Overheating iMac

 A few years back I did something silly even though I knew I should not do it.  I had a CRT iMac in my room that didn't have a seperate monitor switch and I wanted to get some sleep.  Because the display was too bright for me to get to sleep, I covered the iMac with a couple of towels and of course it overheated and would not turn back on.  I then searched Apple's knowledgebase and it told me to open up the unit and find a red PMU (Power Management Unit) button to reset the motherboard.  I did this and all was fine, thank God!

Printing from Parallels Desktop

Last month I installed Windows 7 in Parallels Desktop on my mac but I could not print anything.  I even installed the correct driver from my CD to no avail.  Then I remembered that I had to configure Parallels Desktop itself.  The instructions on how to configure it are below:

SOLUTION:

• Look at the bottom of the window to the right and you'll see a printer icon.
• Select it and now simply choose your printer in the pull-down menu.

Notice the printer icon between the floppy and speaker icons.  Click on image  to make it larger

Red light, green light

A few nights ago I was watching TV then I noticed my Nintendo WII's power light was red.  I thought there was a problem with the console, but looking in the manual told me that WIIconnect was just simply off.

The status lights are as follows:

You can download the manual from Nintendo's website here.

Virtual Switch Networking

For a while now I've been having an error message every time I launch Virtual PC for Mac.  I really never really looked into it because I've never had any actual problema with the software.  After I started this class I decided I would finally look for solutions for these problems.  The problem I am referring to is Virtual Switch Networking not being able to start (the error code it also gave me was A1004).  It was yesterday when I did a search on code: A1004 and it told me to upgrade the software to 7.0.2 (I have 7.0 installed).


There is now a newer update (7.0.3) which is now installed.  All is now fine

Good ol' Bob

This post actually comes from one of my A+ assignments

Windows 98 - Part 1

1. Create a Windows 98 boot disk -- Don
2. Setting up hard disk -- Done
3. Format hard disk -- Done
4. Install Windows 98 -- Done 
5. Name computer and Organization: Sean and MATC -- Done
6. Cancel Rescue disk -- Done
7. Remove floppy disks from drive 'A' -- Done
8. No network Password -- Done

     9-11.  Generic graphics driver found: Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA) found.

               SOLUTION:    • Make sure Windows 98 CD is still in the drive

                                         • Click on the Start menu and select Add/Remove Programs and make sure you also search in the Drivers folder

                                         • Find the Matrox 6200 driver in the list.  click OK

Windows 98 - Part 2

Helping out "Good ol' Bob"

1. Bob wants his computer networked to MATCs LAN so he can access the internet for a project.

                SOLUTION:    • Make sure Windows 98 CD is still in the drive

                                           • Go to the Start menu then click on Control Panel

                                           • Click on Add or Remove Programs

                                           • Click on Add/Remove Windows Components in the sidebar to the left

                                           • Make sure Networking Services is checked.  Click Next

     2.  Bob wants the Freecell game installed on his machine, but it's not their.

                SOLUTION:    • Click on the Start menu and select Control Panel

                                           • Click on Add or Remove Programs

                                           • Click on Accessories and Utilities  and click the Details... button

                                           • Make sure Games is checked.  This will add all the games to your          computer.  If you only want Freecell, double click on Games and only checkmark Freecell

                                           • Click OK

    3.  Bob wants to increase the resolution of the screen

                SOLUTION:     • Click the Start menu and select Control Panel

                                           • Double-click on Display

                                           • Click on the Settings tab

    4.  Bob wants to be able to save images in the Paint aqpplication to the ".jpg" or ".gif" format.

               SOLUTION:      • First do a search on your computer for 2 files called "jpegim32.flt" and "gifimp32.flt".  If you cannot find these files then you can download the Officce Converter Pack from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/212265 (the file is called Oconvpck.exe package)

Release and Renew

I was in mt Network Communications class last week and a student had no internet connection because the Ethernet cable was unplugged.  She then plugged the cable back into the jack to no avail.  I took a look at it and performed the following steps and all was fine:

SOLUTION:

• Go to the start menu and click on Run...
• type cmd and at the DOS prompt, type ipconfig /release
• Now type ipconfig /renew

All was fine

Update: for Macs and other Linux based operating systems. the command is:

sudo ifconfig en1 down
sudo ifconfig en1 up

For the wired interface, replace en1 with en0.

You can also create an alias of these two commands by visiting Terminal and input this command:

alias renew="sudo ipconfig set en0 BOOTP && sudo ipconfig set en0 DHCP"

So then you just have one command called renew that will release and renew your DHCP

For a graphical way of doing this:

Open System Preferences
Click on Network
Click on Advanced...
Click on the TCP/IP tab in the bar across the top
Finally, click on Renew DHCP Lease

Adobe's download manager

So today I went into my console (where you can find system wide error message on Mac OS X) and found all these errors pertaining to a particular Property List named "com.akamai.client.plist".  Before searching the internet, I Spotlighted my compter but came up empty.  I then searched com.akamai.client.plist on the internet and found that this file belongs to Adobe's download manager, which gets downloaded when you download any Adobe software.  To get rid of this file (and all those pesky errors), follow the steps below:


SOLUTION:

• Go back to Adobe.com
• Download ANY trial software title
• stop download at anytime and close download manager window
• open terminal from Applications > Utilities
• now type in /Applications/Akamai/admintool uninstall -force and wait for the deletion to get completed

Not a fan of Phishing

My mom got an eMail last Tuesday from her cousin claiming that she sent my mom a tiny YouTube video.  All she had to do was click on a clink to view it.  When she click on it she was taken to a website that wanted her to enter her mobile number.  My mom then asked me about the suspicious page and I advised her that it was a phishing email that she got.  I then looked at the From header and did a search for "myfanbox.com" (it was from the myfanbox domain).  I found out that is one of the sleaziest phishing sites around

So, if you ever get an email from fanbox, or any other site asking for personal information,  please mark it as spam and delete it

Reading layout view

My sister emailed herself an assignment that she was working on in Microsoft Word for Windows that was in 'reading layout view'.  She asked me how to turn that view off on my Mac so I told her it was probably in 'Print Preview' mode.  I then found out that was not the case.  I then went on the web to search for this feature on the mac only to find out this feature does not exist on the Mac's version of Microsoft Word (Word 2004 or Word 2008).  Read my workaround below:

SOLUTION:     • In Microsoft Word 2004 or Word 2008 go to the file menu and select 'Print Preview'
                           • a window will open up.  Now click on the multiple pages icon and make sure you choose a 2 x 2 layout or 1 x 2 layout.  You now have an easy to read 'book' layout.