troubleshooting
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Poll: Is your Zune device out of sync with Zune software?
Are older Zune models going the way of the brick? We've received a handful of tips pointing us to the official Zune forums, where reports are coming in that apparently a number of the non-Zune HD units haven't been able to sync with Zune 4.0 software. Although a few people have elaborated on some steps to take (hint: it involves a lot of downgrading and reinstallation of both firmware and Zune software), there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus on its effectiveness. Honestly, it's hard to tell from our end if this is really a widespread issue and we haven't seen it ourselves, so we're putting it to you, deer reader: has your Zune device forgotten how to sync with the mothership?%Poll-34945%Read - Sync Error Code C1010007Read - More info on sync errors
Quick and dirty troubleshooting
There's a great post at creativebits today listing some basic troubleshooting techniques. I like it because it lists some simple tasks that anyone can perform. Some of the tried-and-true techniques include: Restarting Quitting unused apps Installing updates Re-installing a misbehaving app Back when I was a part of an IT team, we always checked the simplest solution first. Printer isn't recognized? Is it plugged in? How about turned on? You may laugh, but ruling out the easy answers makes things clearer and it often solves the problem. There are many more tips at creativebits so read the whole post. It's true that the Mac OS still has its problems, but least we've moved beyond the Extension Conflict Hell that plagued many pre-OS X users. Or my other favorite, The Chooser. "That port is in use ...." Good times.
iPhoto 8.0.3 updater bug bites many
Yesterday I tried to open up iPhoto '09, and was greeted with a screen telling me that my iPhoto library needed to be updated. This was sort of odd, since I had run the program many times since the software update of June 4th bringing the program to version 8.0.3, but what the heck. I clicked on upgrade and the program crashed displaying one of the wonderfully unclear error screens of hex numbers.After trying all the usual things like rebooting, resetting the PRAM and saying 'Candyman' three times in front of a mirror, I sheepishly gave up and called Apple. It turned out that this has been happening to many people. Up until two days ago, Apple had been capturing reports to find the source. I was told that they stopped capturing reports when they numbered around 3,000. What Apple found was a bug in the 8.0.3 updater, and apparently the bug could bite just about anytime since it didn't necessarily rear its head directly after the update. The bug, in various incarnations with various solutions, is to be cursorily found in the support forums, but here is the authorized Apple fix:Hold down the option key as you boot iPhoto and you'll see a screen like the one displayed here. Just choose your library (there should only be one) and iPhoto will boot normally. Problem solved! As of now the problem hasn't resurfaced for me, and according to Apple tech support, it shouldn't. This bug will be squashed in a future iPhoto update but for now it's easy to get around.
Take Control of Maintaining, Troubleshooting your Mac
Author Joe Kissell has been informing and entertaining Mac users for years through his books, TidBITS columns and Macworld articles. He's recently finished a pair of books for the Take Control ebook series that will help you learn how to keep your Mac running at its most efficient pace, as well as tell you what to do when something does go wrong. In the first book, "Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac, Second Edition" (US$10), Joe describes actions you can take weekly, monthly, and annually to enjoy top performance from your Mac. He also tells you what not to do, illustrating tasks that take a lot of time and provide few benefits. The second book is an update to Kissell's "Take Control of Troubleshooting Your Mac" (US$10). Joe's expertise really shines in this ebook as he tells you what to do with Macs that won't turn on, how to react when you're getting repeated kernel panics, and actions to perform when internet connections go down or printers are balking. If you already own an earlier edition of either one of the books, you can get a discount on the upgrade. New buyers can bundle the two books for just $16 for a top-notch set of guides. In the interest of full disclosure, TUAW blogger Steve Sande has written several titles for the Take Control series.
TUAW Tip: Fixing syncing between iPhone and iPhoto '08
This is a pretty selfish tip, because this issue has happened to me personally a few different times, and despite my many searches around the 'net, I've never found a quick, simple solution. So here you go: my suffering can be your gain.Basically, iPhoto '08 and the iPhone don't always play nice -- sometimes, you'll take a bunch of pictures on your iPhone, bring them back to sync up with iPhoto '08, and whoops, iPhoto doesn't see them at all. You can see them on your iPhone, but iPhoto's "Import All" button is greyed out, and they're not showing on your screen (sometimes, I've gotten dotted lines where the pictures are -- I think this all has something to do with a corrupted cache that iPhoto keeps of what's on the iPhone). Fortunately, though it's frustrating, there's an easy fix. Open up Image Capture (you can find it in Spotlight or even Quicksilver if you swing that way) with your iPhone connected, hit the "Devices" menu item, and then "Browse Devices." You'll get a screen just like the one above, with your iPhone's name instead of mine.Uncheck the "Connected" box, and then recheck it, and boom. Image Capture, and thus iPhoto, will see all of your pictures and happily upload them. Is it voodoo? Sure -- we still don't know why iPhoto loses its place every once in a while (like I said, I'm thinking a corrupted cache somewhere along the line). But it works.
Turn off Airplane Mode before updating your iPhone firmware
I finally updated my iPhone to 2.2.1 today, and after a reboot I got the screen that says it needs to verify or authenticate the SIM card. Unfortunately, that failed because, while I do have a SIM card in there, I do not have AT&T service -- and I had the cell radio turned off. My iPhone is never used as a phone (I don't have T-Mobile in my area, so even unlocking it would be useless). I wound up restoring the iPhone, which took a couple of hours, but apparently there's a better way.Danny Goodman on the Apple Discussion boards posts this "2.2.1 Upgrade and SIM Error (and Solution)" tip. My advice? Always turn off Airplane Mode before applying a firmware update. The phone wants to access the radio hardware during the upgrade, it seems, and disabling the cell radio makes this impossible. Thus, I was locked out of my phone for several hours today. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon this tip about 5 minutes after I started the restore process.
Spiritual Guidance: 4 different ways to diagnose your healer
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Today Matticus checks out common problems healers run into that stall them from being effective. Every healer in their life time will experience a situation gone bad where they try to figure out what went wrong. It usually goes something like this: "What's the problem?" "Lack of heals." "Okay, more heals please!" If I had a copper every time I heard that phrase, I would have enough for a mammoth by now. After every wipe or death, the first person that gets blamed is the healer. Big props to all of you right now no matter what class you are for sticking through it and helping your friends, guilds and raids out. I know I put up with a lot of stuff when crap hits the fan.
Friday Favorite: Mac HelpMate
I'll open this Friday Favorite with a caveat -- Mac HelpMate is not an app that just anyone is going to want to license. However, if you're a Mac consultant and/or do system support for many Mac users, this is an application you should consider. Mac HelpMate is the brainchild of Dean Shavit, an Apple Certified System Administrator based in Chicago, Illinois. Dean's goal in producing Mac HelpMate was to eliminate many of the issues that Mac support professionals deal with when trying to perform remote support tasks for their clients. What are those issues? Usually, they consist of trying to reach the end user's network through a maze of firewalls and routers. For example, one of the major issues with Apple's Back To My Mac remote access and control technology is that it doesn't work with many cable or DSL modems that don't support UPnP (Universal Plug-and-Play) or NAT-PMP (NAT - Port Mapping Protocol). Mac HelpMate provides zero-configuration remote access through a proxy server run by Shavit's company, eliminating the hassles of trying to talk clients through configuration of their Macs and network hardware.
MacBook Pro tip: resetting SMC saved my day
Here's a timely tip if the battery on your Intel based Mac laptop seems to be operating at less than optimum performance.The other day I took my MacBook Pro off the charger and was surprised to see only an hour and 40 minutes of run time, even though the battery was fully charged and only a few months old. It didn't seem right, and I went immediately on the web to make a Genius appointment at our local Apple Store. Then I did a little digging around Apple support documents and found one that seemed promising. Was it possible I needed to reset the SMC (System Management Controller)? Well, dutifully following the instructions, I shut down my laptop, removed the power cord and unhooked the battery. I held down the power button for 5 seconds, put the power cord back on, and inserted the battery. Surprise surprise, my computer started up and showed about 4 hours of time left on the battery when I went back off the charger. Better still, it really did hold up for that amount of time, so things were back to normal. I canceled my Genius appointment and spent the day congratulating myself for finding the tip, and getting my battery back in shape.The SMC is a chip on the motherboard that can lose its way, and in my case it needed a little kick to get itself sorted out. This chip has been the focus of some controversy in the past, and Apple has updated the SMC firmware repeatedly. Anyway, this fix worked for me -- might work for you. Here's the link to the Apple Support Document. There are instructions for the Intel MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and the new MacBook Air. Be there or be square.
"Utility of last resort" AppleJack updated for Leopard compatibility
You may sincerely wish never to need it, but if you run into a situation where your Mac refuses to boot fully to the Finder and you don't have any boot-capable utilities to tackle the problem, Kristofer Widholm's AppleJack is probably your best friend in the trenches. The single-user-mode tool is only available if you start your machine while holding down Cmd-S to boot to the command line (as per Dave's tip from yesterday), but once there it streamlines the process of checking your disk for errors, repairing permissions, cleaning caches, zapping corrupt preference files, and deleting leftover virtual memory swap data. You could do most of this yourself via a series of commands, but AppleJack is a) much, much simpler and b) completely free and open source.For a long while it didn't look as though AppleJack would make the leap from Tiger to Leopard, as Mac OS X 10.5 made some key changes that broke AppleJack's functionality (specifically, the 'id' command didn't work, and the /etc/rc file was removed). Developer Steve Anthony jumped into the project this summer and was able to code around the Leopard-specific problems, finally giving us back our beloved AppleJack in version 1.5. Let's all raise a glass of the original Jersey Lightning to Kristofer and Steve for their work on behalf of Mac troubleshooters everywhere.
Leopard Graphics Update does a de-rez on external displays
Imagine the scary, Sarkian voice of David Warner intoning "You will be subject to immediate de-resolution" and you'll know how a cluster of Leopard-using laptop owners (including yours truly) are feeling after getting bitten by a problem in the Leopard Graphics Update. You can see the rundown over at MacFixIt; the symptom is that after a restart or crash, the previously-happy external display is registered by the OS as a replica of the internal LCD, limited to the same 1400x900 resolution (in the case of the MacBook Pro 15" I'm using) as the built-in display. Custom calibrations and other display-specific tweaks are also nowhere to be found.The usual first steps to troubleshooting display issues -- unplug/replug, "Detect Displays," sleep and wake the laptop -- were fruitless. For me, even the heroic measures of a PRAM reset and deleting the com.apple.displays plist from the ByHost preferences folder didn't make a dent. Switching from a DVI to VGA cable left me with only a secondary screen on the laptop, sans menu bar, and the usual Cmd-F2 to trigger a display detect did nothing at all. How aggravating!Still, one of the reasons I heart MacFixIt is because there's usually an offbeat (not to say wacky) workaround in the mix when a problem comes on the radar. In this case, the suggestion that made me go "Wha? Nah!" was to power on the laptop, immediately close the lid (with external display still attached) and wait for the machine to boot completely. I tried it; lo and behold, the external display is now recognized correctly, and when the machine is slept and awakened or "Detect Displays" is triggered, everything behaves as expected.Sometimes, when the weirdest possible fix is the one that works, you just have to put the laptop down and slowly back away.
Confirmed: iTunes 7.6 needed for some successful 1.1.3 upgrades
A heads-up for those who are struggling to get iPhones updated: If you've tried upgrading your iPhone or iPod touch to 1.1.3 and are getting mysterious errors that keep you from finishing the upgrade or restore process, make sure you're already running iTunes 7.6. I'm hearing reports from various parties that pre-7.6 iTunes installations will may fail to properly upgrade iPhones and touches. After installing the newer software, the upgrades begin to work properly. iTunes 7.6 is available in Software Update or directly from Apple.Update: It looks like there are 1.1.3 successes on both Mac and Windows without 7.6. If you do get the update error, go ahead and upgrade but as reader responses are showing, you may not need to upgrade beforehand.Update 2: The specific errors you may encounter are 1603 and 1604. If you get these errors, update to 7.6, and if possible reboot both iPhone and your computer.
Gefen's TV Signal Generator for HDMI helps you troubleshoot
Unless you redo your entire home theater setup every quarter or so, we doubt the average joe / jane will really need to snap up one of Gefen's TV Signal Generator for HDMIs, but custom installers should find plenty to love here. This handy box allows for a myriad tests to be performed on HDMI connections (or DVI with the appropriate adapter), including HDCP verification, three audio testing signals, a sine-wave formation and 35 timing settings. All of the tests are accessible through the unit's top-mounted LCD, and if you're really eager to get your feet wet, you can even utilize a Windows-based application for "extra timing and programming controls, including reading / writing of EDID and favorite timing modes for the auto scroll feature." Notably, the unit also comes with supplemental RCA and TOSlink audio inputs, supports SD and HD formats and even plays nice with PAL and NTSC -- but being so in the know will set you back a stiff $699. Click on for a few more looks.
Help with USB problems
I have found that strange USB problems creep up occasionally, often with no obvious cause (see, for instance, this week's Ask TUAW comments). I myself have a USB hard drive that sometimes just randomly disappears from my desktop and I have heard quite a few other folks report similar problems. Well MacFixIt has a nice tutorial up that offers some good suggestions from the obvious (unplug and replug) to the not so obvious (replace the relevant kernel extensions). So if you've ever had USB problems, this would be a good one to file away for future reference.[via MacVolPlace]
iPhone Troubleshooting: How to Restart, quit frozen apps and Reset iPhone
I'm starting to think there is some sort of bad luck attached to my iTunes Store account, as tonight I experienced the third iTunes Store song that completely locked up an iPod - only this time it was my iPhone. While listening to 'Again with the Subtleties' from the Yppah album You Are Beautiful At All Times (US iTunes link) in my iPhone's iPod app, the phone completely locked up at the end of the track with an almost-faded out display. What was worse, the iPhone became completely unresponsive - the display wouldn't accept any of my taps, and even the external buttons were ignored. Momentarily wishing I could simply yank the battery to cut the power and reset the phone, I realized Apple must have some sort of a contingency in place for lock-ups like these.Fortunately, I was right: The iPhone troubleshooting section of Apple's main iPhone support site contains a walkthrough for situations like this, complete with instructions on how to restart the phone, force quit a frozen app or reset the phone in cases like mine where it has completely locked up. Here are these steps in a nutshell: Restart your iPhone: Most people probably already know how to do this, but just in case, you can simply hold the sleep/wake button on the top for a few seconds to bring up a red slider at the top of the display which allows you to power off the phone. Quit a frozen iPhone app: I know it's a crazy thought, but it is entirely possible that Apple's wondrous iPhone apps can lock up from time to time. In this case, simply hold the Home button when in the app for about 6 seconds to kill the app. You should be able to jump back into the app without restarting the phone itself. Reset your iPhone: Note that this is not Restoring your iPhone; that's the button in iTunes that wipes the iPhone and all your information on it. Resetting an iPhone is nothing more than a hard reset or a forced reboot - you're simply cutting the power and making it reboot. To do this, hold the sleep/wake button and Home buttons simultaneously for a few seconds; the display will quickly wipe itself and you should see the black background and white Apple logo, signifying a reset well done. Fortunately, that reset fixed my problem and I'm jamming again with my iPhone as I write this. Still, you can be sure that I'll ping iTunes support to find out what's going on with these files, as this is the third one I've downloaded from the iTS that's caused an iPod to stop dead in its tracks. Anyone else experience something like this? You know where to sound off.
Does your iPhone have dead or stuck pixels?
Dr. Macenstein suggests that now is the time to act. He writes (and he is a he, right--it's not a Frau Doctor Macenstein?) that Apple Store Genius say there's currently no official stuck pixel policy for iPhones (while there are official policies in place for monitors and laptops). If your iPhone suffers from a bad pixel or two, you'll want to bring yours in and get a replacement asap, i.e. before an official policy rears its ugly head. The article tells you how to check your iPhone for pixel problems by adjusting your iPhone display brightness.
Wii having problems with 480p output?
A thread over at the Nintendo of America forums has highlighted a potential problem with the Nintendo Wii's output of 480p signals using component cables. Over a dozen members have reported blank and flickering screens on a range of televisions from 30" Toshiba CRTs right up to 65" Sony XBR LCD TVs. The type of cable isn't limited to third party solutions from the likes of Mad Catz, Psyclone, and Joytech either: several reports indicate that the standard Nintendo component cable also exhibits the problem (no word on whether DIY will save you). Strangely, the problem -- which Tharealfofo states is "like nothing is connected" -- occurs in similar sections of certain games and applications: several forum members have mentioned that the screen goes blank during specific sections of Zelda, the Wii Channel, and in the Opera browser. Switching to 480i output in nearly all cases fixes the problem. The broad mix of configurations that are affected suggests that the problem is the Wii itself, so hopefully Nintendo will issue some form of update in the not too distant future. In the meantime, feel free to sound off in the comments about how being forced to view your games with interlacing is a breach of your fundamental human rights.[Thanks, Galls]
Zinio offers fix for QuickTime + Flash quirk in their magazines
Zinio, if you aren't familiar, offers magazines in digital format (yes, with DRM), many of them with rich media like embedded movies right in the pages, for Mac and PC. They have quite a selection and they've been around for a few years now, but apparently their latest version (released around the dawn of time) is suffering a quirk due to Apple changing the way QuickTime renders Flash with the latest QuickTime 7.1.3 update, causing embedded rich media to misbehave.Fortunately, they've issued a fix via email, and it goes a little something like this: Close the Zinio Reader, if open Go to the QuickTime pane in System Preferences In the Advanced tab, check 'Enable Flash' After that simple process you should be able to return to your regularly scheduled, though in my opinion ridiculously overpriced, reading.This fix, by the way, is also how you enable iTunes 7 to play interactive booklets from the iTunes Store according to this Apple KB article.
Apple issues support doc for wonky AirPort performance on Intel Macs
Sketchy AirPort performance has been bugging me for weeks, probably over a month now, and I've been going through all forms of troubleshooting with my AirPort Express trying to squash the issue, but to no avail. My MacBook and iMac drop their Wi-Fi connection seemingly at random, sometimes right in the middle of Unreal online, and never regain it unless I manually re-select the network. I've been following the typical methods of changing channels on the APE, reducing range and using Interference Robustness - but it's all been for naught.Now, Apple has released a support document that might provide a solution for those like me who are experiencing less-than-stellar AirPort reliability and connectivity with their Intel Macs. The document specifies that these issues are related to the use of WPA2 and upgrading to 10.4.8, and I can't offer any feedback just yet as to whether my problem has been solved, but this doc is at least a step in a troubleshooting direction other than 'pull out more hair.' Feel free to share your experiences and any solutions in the comments.[via HardMac]
Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.0
Apple has issued an EFI Firmware Update 1.0 which "fixes several Boot Camp and start up issues on Mac Pro computers." We've been hearing about these problems for a little while now, so here's hoping this 1.8MB update can let Mac Pro + XP owners sleep a little better at night. The updater requires Mac OS X 10.4.7 and is available here.Thanks Robert
