troubleshooting
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Some Lenovo ThinkPad X220 owners report downthrottling, reduced performance
No matter how much time we spend with a laptop while we review it, there are some things that are just harder to gauge -- namely, what happens once you've owned the thing for a while and the Sandy Bridge-fueled honeymoon comes to an end. That couldn't be more true of the Lenovo ThinkPad X220, one of our favorite ultraportables at the moment. We're seeing assorted reports from folks whose machines keep downthrottling to 800MHz, even when they're plugged in, set to the maximum performance profile, and not overheating. The result, they say, is slower HDD and SSD performance and reduced random read / write speeds, among other pernicious side effects. Worse, the only reliable solution so far seems to be shutting down the system and performing a cold boot. (For some -- but not all -- disabling Intel Speedstep and / or CPU Power Management in the BIOS works, too.) Judging by the threads in Lenovo's user forum, the company is definitely aware of the problem, though it's unclear if it's found a fix yet. We've pinged Lenovo for comment and will let you know what we hear. In the meantime, how's your X220 treating you?
Momentus XT hybrid drive causing headaches, Seagate working to fix
All's not well in hybrid solid state storage land, as owners of Seagate's Momentus XT are facing serious issues with their drives -- despite glowing initial reviews, a number of long-term users claim that the drives chirp, crash, stutter, and freeze with alarming regularity, particularly when installed in a Mac. Seagate forumgoers speculate these are symptoms of the XT's magnetic platters spinning down inappropriately, due to an overzealous power management scheme. That's the bad news -- and it sounds pretty bad -- but the good news is this: Seagate's owning up to the issues, and is actively involved in getting them fixed. So far, a pair of new firmware updates have addressed some symptoms, a third is on the way, and a Seagate engineer known only as STX_NB is proactively chatting with affected customers about possible fixes. That's what we call technical support -- take notes, tech companies.
The Soapbox: Accessibility and customer service
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. I was originally pulled into World of Warcraft by two real-life friends of mine. They liked the game, played for a year or so, and then quit playing. They never got sucked into the world of MMOs like I did. I don't think they ever will either. It's not that they aren't gamers or that they don't fit into the culture. Maybe for their own reasons, they'd never play an MMO again... life and all that. But one interesting thing they told me makes me think they really will never play an MMO again: imperfect games. Now, besides the fact that no game -- online or off -- is perfect, there appears to me to be a great disparity in the functionality between MMOs and single-player games. It's easy to see how someone similar to me can work his way past a few speed bumps to get an MMO up and running, but what about a computer-illiterate person? Before there's even talk of bugs in the game or of the game being fun or not, there's an issue of accessibility and customer service. I want to talk about accessibility and customer service in this round of the Soapbox.
Google's Teach Parents Tech site to help mom and dad find the 'any' key this Christmas
It happens every December. You head home for the holidays only to be accosted by parents who need help fixing their computers. This year, it looks like Google will be lending a hand with its unannounced Teach Parents Tech series of public service videos. The Google-registered website teachparentstech.org still shows a "coming soon..." graphic and the videos remain unlisted on YouTube, but that shouldn't stop you from sending the source link below to your parents right now. At the moment, we're counting 54 cross-platform how-to videos hosted by real live Google employees. The videos are brief (less than a minute) covering topics as simple as "how to copy and paste" and "how to attach a file to an email" to more advanced sessions covering "how to setup an email autoresponder" and even "how to find cheap flights." Unfortunately, even Google can't explain to parents how to create a FAT32 hard drive partition. See what we mean after the break. Update: And it's live. Might as well get in the gift-giving spirit, eh? [Thanks, Nathan G.]
iOS 4 and iPhone 3G is a match made in... what's the opposite of heaven?
Update: It's true -- the 4.1 update does wonders for the iPhone 3G's health and happiness on iOS 4. Do you have an iPhone 3G? Me, too. Have you updated it to iOS 4 yet? If the veins are popping out of your neck and your skin is turning green, you probably have. If your iPhone 3G hasn't been updated to iOS 4 yet, then do your iPhone, yourself, and your sanity a favor: DON'T UPDATE YOUR iPHONE 3G TO iOS 4! Apple's support forums are buzzing like an angry hornet's nest on reports that iOS 4 has all but crippled users' iPhone 3Gs. By far the most-reported problem is generalized slowness; iOS 4 runs so slowly on many people's iPhone 3Gs that the phones are almost unusable. The video above, although a parody we've posted previously, is actually a fair representation of what's been happening to the iPhone 3G under iOS 4. Click "Read More" to see some ways to fix the problem.
Readers: How to get satisfaction from Apple support on iPhone 4 issues
Apple's rumored policy is to not give away the $29 bumpers to consumers, and DIY bumpers may not suit your style. So, how do you get the golden ticket, in this case the free bumper? It seems that documenting your case carefully and showing that you've performed all of the recommended fixes in advance of your Genius Bar appointment helps a lot. Click on the read more link below to see our suggestions on what you need to do to best represent yourself before heading off to the local Apple Store.
iPhone sync problems after iTunes update traced to leftover plugin
In case you are on the road to an iOS 4 update (and be careful), you might want to double check your work. Remember, first you have to update iTunes to 9.2, which will then allow you to download the iOS 4 update. After I updated iTunes, I went in to make some changes to what I had synced and take off some podcasts that I don't listen to and video I don't really watch. After making changes and clicking apply, I got this error: "iPhone cannot be synced. A duplicate filename was specified." A bit of searching found other people having this issue, and the clear explanation at Apple Toolbox saved the day. As it turns out, the culprit is iToner from Ambrosia Software. I used it once a long time ago, and then I deleted the application without using my handy dandy AppZapper. As a result, it left behind a little file in my iTunes Plug-ins folder that I didn't realize was there. I removed the file, and as if by magic, everything started working again. However, if FedEx isn't lying and my iPhone actually does show up tomorrow, it was a bit silly of me to jump through all of these hoops to run iOS 4 on my 3G ... for one day.
Shifting Perspectives: Troubleshooting cat DPS
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. This week, we attempt to locate your cat DPS problems with a small flashlight and a cricothyroidotomy. Dear CatBearTree Girl, DPS no good. Am parked on boss rear but is not dying, just mad. Send halp. Sincerely, Sad Cat p.s. Is hard to write letters with paws. I get versions of this letter pretty frequently, and whenever I do, I ask for an armory link and (when available) a World of Logs entry. Afterwards, we start going through the following possibilities in an effort to pinpoint what might be causing problems for a player who's trying get more damage out of his or her cat.
HP Envy 15 said to be suffering from blank screen issues, lousy webcam
We can't say we experienced the problem during our time reviewing the HP Envy 15 (though we certainly had some other issues with it), but a sizable number of users have been reporting a persistent problem with the laptop's display randomly going blank. That's apparently so far gone unremedied by any number of driver updates, with the only "fix" being a forced reboot of the computer. Also problematic is an issue some folks are reporting with the laptop's webcam, which apparently has an odd tendency to only work properly under fluorescent lighting -- move under an incandescent light and everything takes on a distinct purple hue. Head on past the break for a vivid example of that problem, and hit up the source link below for all nineteen pages of complaints about the blank screen issue. [Thanks, Kasper]
Apple promises to fix iPad WiFi issues in future software update
Not satisfied with Apple's previous "fixes" for those pesky WiFi issues with the iPad? Then it looks like the folks in Cupertino have you covered, or will soon -- the company recently updated its support document on the issue to say that "Apple will also address remaining Wi-Fi connectivity issues with a future iPad software update." Interestingly, Apple also now suggests adjusting the screen brightness if you're experiencing the problem, which is a fix that was previously discovered by some users on their own but not recommended by Apple. Still no ETA on that software update, of course, but you can find the rest of Apple's troubleshooting suggestions at the link below in the meantime.
How to squash a syncing bug in iTunes 9.1.1
iTunes 9.1 brought a feature to all iPods that had previously only existed for the Shuffle: the ability to sync lower bitrate, 128 kbps AAC versions of songs. With only a modest reduction in sound quality, enabling this feature saved nearly 2 GB of space on my 16 GB iPhone 3G. After enabling it, the feature works by re-encoding songs on the fly to the lower bitrate the first time you sync your iPod. This will likely be followed by a very lengthy first sync as hundreds or even thousands of songs are downsampled to 128 kbps AAC, but all subsequent syncs are supposed to skip this step altogether unless you make major changes to your music library. Since iTunes 9.1.1, however, I've noticed that there's been an extremely lengthy sync operation every single time I've synced my iPhone, with hundreds of songs that were already on my iPhone being re-encoded again for no apparent reason. Fortunately I haven't been the only one with this bug, and the folks at Mac OS X Hints found a solution to iTunes 9.1.1's syncing bug.
What to do when your Mac dies
In general, Mac hardware is very reliable. Like any complex gizmo, a Mac will have its quirks, but only rarely do those quirks turn into a full-on, machine-killing meltdown. When that does happen, as it recently happened to my wife's MacBook, there's a few things you can do to keep the death of your Mac from becoming more of an ordeal than it has to be. Before your Mac dies: Back up your data. Your Mac is humming along nicely now, and if you've never had a computer die on you before, you might think it'll go on crunching binary bits forever. Unfortunately, it won't -- eventually, something on the Mac is going to fail. And when it does, it'll take all your music, documents, games, videos, and family photos down with it... unless you have those things backed up in another location. At a bare minimum you should be using Time Machine to back up your entire Mac to an external hard drive. Considering that Apple bundles this simple-to-use backup software in OS X, and considering how cheap even terabyte-capacity external hard drives have become, there's really no excuse for not backing up your data. Having all of your data backed up to another drive makes a dead Mac an inconvenience rather than a full-blown catastrophe. There are other third-party tools you can use, like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, but if you're looking for a solution that doesn't require an additional download (or much conscious thought to implement), Time Machine is the probably simplest backup tool available. More suggestions, both pre- and post-death, after the link below.
iPad Wi-Fi issues continue to irritate
This morning, we spotted this write-up on Apple 2.0 about dealing with iPad Wi-Fi issues. Since this is the iPad's number one usability issue -- poor Wi-Fi throughput and lost connections -- users are on the prowl for solutions, even ones that may sound a little offbeat. In this case, one correspondent who was experiencing the specific issue of "no connection when waking from sleep" found that his woes became bygones with a quick tweak: he turned his display brightness back up, after having lowered it earlier. It sounds a bit like Cargo Cult troubleshooting, but with a new device and a new set of quirks and workarounds to experiment with, some strange remedies might just turn out to be valid. (For years, I used the freezer and firm thwack hard drive recovery methods to great effect, regardless of the strange stares and annoyed memos from the kitchen staff.) Apple has posted a number of Wi-Fi support links over at its discussion board. According to the company, reconnection issues may occur when working with dual-band routers that use similar network names and different security settings for each network band. Low and intermittent signals may be due to distance from a Wi-Fi hotspot or multiple WEP keys, and the standing recommendation is to try repositioning the router, the iPad or both. If you've tried these fixes, or other Wi-Fi workarounds, let us know below.
Some iPad owners experience Wi-Fi connection issues
Many iPad customers spent the weekend playing with their new devices, and several reported iffy Wi-Fi performance. One thread on Apple's Discussion Boards describes a weak or inconsistent signal. "My signal keeps fluctuating from strong to weak, while my MacBook and iPhone show a consistent signal at the same location," writes user Andrew79. Another user writes, "Even when standing in front of the wlan router the signal fluctuates from strong to very weak." I've experienced this myself. However, when my iPad's signal strength indicator fluctuated between one bar and four, it never lost a connection. So I'm inclined to believe that it's reporting the signal strength incorrectly, not actually dropping off and on. Users in another thread report that their iPads connect, but can't get an address to get out to the net. " My iPad connects to my wifi without a problem," one user writes, "but the only site I can visit is my access point's web interface. I can't even get to my router's interface from the iPad. All my other devices (touch, laptops, Roku) can access the Internet without a problem." I haven't had this particular issue. If you're having trouble, consult the iPad User Guide [PDF]. Specifically page 117. Otherwise, sound off in the comments and Discussion Boards. [Via AppleInsider]
T-Mobile gives reps troubleshooting tips for Nexus One's 3G issues
T-Mobile's already starting to acknowledge that the Nexus One might have a love-hate relationship with its 3G spectrum, but we've been able to track down some internal documentation on exactly how the carrier's going about resolving this. Naturally, they're recommending affected customers reset the phone -- an old standby that actually works a troublingly high percentage of the time -- and hitting them up with some knowledge about the behavior of the device in different situations (you don't see the 3G icon when you're on WiFi, for instance, nor if you're not in a 3G area). As far as T-Mob knows, exchanging the handset doesn't help so they're not currently recommending it, but they are asking folks with other 3G devices to see if they can pick up a signal in the same area -- something we'd already seen from the carrier's support forum post. We're hopeful this all gets tied off nicely with a firmware update on the double, because let's be honest: a device with a huge touchscreen becomes a lot less interesting when high-speed data goes away.
Mac 101: Eject a stuck disc
Now that the holidays are approaching, you'll probably be asked to service your relatives' computers. "You like computers, right? Will you take a look at this for me?" Prepare yourself, it's coming. Some fixes are easy, including the stuck disc. It can happen for a variety of reasons that we won't go into here. After all, when the Titanic is sinking, you don't stop to yell at the iceberg. So let's just eject the disc. The fix is simple. After trying the obvious (hit the eject key, drag the disc into the trash), restart the machine and as it starts up, hold down the mouse button (or trackpad button if the offending Mac is a laptop). The disc should now eject as the Mac continues to start up. If not, you may have optical drive issues to worry about. But chances are you'll get mom's extended edition Murder, She Wrote DVD ejected safe and sound.
Some tips when visiting the Genius Bar
Nobody likes it when their shiny Apple gear breaks. About a week ago I walked in to the Apple Store here in Knoxville to meet with an Apple Genius about my iPhone 3GS. It seems my phone was crashing much more than normal -- I logged around 90 crashes in the five months or so that I had the device. I walked out of that Apple Store within about 30 minutes with a shiny-new iPhone 3GS. How did I do this without yelling? Read on. TIP: Don't take something to the store upon first crash. I had "put up" with the crashes for a long time. Patience is a virtue, although waiting until your warranty is up is not good. In this case, I had experienced enough crashes across enough updates to indicate the problem might not be the OS itself. Unless your Mac or iPhone is clearly broken, try searching for your issue on the Apple discussion boards and search the support docs for troubleshooting tips. Some basic troubleshooting tips usually include: rebooting, uninstalling/reinstalling, setting up a Guest user account (on Macs) or restoring your iPhone to factory settings. TIP: See what conditions cause the issue to occur and document or explain those to the Genius. In my case I "restored" my iPhone (a clever euphemism Apple uses to hide the true meaning: nuke your device back to factory settings) and tried starting from scratch. My frequent crashes and disconnects from iTunes while syncing indicated a hardware issue if the OS wasn't corrupted. So I had to eliminate the OS as a cause by re-installing it. The problem was, as a factory-fresh install, the iPhone worked fine. So I started adding only content, not apps. Music and videos starting eating up the gigabytes and, sure enough, things started to go horribly wrong. I was able to reproduce the issue only when the device was filled with more than 2GB of data, it seemed. This indicated it was not the sync cable (I had tried several anyway), but possibly the memory in the unit itself. TIP: Bring any supporting materials with you (error reports, logs, etc.) and explain each issue in detail. I had the luxury of using Xcode to peep my iPhone's crash logs. You can find these for your Mac in Applications > Utilities > Console, but they are essentially hidden for users on the iPhone unless you are a developer. My crash logs indicated something very, very wrong: the backup tool that runs each time you sync with iTunes was bombing in a bad way, as though I had ripped out the iPhone in the middle of a sync. That again indicated (to me) that there was a bad block of memory somewhere. When the Mac tried to read or write from that block, the OS just freaked out and crashed. TIP: Try it twice. I tried restoring my iPhone twice just to make sure I didn't get another corrupted install. It amazes me how computers screw this up, given that they are supposed to be famous for doing the same thing given the same set of instructions, but "things happen" as they say -- give whatever you're doing two chances to make it right. Three strikes if you are generous and have the time. Personally, it was a huge enough pain losing all my preferences and settings and game data the first two times. I felt I had enough info at this point to march into the store with a Genius Bar appointment.... The Genius at my store was impressed with the level of detail I was able to go into, and as a result he was able to simply confirm my findings and provide me with a new phone. It took longer to charge the device (which had been sitting in a drawer for a while) than it did to diagnose. Be patient, be aware, come prepared -- do those things and your unfortunate trip to the Genius Bar may not be in vain.
Mac 101: Building a bootable diagnostic and repair flash drive
More Mac 101, our tips and tricks for novice Mac users. Update: You cannot install Snow Leopard on an 8 GB flash drive. I was incorrect in writing that an install of Essential System Software would take 3.81 GB. As a few of our commenters pointed out, and as is the case, in testing I erroneously tried to install Snow Leopard on a flash drive that already had a version of OSX on it, making the installation much smaller than installing on an empty flash drive. According to readers, installing Snow Leopard on an empty flash drive will take 8.01 GB requiring a 16 GB flash drive. I'm very sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. It's a good idea to have a strategy in place in case of emergencies. If your hard drive tosses you errors, behaves badly or doesn't even appear, what to do? If programs crash at random, you need to be ready. You can prepare for this by creating a bootable flash drive containing some diagnostic and repair utilities. This is not meant to replace or in any way affect backing up your hard drive. Time Machine makes it so easy that not having a backup plan is just silly... but so much for the disclaimer. To make a diagnostic and repair flash drive, I'd suggest buying an 8 GB flash drive, 16 GB flash drive which can be had for around US $20 US $35 these days. When you get it, it probably won't be formatted for your Macintosh, so plug it in and run Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) to format the flash drive. In doing so, you have a number of choices. With your flash drive highlighted click on Erase and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and give the flash drive a name. Then click on Erase on the bottom right side of the screen and in a few seconds your flash drive will be ready for an operating system. I inadvertently omitted a step! Click the icon for the drive (not the disk partition -- the one that includes the size) and click the Partition tab. Choose "1 Partition" from the pop-up menu, Mac OS Extended on the right, then click Options at the bottom of the screen and make sure "GUID" is the selected partition type. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out. At this point do the Erase as mentioned above which should look like the following screen shot.
Getting bit by the Gmail "exceeded IMAP bandwidth limits" bug
I have a couple of Gmail accounts set up with Google Apps, so that Google is hosting my email using my own domain names. While those accounts have been working flawlessly for quite a while, I suddenly ran into issues a few days ago where Apple Mail couldn't pull email from the server. I could use the Gmail Web client and access the email, but using Mail or my iPhone, I'd get an error. Both Mail and the iPhone initially reported that either my password or username was incorrect, but after restarting my MacBook Air, the message changed to what you see above. While I had been sending some large files through email last week, I wasn't using anywhere close to the 2 or so GB per day of bandwidth that Google allows. A quick search revealed that there's a known bug where accounts are locked out for exceeding IMAP bandwidth limits when using Apple Mail under Snow Leopard. To quote Google's support page, This is a known issue for users of Apple Mail on the Snow Leopard OS. We are working with Apple on a resolution to the issue. In the meantime, there are a few workarounds to reduce the likelihood of hitting the bandwidth limit: Do not sync attachments. Reduce the number of folders you sync by using the Advanced IMAP Controls tab in Gmail. Close your email client when you are not using it. For my business, I keep my email client up and running most of the day, so the third workaround was not an option. Syncing attachments is easy to turn off in Apple Mail Preferences for Gmail IMAP accounts by selecting "All messages, but omit attachments" under "Keep copies of messages for offline viewing" on the Advanced tab, but it didn't resolve the problem. I fortuitously noticed that my MacBook Air seemed to be losing a lot of disk space, and searching the ~/Library/Mail folder indicated that the issue seemed to be in the "Recovered Items" Inbox for this Gmail account -- something I didn't even know existed! It was taking up a whopping 18.66 GB of space, so I went into Mail and deleted the "Recovered Items" inbox. While this didn't fix the issue immediately, it did eventually allow the account to come back on line with no problems. All told, I was without Mail.app and iPhone access to the account for four days, but at least I could check my Web mail occasionally to see what was coming into the Gmail account. If you're running Snow Leopard and get bit by the "bandwidth bug" with a Gmail account, I hope that this tip can help you out.
Bug tracker: Snow Leopard guest accounts eating files?
Update: Cnet reports that Apple is acknowledging the problem, while calling it "extremely rare." There's a few threads on Apple's Discussion Boards describing a problem that's affecting some Snow Leopard users. An issue with the Guest account feature in SL appears to be chomping down on user data with extreme prejudice. Cnet/MacFixIt first took notice of the issue back in early September, but a 2nd report & a link from 9to5Mac have raised the threat level quite a bit. According to affected users, the guest account's logout wipe -- a standard feature intended to prevent guests from leaving files on the machine -- is inadvertently clobbering the home directories of the non-guest accounts, with catastrophic results. One user writes, "I hadn't used my Guest Account since upgrading to snow leopard, and I accidentally clicked it instead of my user account this morning, to find that when I logged into my normal account ALL my files, settings, mail etc had been reset." Worse of all is that he's not the only one. MacFixIt reports that it isn't an epidemic, but readers have described the same issue in the comments to their post. For now, we offer this simple advice. First, make sure your backups are current. Secondly, turn off the Guest account feature if you're not using it (simple instructions here); some suspect that the issue is triggered by having it turned on prior to the SL upgrade. If and when the culprit is identified and squashed, we'll let you know. Thanks to everyone who sent this in. [Via Engadget]
