop sees the network, but can't recognize it as WPA2 Personal; when I try to connect, the SSID shows up in my saved networks as WPA2 Enterprise. Editing one of the Enterprise instances to Personal with the correct login information doesn't help, nor does manually adding a new Personal instance.

Other things I have tried:

- rebooting the router (multiple times)
- deleting the keychain storing network passwords
- deleting the plist storing network prefs
- deleting and re-adding the entire Airport connection in my network prefs
- reinstalling and updating Snow Leopard (update done with the MacBook connected by ethernet)

Any thoughts/suggestions/ideas?

How can I tile windows in OS X

creeront — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:42:11 -0800

How can I easily tile my windows in OS X like I do in MS Windows? I want to easily and quickly tile my windows in OS X (especially word documents so I can read them side by side) like I do in MS Windows. In Windows, I use Winsplit Revolution and right clicking on the taskbar and hitting 'tile vertically'. Is there any way to do this?

Could the fact that iTunes skipping be a sign that I need a new hard drive?

phr4gmonk3y — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:22:50 -0800

I just got my Macbook back from the Apple Store today after they replaced the logic board on the unit. I've noticed that every song I play in iTunes seems to skip. Finding this odd, I opened up the Activity Monitor and looked at disk usage. It seems like whenever a read to the disk is made, iTunes seems to begin skipping. Furthermore, I have the same problem after trying to play mp3's via mpg123. I'm worried that the skipping could be a sign my hard drive might be failing. I recently installed a brand new 250 GB hard drive from Newegg about a month and a half ago, so I'm somewhat skeptical. Is it a reasonable concern?

Mac Powermac G4 AGP will not boot, can I take the drive and boot using a firewire enclosure on another G5?

safepants — Mon, 26 May 2008 09:38:14 -0800

Mac Powermac G4 AGP will not boot, can I take the drive and boot using a firewire enclosure on another G5? I've tried replacing the CMOS battery and resetting the PMU which didn't work. I really need to boot from this drive to use the files immediately, then take the data off afterwards.

Can I boot with this drive in a firewire enclosure using a G5, or does it have to be another similar G4 system? would a powerbook g4 work too?

Virtualized Network Problems

nivekraz — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:31:05 -0800

I'm having network problems with virtualized systems. I have Macs runnig OsX 10.4 with Parallels running XP. At random times, the network fails...kinda The network will stop working (cant get to Internet, internal hosts, email, pings, DHCP) but the network link never goes down. Link lights are on, switch says port is active and in proper vlan. Snoops on the interface and switch port the show computers trying to get a DHCP address. If someone has music streaming from the Internet, it will continue to function. Any new sessions will fail. I can fix it by pulling the network cable and plugging it back in. This only happens on systems with Parallels w/ XP but it can happen even when Parallels/XP is NOT running.

What can be causing this? What can I look at?

Folding@Home and nowhere else

mccarty.tim — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:39:04 -0800

I want to run Folding@Home on my MacBook Pro, but I want it to only fold while plugged in. Is there a way I can do this? I like to run Folding@Home on my MacBook Pro, version 6.10 beta 2. I remember when I ran F@H on my old PC, it had an option in the console version to stop the program when the computer was running on battery power. Presumably, it would start it back up when the computer was plugged back in. My old PC was a desktop, so I never really knew how well that option worked. Now, on my Mac, I want to conserve battery power when I'm on the go, but I'd like to run F@H when I'm at my desk. I can't find any option to do this in the pref pane or on F@H's site. Is there any script or program I could do to automate this? Also, could I possibly have F@H stop at a certain time of night so that I can sleep without having to hear my fans running full blast (Sometimes, I keep my laptop on to download stuff at night, but that's a fairly quiet procedure.).

Thanks for your help, guys. I really want to contribute to F@H and I feel like I'm always wasting my dual core processor in Mac mode. And if I should be running a different version, let me know and I'll change it.

Should I put Leopard on my G4s?

Phatty Lumpkin — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:06:34 -0800

I'm concerned about making my computers sluggish by "upgrading" them. Should I install Leopard on older G4 Macs? I understand that Leopard runs faster than previous versions of OS X on the newer Intel Macs, but my family has three G4s and I'm wondering if I should upgrade them. This question is purely about performance--we already bought the disc for another computer--so it's not a question of price. I've seen the system requirements and I'm nervous about the transition because these computers fall on the low end of the scale. Here are the setups for the G4 computers:

Dual 867 MHz Power Mac with 2 GB of RAM
1.33 GHz Powerbook with 512 MB of RAM
1 GHz iBook with 1 GB of RAM

We don't really tax the first two with heavy gaming or graphic editing, though I use Photoshop occasionally on the iBook. I know that new programs often come out that aren't compatible with older versions of OS X and I'd like to avoid that happening. Complicating the situation is that I'll be doing this over one week while I visit home; long-term observation of the systems' performance isn't an option. What do you think? Should I upgrade?

Help me turn a G4 into a media server

sdevans — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:00:04 -0800

How can I use large ide drives (200GB+) in old powermac G4? I've searched for answers on this (see http://ask.metafilter.com/21793/Mac-Migration for instance) but I'm not sure I understand.

According to the interweb old powermac g4s will only see a maximum of 128GB of a drive. There are ways round this according to my research (drivers and hardware), but I'm confused as some information is contradictory.

I need to add a 200GB as a secondary drive and I will be using Tiger or at least Panther on the G4. I think that means the computer will see the extra space, it's just the original operating system of G4s (10.2?) wouldn't see it?

Does it make a difference that this 'large drive' is not going to be my boot drive, it's in there to act as a media server.

How to learn the Mac OS on the cheap!

covert7 — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 11:38:33 -0800

How can I learn the Mac OS as inexpensively as possible? So here's the deal: I'm a PC tech and I've been working in the Windows world for a about 15 years now. Mostly tech support roles with some system admin stuff as well. I do a pretty good bit of side work (setting up small offices/helping people with their home stuff) but I've been asked a few times for help with Mac systems. Unfortunately, I have no experience with Macs so I thought it might be good to finally get in there and learn.

Aside from straight up purchasing a new Mac, how would you go about this? I hear it's technically possible to get OS X running on a regular PC but it requires a lot of upkeep and work. (It's also illegal I believe.) I don't mind monkeying with the system as I feel that may be a good way to "learn" the ins & outs of it. But is it just a stupid big hassle even worth considering?

I've got a couple of spare PC machines at my place and I'd love to use this hardware for this purpose if it's viable. (Kind of like using it for a Linux box.)

So there you go. How would you guys accomplish this as inexpensively as possible? Thanks for your help!

Mac tired of playing games.

theholotrope — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:51:33 -0800

What exactly is happening when my mac "gets tired" when playing video games? How do I correct it? After installing Boot Camp, Ive been much more inclined to playing games on my mac. After playing games for a while Ive notcied something that might be obvious to some people but its new to me.

Ive played Riven and Jade Empire on Boot Camp and Civilization IV on OSX and its always the same issue: at first all is perfectly well and then everything starts getting choppy and sort of malfunction a bit after playing for about an hour or an hour and a half. Civ characters start moving slowly, everything takes more time, but mostly just choppiness.

It seems to get tired of playing. My first assumption is that the CPU is overworking itself but on a Macbook Pro 2.16 GHZ with 2GB ram, should this be happening?

Anyway, I want to be able to play for as long as I like without giving my mac a break... whats going on and how can I correct it?

Itunes is not counting play counts and recently played tracks from my ipods.

rglass — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:26:06 -0800

Itunes is not counting play counts and recently played tracks from my ipods. Itunes is not counting play counts and recently played tracks from my ipods.

I have a 3G ipod and a 1G nano which I sync about once a week with itunes 7.0 on my Macbook.

When I play songs on itunes, the play count for that song increases by one and it appears in the Recently Played playlist (and is submitted to LastFM, by the way).

When I connect my ipod and do a complete sync, play counts are not updated and songs played do not seem to appear in the Recently Played playlist (and are not submitted to LastFM).

I have both ipods to sync specific playlists, and I have not checked the box that says "Manually Manage Music" on the ipod summary screen (I heard that can cause sync problems).

I thought it might be a chronology problem – that if I played my last ipod track at 2 PM and my last itunes track at 3 PM, that when I did a sync it wasn't tracking anything from before my last played itunes track. (Did I explain that clearly?) But that isn't it. I've been using itunes for years and I've never seen it behave that way before,
and I just did a test, using my ipod for 24 hours without playing any tracks on itunes. I did a sync, and none of them are in Recently Played, and the play counts have not changed.

What's going on? How can I get itunes to keep track of the songs I play on my ipod? (Can't get them submitted to LastFM either, but that's a secondary issue).

Where in the heck is my scrollbar?

booknerd — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:09:14 -0800

My scrollbar has disppeared and won't come back! I'm sure this is a stupid question with a simple answer, but I can't seem to get google to work for me to help answer it. I'm running MS Word on OS X, and my vertical scrollbar on the right hand side disappeared a few weeks ago. I nosed through pretty much every menu looking for a way to bring it back, but I can't seem to find it. It's becoming more than just a minor nuisance. The horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the window appears just fine, it's only vertical that has gone missing. What do I need to do to bring it back?

What is the easiest way to convert e-mail to tasks or appointments in OSX?

4ster — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:10:25 -0800

I am considering making the switch to the Mac, and I am wondering how you all convert an e-mail to a task or appointment in OSX. In Outlook, I just drag it to the Calendar or Tasks button (or use one of the ClearContext buttons). I understand this does not work in Entourage. I don't believe I have to use Entourage, but I just thought I would begin there, since it is closest to what I already use.

Thanks for your help.

Combination laser pointer + presentation mouse?

NucleophilicAttack — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 07:28:26 -0800

Can anyone recommend a wireless presentation clicker/mouse + laser pointer for Mac OS X? Would need decent range (say, 30 feet), and be able to control (at minimum) PowerPoint and KeyNote.

The device will be paired with a MacBook Pro.

How do I compile GCC on OS X?

mto — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 08:10:04 -0800

When compiling gcc-3.4.4 on OS X 10.4.5 I get an error about an undefined symbol, _fprintf$LDBLStub. How do I make this go away? Google shows that this is a really common problem. However, I can't seem to find a solution that works for me.

The two suggestions I see the most are to use GCC 3.3 (gcc_select 3.3) and/or to include -lSystemStubs for linking. I've tried with both the GCC 3.3 and GCC 4.0.1 compilers on my system, same results with either. I'm a bit wary about the -lSystemStubs suggestion since this is GCC (I find it more intimidating than most programs). Also, it takes a long time to build and I'm not exactly sure how to make sure it uses that library (just set LDFLAGS?).

I need to compile this for myself and I do need GCC 3.4.4. So I'm not looking for binaries or different versions of GCC. I know other OS X users have gotten this to build but I'm not sure exactly how, but I do know it's possible.

Switch. And Switch back, you know, whenever you damn well please.

Tikirific — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 10:17:17 -0800

This may be slightly premature, but would it possible to install Windows onto one of the new Macintel platforms and so have an OS X/XP dualbooting machine? I realize the computers in question aren't exactly released to the public yet, but if anyone is familiar with the hardware inside (and hence are aware of Windows' ability to drive those components) I would really like to know whether it's possible. It being Intel architecture, I would assume that it's at least feasible, but since Apple is preventing OS X to be used on generic PC systems by way of a hardware security block, I was wondering if anyone had heard of a similar restriction on running other OSes on a Apple box (or, whether the use of proprietary components inside an Apple would prevent this anyway).

Can I use my iMac integrated monitor as a MacMini monitor?

AgentRocket — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 19:00:36 -0800

Can I use my G4 iMac (the one that has a round base and a swivelly flat monitor) as a monitor/second hard drive for a new mac mini? I have a 17" iMac that I got in mid-2002. I love the display and love the computer but with pictures and movies and music my hard drive is full and my programs (particularly iPhoto, with 2000+ photos) are super slow. We have not upgraded from Jaguar, because I don't have much confidence in the memory or processor (256 and 800, respectively). Rather than spend a bunch of money separately buying (1) RAM, (2) an external hard drive, and (3) Tiger, I thought I could buy the fancy Mac Mini ($700) and get all three. Paying $1700 for the new iMac is out of my price range. Here's my question(s):

(1a.) Can I somehow use my 17" swivelly monitor as the MacMini monitor (even though it is integrated into my iMac?) I figure it wouldn't hurt to just have 'em both on at once, right?
(1b.) Could I format my current iMac hard drive and use it as a second hard drive that is controlled by the MacMini?
(1c.) How hard do you think it would be to get the stuff on my current hard drive onto a MacMini hard drive?

As you can probably see from my questions, I am not terribly smart about this stuff. I thank you in advance.

Where can I find vector representations of the keys on a Apple keyboard?

jeremias — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 07:44:40 -0800

Where can I find vector representations of the keys on a Apple keyboard? I'm looking to use icons of the Apple keyboard in a tutorial I'm writing and I thought it would be cool to use the actual representation of the keys. So is there any vector library or typeface out there which symbolizes the shape, typeface and position of the keyboard symbol?

Airport Extender?

al_fresco — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:37:54 -0800

WiFilter: I have an Airport base station set up as a WDS, and an AirportExpress set up to extend the wireless network to an outbuilding. Some days the signal in the outbuilding is pretty good, but other days… …I can't connect. The computer in the outbuilding is a G3 iMac with a standard Airport card. I've looked at this previous thread, but it doesn't seem obvious that something like a cantenna will work with my configuration, as the Airport base station is the farthest away from the outbuilding (and the whole house is in between). Anyone have luck boosting/extending their Airport network? OS X.3.9. Thanks!

Why isn't OSX recognizing a blank user password?

jeremias — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 16:22:19 -0800

OSX_Admin_Filter: How do I get OS X 10.4 to allow me to give a blank password to a new user? This is trickier than it may sound: I set up three user accounts each on 10 new G5's. All of them running the same system (10.4). The first account was the admin account. There is a user name and a password on this account. I then set up two additional accounts lets call them user X and user Y. I did *not* give these accounts passwords, they are student machines and passwords are not needed.

On 8 of the 10 machines there is no problem logging in as user X or user Y. Simply click on the user icon and you are logged in, no password needed. On two of the machines you are prompted for a password (even though there is none). It seems impossible to login to these X and Y accounts because not even the admin password will work.(I can login as the admin and access the computer) I'm totally confounded. Any help appreciated.

Can I access my mp3s remotely?

synecdoche — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 10:28:12 -0800

Can I access my files on a Window 2000 machine (at home) from my iBook when travelling? I have a Windows 2000 desktop at home. I store my MP3 collection on it. Usually when doing day-to-day computing, I use my iBook laptop. At home, I can easily access the files on the Win2K box over my local network. However, I do travel from time to time, and I'd like it if I could mount the remote computer as a hard drive when I am away from home (whether across the country or at my university).

Is there any simple way to do this? If it works okay, I'll just tell iTunes that the library is in a new location and then keep it all the time. It'd be nice to be able to move files back to the Win2K machine, too.

I've seen somebody do something similar but they were running Linux, which I am not too proficient with.

I have Win2K Pro, updated to whatever they're at now, on the desktop where the fiels are, and OSX Tiger on the iBook.

Microsoft Office Keyboard on an iBook

synecdoche — Sun, 12 Jun 2005 20:21:17 -0800

I picked up a very cheap Microsoft Office Keyboard today. It works great on my Windows 2000 machine with the software provided, but the Mac software included on the CD is for OS9, and I want to run it with my KVM switch into my G4 iBook (OSX.4). I tried to install Microsoft Intellipoint software from the Mac section of the Microsoft web site, but it has not helped-- so far the only extra keys that work are the volume controls. The standard keys work fine, though.

Now, to compound matters, I can't find any reference to this specific keyboard on Microsoft's website. I was hoping there'd be an updated driver, but evidently the keyboard is discontinued enough for Microsoft to remove any online support for it.

So, the question is, is there anything I can do to get full functionality out of the keyboard on OSX.4?

This is the keyboard, by the way.

Why doesn't my mouse mouse?

renderthis — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 05:10:37 -0800

OS X 10.4 Tiger. My mouse has stopped mousing. Last night I was happily computing away when I got the grey press-power-to-restart screen in OS X 10.4, and when I did, my mouse wouldn't respond. I could neither move the pointer, nor click on anything. So I began restarting. On some restarts, the OS would tell me it couldn't find a bluetooth mouse, which is understandable because I don't have one. On other restarts I just couldn't do anything.

I booted from the OS DVD and the mouse worked fine, so I repaired permissions and the HD, expecting that to work, but it did nothing. Likewise, I tried every usb port on the computer; it didn't make a difference. And also, the keyboard does still work.

My computer is a single processor 1.8Ghz G5 with 1GB of ram and plenty of hard drive space. The mouse is a usb mouse that normally runs through the keyboard hub, but today I've run it through every usb slot I have.

So does anyone have any ideas how to fix it? Has anyone had this happen to them before?