Ask Jacob

I had no idea that the playlist location feature existed.. It took me some time and an iTunes update later to find it, but here is how you get to it. In iTunes 7, right click or hold down the “Control” key and click on the song file. In the pop out menu look for “Show in Playlist.” Mousing over that will show you the playlists that that song file is in. Also above the “Show in Playlist” is “Add to Playlist” which will let you add that song to any existing playlist without dragging the song file.I think that is what you were looking for.

Finding the right boot discs that originally shipped with your computer can be difficult. Macs need to have specific boot discs and even little differences will cause the problem you are having. PowerMax sells boot discs but we only do it over the phone because we have to get detailed info about your computer in order to find the right version. Another option you may want to consider is buying a full copy of OS 10.4 Tiger (http://www.powermax.com/product/Mac_OS_X_Tiger_Version_10.4.6/j93916.html).. That will give you a disc to boot up off of to change your passwords and a useful OS upgrade.Hope that solves it.

The program you are looking for is The Missing Sync (http://www.markspace.com). I have not used it but have heard rave reviews. They support Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and the Sony PSP. It should solve your problems for a reasonable price of $39.95.I hope it is what you are looking for.

The most recent OS that will work on your iMacs is 10.3, which will come with the Safari web browser, although you may also want to use the Firefox browser. In order to run Mac OS X 10.3 you will have to upgrade your RAM up to 256MB. On those computers it would be easer to get help installing RAM from a local service center than doing it yourself. You can do it but tray-loading CD iMacs are a little difficult to open up. Here is a link to instructions on installing RAM (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43012).Have fun with those upgraded iMacs.

X11 is offered as an optional install on the OS X install discs. You can probably track down the individual installer on the disc but I would recommend booting off the install disc and selecting the X11 installation in the “Customize” section. From the same area you can unselect all the installers that you don’t need. If you are still having problems after that, you may want to do a custom “Archive and Install” from the discs. This is done from the “Options” section when you select your hard drive and just before you get to the “Customize” section. After everything is installed it should be a simple matter of installing the Application and launching it.With Open Office you must make sure you have the correct version for your Mac’s processor. http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/index.html. Choose the Intel-based download for your Mac Pro from this link. After that, everything should work just fine. I encourage you to also install the Developers Tools, which can help with other aspects of porting Linux/Unix based applications.Let me know how it works.

I think you may have accidentally turned on a Universal Access feature, and that’s what is causing your problems. Go to the System Preferences and click on Universal Access. Now click on the mouse tab and turn off “Mouse Keys.” Unless you use Universal Access you should make sure all settings are marked as “off.”Hope that solves it.

Having a single wireless network comprised of multiple base-stations is one of the things that sets Apple wireless products apart from the rest. What you will want to do is set up “WDS” in your network. WDS stands for Wireless Distribution System and it’s what allows one base station to act as the primary connection to the internet, and every other base station in range to act as a repeater. With the latest version of Airport Admin Utility, connect to the Extreme base station. Click on the WDS tab. Check the checkbox next to “Enable this base station as a WDS” and set it to be the “main base station.” Next, select the “+” button to add your Express base station. It will have to be within 150 feet for this to work. Select your Express and then click the Update button. After everything resets, your two base stations will act as one network and each base station can support a printer. This is the best way to setup multiple base stations and you can keep adding Express base stations to the network as your needs grow.Have fun.Jacob Loeb

The program you want to use for your AVI files is the versatile and free VLC (http://www.videolan.org/). It is a cross-platform “Swiss Arm Knife” media player. Give VLC a try and see if it solves your playback problems. Your keyboard, on the other hand, may need a trip to the service center see if the key is properly installed and if needed, get replaced.For word processing you have many options. You already have TextEdit in your applications folder. As a basic word processor TextEdit can type formatted text and spell check for you. If you want to use MS Word it is available for the Mac and has long been a standard of the business world. Apple’s own Pages is also a very good word processor, without some of the complications and hitches Word has. There are also less expensive yet capable word processors like Mariner Write (http://www.marinersoftware.com). Try some of those options; you truly don’t need your PC any longer.Jacob Loeb

There are a few things to try and it may be a simple fix. The first standard Mac fix with almost anything is to zap the PRAM. This is done by holding down the “Option,” “Command/Apple,” “P,” and “R” keys on start up. Hold them down until you hear four chimes from the Mac. Then see what you get. If this doesn’t fix anything, then try reinstalling the OS, any Mac OS will do. If the computer will not boot of an install CD or the hard drive, then it is a good idea to try and reset the Power Manager on your computer. Unplug the power and open the case. Locate and remove the PRAM battery. Near the battery is a small button 1/16th of an inch in size, press it once. Put the battery back and plug in the power cord. Boot it up and see what you get. If you are still having problems see if your friend still has the original G3 processor. If he does you are going to want to reinstall it and see if it was an issue with the processor upgrade not being compatible with OS X 10.2.Good luck and let me know how it works out.Jacob Loeb

A flashing folder indicates that your Mac can’t find a bootable system. When you hold down the Option key on startup most modern Macs will show a Boot loader. That is the blue screen with the two buttons you described. If you had a good hard drive with an OS installed, it would be displayed there as a button to click on. You should also be able to see any retail OS X install discs or Restore discs if it was in the optical drive. The OS install disc needs to have been released after the original sale date of your G4 in order to boot it. If you know the OS install discs will boot your computer but it does not show up in the boot loader then you may have a problem with the PATA bus.A way to test the hardware is by using a bootable FireWire drive. Most people do not have access to one but if you have another Mac with a current OS then you can use that. Boot up your good Mac holding down the “T” key. When the screen shows a blue background with a yellow FireWire symbol then you can connect the two Macs with a 6 pin FireWire cable. Reboot the sick Mac with the Option key held down. In the boot loader, select the good Mac’s hard drive and press the forward arrow. When you get to a desktop you will be able to use Disk Utility to locate and fix the internal hard drive. If you cannot see the drive it would indicate a hardware failure and either the hard drive needs to be replaced or more serious service work needs to be done.I hope this gets you closer to reviving your G4.Jacob Loeb

BillI honestly have not been a strong supporter of Norton or McAfee products. They do offer virus protection and Spyware-vulnerability scanning, but their benefits have never outweighed the problems they cause. Mac OS X 10.3.9 has a great firewall built in, and the best protection is to be connected to the Internet through a network router. If you have a wired router or a wireless base station you are going to be safe and the OS X firewall will be more protection on top of that. My recommendation would be to turn off the firewall and other active parts of Norton and turn on the OS X firewall in the “Sharing” System Preferences.To keep using Norton’s firewall you are going to need to go into the preferences and adjust your notification levels. It sounds like it is notifying you about every application’s attempt to connect to the Internet. You are going to need to tell Norton that your applications are allowed outbound connections.Hope that helpsJacob Loeb

The best way to move forward with your genealogy work is to upgrade to an OS X native application. You are in luck that your old program saved your data in the Personal Ancestral File (PAF) format. That is still the standard file format for genealogy programs and the replacement program I would recommend, Reunion 8, supports it. (http://www.powermax.com/product/Reunion_8_for_Mac_OSX/ms-125358.html) After moving your data file from the Cube to your new iMac, you will be able import that data into Reunion 8. It works on Intel and PowerPC Macs and should last you through many more upgrades into the future.That should get you back to work. Good luck.Jacob Loeb

I had trouble recreating this here on my system. Even when I used “Save As” instead of “Save” it retained the original creation date. There is a possibility that this problem could be caused by saving to a PC formatted drive. Both NTFS and FAT32 drives have problems with Mac file dates. To check the format of the drive, click on it once and push the Apple key and “I” key at the same time. Under the “General” section you want to look for the “Format” entry. That will tell you what its format is. Mac OS Extended is what you want to see for Mac only drives. If you see something without “Mac OS Extended” in it, you will want to backup the data and reformat from Disk Utility. However, only reformat if this is just used for Mac-only data, sharing the drive with Windows PCs requires different formatting. Hope that gets you a little further, let me know how it works out.

The magazine article you read has some truth to it. Upgrading is just that, taking all that was old and just adding to it. A clean installation will ignore your old system files and write new ones, often replacing damaged files. Upgrading damaged files can make a small problem bigger, so a clean “Archive and Install” is recommended. You can do an “Archive and Install” at any time without losing your personal information. This is how you do it. First boot up off the Mac OS install disc. Before you began installation, you will want to repair disk permissions. Under the “Utilities” menu on the install disc is the application “Disk Utility.” Launch that and select your hard drive from the left hand side. On the right hand side click the button called “Repair Disk Permissions.” After it finishes up, which can take a little time, quit Disk Utility. Then start with the installation. At the point you are asked to select the installation destination disk, you want to click on the “Options” button after you select your hard drive. In Options you will select “Archive and Install.” Make sure that the preserve network settings and user data checkbox is checked. Then proceed with the installation as normal. When you are done you will need to run Software Update to bring you back up to the latest version of your OS. My gut tells me this will fix those slow system issues you are having. Remember too, you should always back up any important files before you do this kind of OS installation.

I would recommend using a utility to upgrade the DVR-110D firmware. The only one I know about for the Mac is “DVRFlash,” currently at version 2.2. It is found here: http://lasvegas.rpc1.org/. DVRFlash is a nice Terminal utility that will flash your drive with the latest firmware. You will need to find out your drive’s firmware by going to the System Profiler and looking at the drives “Revision:” number. If it is less than version 1.37, then update. I would also suggest upgrading to OS 10.4.3 for the best compatibility. That way you will not lose any updates you have done and will get the latest drivers from Apple for upgraded hardware.

Good luck, and be sure to read the DVRFlash instructions.

It can be hard to tell for sure. My suspicion is that this could have been a “Disk Permissions” error. I have seen this happen before when a significant OS upgrade is performed on a well-used hard drive. Try launching Disk Utility and repair the Disk Permissions first and then install. If this happened during a point release upgrade (i.e. 10.3.8 to 10.3.9) then in addition to repairing Disk Permissions make sure you are using the COMBO update version. This version of the OS update replaces the greatest number of files, which helps solve more software issues.

What you are experiencing with your shrinking OS partition is a common symptom that often goes unnoticed in the era of large hard drives. Mac OS X uses a portion of your hard drive to hold data that was in RAM but needs to be stored temporarily so it can load more information into RAM. What OS X does is create invisible files called Swap Files. Each time it runs out of space in a Swap File it makes a new one. When you restart your computer it erases all your old swap file… hopefully. The more RAM you have the more Swap File space gets used. If after restart your drive is still full than repairing disk permissions from Disk Utility and then restarting could help.

As for changing your partition size without damaging data, it can be done. PC users have been able to change partition sizes for years with PartitionMagic. For the most part it is safe and effective but always back up your data whenever working on a hard drive. As for the Mac software I know of a couple but have not used them myself. I will mention them but you should evaluate the software for yourself.

DiskStudio – From MicroMat, which is a trusted company and the maker of TechTool Pro.

VolumeWorks – I do not know this company but it looks to be well liked product.

Let me know what you chose to use and how you like it.

There are several things that could be the cause of this problem. First thing to do would be boot up off the “Apple Hardware Test (AHT)” CD. Sometimes this is on the “Restore/Install” DVD. Insert the DVD and restart the computer holding down the “Option” key. You will see a blue screen with buttons indicating bootable volumes available. Chose the HST button and click on the right arrow. After it boots up to the test screen, run the test several times and see if it finds any faulty hardware. If it does not find anything then try reinstalling the OS off the “Restore/Install” DVD. Chose the Clean install option when installing. Now if that still has not solved the problem try exchanging the RAM to see if that helps. An Apple Authorized service center can help with the RAM tests if you have not installed any RAM yourself. If you have, Remove that first then see if the problem is fixed. Leave it out before you take it to a service center.

Let me know if this solves your problems and if you do not have it, I would recommend Apple Care for this computer.

You are right to question Retrospect’s performance and design. It is a processor hog and can require a lot of skill to set up. It’s an old application that has only received a minor face-lift for OS X. All that being said, it’s the only competent game in town in order to do what you want. An expanded Workgroup version of Retrospect, installed on the XServe, will be able to backup all your client eMacs in dated incremental segments. You can pick the date to restore, but still avoid filling the 250 GB hard drive with redundant data. I have asked around about alternatives but every other option costs more and is not quite what you need.

I have one hardware-based solution that could simplify the process and give you the added security of off site backups. “Broken Mirror” backups are used in many businesses to provide dated backups that can be stored off site. It will require a change in how your computer lab operates. You would need to setup “Portable Home Directory” services on the XServe. This would mean that the XServe would host all user data. Then you would need to create a RAID 1 or “Mirror” RAID set of that 250 GB hard drive. All the User accounts would be kept on that Mirrored RAID and always have the latest user data. Then when you want to create an archive copy of that data, you break the RAID 1 and remove one of those 250 GB hard drives. Then you replace it with a new 250 GB hard drive and repair the RAID 1. You can end up burning through a lot of drive modules this way but it will protect your data the best without the need for software backups.

It is probably best to use the imperfect Retrospect because of the alternatives’ cost and complication.

QuickTime Player is a free application. QuickTime Pro, however, costs $29.99 for a license. The free player can be found here. http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/mac.html Just uncheck the two checkboxes and click on the “Free Download NOW” button. If you had QuickTime Pro 5 or 6 before, then moving to QuickTime 7 will require you to upgrade at a price. Unless you need to create or reformat video content, then the free player should suite you just fine.

I have found very few problems with Mac OS 10.3.9 but I would recommend you do some drive maintenance before upgrading. Open the application Disk Utility found in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. From the left hand side of the Disk Utility select your hard drive. Then look for a button called “Repair Disk Permissions.” When you click on that button all your files will be checked for errors that could interfere with an OS installation. Those files will be fixed if problems are found and those fixes will be displayed in the box above the button. Quit Disk Utility after it is done repairing your disk permissions. Now you can upgrade your OS. I would recommend doing this every time before you do a big update.

Tiger has had some problems in its first few releases. Most copies sold now are at version 10.4.3 and are very stable. Of course you will need to upgrade further to 10.4.5, but 10.4.3 and up are all good versions of Mac OS X.

A few things may be causing this to happen so I am going to have you try three things. First click on your desktop once. Then hold down the “Control” key and click again without releasing the mouse button. A menu window will appear next to the pointer. Select “Show View Options” from the menu. A small window will open. Towards the bottom of the window will be a checkbox labeled “Keep arranged by” with a pull down menu below it. Check the checkbox and change the pull down menu to “Kind.”

Next, from the same window check your icon and font size. The icon should be about 40X40 and the text should be 12 pt. You may want to adjust the size of both the icon and text to see if those are affecting your system.

Lastly check to see that your hard drive’s name has no extra spaces. To do this, click once on the hard drive icon and once again on the name of the hard drive. The hard drive name will be highlighted meaning you can edit it. Retype the hard drive’s name as you like it to appear. Click any place on the desktop when done.

One of those three things should fix your problem.

I once read a little tip on this that seems to help a slow HelpViewer. The tip is to create a network location without any ports. This can help by preventing HelpViewer from looking at Apple’s site for additional information. HelpViewer will try to connect to Apple.com to check for relevant support articles that match your question. Often this outbound Internet connection is what slows down HelpViewer.

Here is how you make this new, port-less, location. Open System Preferences and click on “Network.” From the “Location:” pull down menu select “New Location…” and name it “Off-Line.” Now from the “Show:” pull down menu select “Network Port Configurations” and uncheck every checkbox. Click the “Apply Now” button and you are now disconnected from the Internet. Close the preference window. You will now be able to switch network locations from the Apple Menu. Click on the Blue Apple and mouse down to “Location” and in the pop out menu will be your locations. Switch back to your previous location, the default location is called “Automatic.” Now you should be connected to the Internet again.

Next time HelpViewer is painfully slow, just try a quick location change to “Off-Line” and see if HelpViewer speeds up.

You should have no problem jumping to Tiger. You will want to have 512MB of memory and you need to repair your disk permissions before you install. I would always recommend backing up your files before upgrading your OS a full version, even if for no other reason than it gives you incentive to back up, which you need to be doing anyway. After you upgrade, you should look for software updates to all your applications in case they have some compatibility fixes for Tiger.

Other than that, upgrade away!

Playing around with file permissions can get you into trouble, as you are now finding out. When you change the permissions on a volume (aka a partition) it is going to be near impossible for you to recover. That is the “you” that’s the user currently logged into the computer. What you need to do is become bigger than “you” are in terms of user privileges. And in the Mac OS X world “root” is bigger then anyone else. So lets enable root and get you logged in as the “God User.” From the /Applications/Utilities/ folder launch “NetInfo Manager.” From the Security menu click on “Authenticate…” and enter your administrator password. Now go back to the Security menu and click on “Enable Root User.” You will be warned about choosing a good password for root and then prompted to create that password. Make this a password that your kids are not going to guess but that you will not forget. Now logout from the blue Apple menu and you should see a new “Other” User option in the login window. Choose “Other” and enter “root” as the user name, and that new password you just made as the password. Now that you’re logged in as root, you should be able to see that missing partition and fix the permissions on it. Please use extreme caution when doing anything as Root. There are few limitations when logged in as Root so you can break your OS if you’re not careful. When you’re done, log back in as “you” and run a Repair of Disk Permissions from the Disk Utility to clean up your system.

Hope that brings your partitions back.