Reset your Mac's EFI Extensible Firmware Interface) password

So you're locked out of your mac because a firmware password has been set and you forgot it. Don't worry, there is hope and you have several options:

Firmware Password Utility: 

• Boot from OS X Recovery (Time Machine, USB, internet recovery, etc.) 
• Go to your Utilities Menu and choose Firmware Password Utility to either reset your password or to turn it off. 

Firmware Password Utility

 EFI Reset Tool (I also take no responsibility for any illegal use nor do I condone this). 

• Go here to read about the tool: http://hackaday.com/2013/02/26/mac-efi-pin-lock-brute-force-attack-unsuccessful/. Sometimes this method doesn't work and there is a reason. 

Reset PRAM/NVRAM three times:

• Add or remove a stick of ram. Obviously if you have one stick in, add one and if you have two in remove one. 
• Power on the mac and immediately press and hold command-option-P-R. 
• The system will restart with the ‘bong noise’, allow it to do this 3 times. On the third ‘bong’ you can let go of the keys. 
• The machine will now boot with a cleared password and reset PRAM/NVRAM. 
• You can shut down the machine and replace the original ram configuration. 

Hold in the power button:

• Press the power button for ten seconds until the front indicator flashes. 
• Keep holding the button till the mac starts up; this way your Mac EFI is reset. This will help in a lot of problems. 

If nothing works, I am afraid you will need to go to the Apple store and show proof of purchase before they reset the EFI for free. Here is a little more information on this topic.

Reset Internet Explorer to resolve problems

Last week a customer of mine was trying to open a favorite from his Desktop and an error popped up saying, "There was a problem sending the command to the program".  To fix this, just reset Internet Explore or click here to download the Fit It Application.

• Exit all programs, including Internet Explorer. 
• Open the Internet Options control Panel then click on the Advanced tab. 
• Under Reset Internet Explorer settings, click Reset. Then click Reset again.
• Click to select the Delete personal settings check box if you also want to remove browsing history, search providers, Accelerators, home pages, Tracking Protection, and ActiveX Filtering data.  It's probably safer to leave this unchecked
• When Internet Explorer finishes resetting the settings, click Close in the Reset Internet Explorer Settings dialog box. 
• Start Internet Explorer again.

Important: Reset Internet Explorer to its default configuration. This step will also disable any add-ons, plug-ins, or toolbars that are installed. Although this solution is quick, it also means that, if you want to use any of those add-ons in the future, they must be reinstalled.

If this doesn't fix the problem, you can type sfc /scannow in the Command Prompt as an administrator, which scans and verifies the versions of all protected system files after you restart your computer at the command prompt.

If you are still having problems, you may want to open the the Default Programs control panel and select Internet Explorer in the left sidebar.  Now click on Set This program as default.

You can also check to make sure that the shortcut is not being run as administrator. Right-click on the shortcut and choose Properties. Then go to the Compatibility tab and make sure the Run program as administrator box is not checked.

Here is a little more on the sfc command:

sfc [/scannow] [/scanonce] [/scanboot] [/revert] [/purgecache] [/cachesize=xParameters

/scannow : Scans all protected system files immediately.

/scanonce : Scans all protected system files once.

/scanboot : Scans all protected system files every time the computer is restarted.

/revert : Returns the scan to its default operation.

/purgecache : Purges the Windows File Protection file cache and scans all protected system files immediately.

/cachesize=x : Sets the size, in MB, of the Windows File Protection file cache.

/? : Displays help at the command prompt.

Notes:

• You must be logged on as a member of the Administrators group to run sfc.

• If sfc discovers that a protected file has been overwritten, it retrieves the correct version of the file from the %systemroot%\system32\dllcache folder, and then replaces the incorrect file. 

• If the %systemroot%\system32\dllcache folder becomes corrupt or unusable, use sfc /scannow, sfc /scanonce, or sfc /scanboot to repair the contents of the Dllcache directory.

See also Completely reset Safari to fix problems 

Sometimes uninstalling a driver is the simple solution

Two weeks ago I went out of town and my aunt's laptop's audio was very muffled and very echoed.  So, as the techie in the family, and after playing around with the settings for 3-4 minutes, I decided to uninstall the audio driver.  I then rebooted to let Windows Vista reinstall the missing driver and now all is hunky dory.

Here are the steps I took to uninstall the offending driver:

• Go into Device Manager by right-clicking on My Computer and by selecting Manage

This reminds me of another post that I wrote in my other blog describing the time when I was helping a customer a couple months ago who was watching movies on his computer and his volume kept muting.  It was later when we found out that he downloads a lot of files from Frostwire, which if you're not careful, can contain a lot of malware and seriously mess up your system

Gray screen instead of login screen

I was hoping you could help with my MacBook Pro issues. First, my left fan was grinding so of course i blew out the fan (they were dusty). The laptop was also getting hot. After login I would also be presented with a white screen and no login screen would show.

I did every troubleshooting technique possible from:

1. repairing permissions - all fixed

2. resetting PRAM - was advised to release after 7 chimes

3. ran Techtool Pro 6 - no problems, not even video (card, memory... nothing)

4. ran Onyx (kinda like CCleaner). I cleaned EVERYTHING

5. took to Apple Store and they ran diagnostics and everything checked out. The fans even checked out

6. I was advised that my Hard drive was failing, but the SMART passed

7. As a last resort, I backed up, erased and reinstalled Snow Leopard thinking it may just be a something I installed (driver or something) causing conflicts. I'm still getting the white screen.

This is the funny thing, I safe boot the laptop and I get the login screen and everything is hunky dory. This happens every time I safe boot (no white screen)

I have done extensive research and tried everything presented to me to no avail.

Scheduled powered events

If you want to find out when your mac is scheduled to wake up or power on because it's missing important events, such as recording television shows, launch Terminal.  Verify using this utility that these Events are getting set properly. There is a command-line tool that can be used to view the existing Events within your Mac's Power manager. To use this tool, launch the "Terminal" utility, located in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal, then enter the following command (you can copy/paste the line below) and press return:

pmset -g sched

The resulting output should look something like this:

Scheduled power events:
[0] wakeorpoweron at 08/05/09 19:56:00 by com.elgato.eyetv

If there are no Events listed here, then there may be a problem with the "Wakein" component, a small script that EyeTV uses to create Events. If there are other Events listed here, these can conflict with some older versions of EyeTV, which cause EyeTV not to place its own Events.

Note: Before you check out this component, you may want to restart your computer and retype pmset -g sched into Terminal. The output may now be there.

You can view the full help page here.

If you're like me, some of your information is in the cloud and some is on your machine, and you don't always remember what is where. That can make it frustrating when you try to use your favorite local search tool to find something. Isn't the whole point of search that you don't have to remember where you put things?

That's where Precipitate comes in. After you install Precipitate, you can use Spotlight to find files online (such as those in your Google Docs list) just as you would find files stored on your Mac. Then, you can open them in your browser with a single click. Once Precipitate is set up, it stays out of your way, regularly getting the latest contents of your documents automatically, so you'll never need to think about it — and if you have Lion or Mountain Lion with iCloud enabled, then you are truly on your your way to being fully organized!

Turn off startup programs to speed things up

If you have too many programs configured to startup at boot, this may slow down your computer.  This is especially true if you keep installing programs over the years.  Disabling startup programs can also help you isolate software conflicts you may be having.  I show you in this post how to disable these.

First, I'll show you how to do this on a Mac:

1. Go to the Apple Menu and choose System Preferences... (you can also click on System Preferences in the Dock, if it's there)

     2. In the System section, Click on Users and Groups

     3. Click on the Login Items tab and highlight the unwanted programs and click the minus button.

In Windows, follow the following instructions:

     1. Click on Start
     2. From the Start Menu Options choose Run
     3. Type “msconfig” without quotes and click okay. This will bring up System Configuration Utility
     4. System Configuration Utility >> Click the tab called Startup
     6. Now you can uncheck any programs that you do not want running upon startup
     7. Once you are done unchecking Click Okay and you will be prompted to restart your computer

Click this link to access a page to help you figure out what startup programs are necessary and not necessary.

Force key repeat

Staring with Lion Apple added a new "feature" to give you alternative characters when you hold down certain keys (this is equivalent to holding down the option key in previous versions of the OS).  To force key repeat, type in the following command in Terminal:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

You can also achieve this behavior via the Secrets Preference Pane, as illustrated below.

Constant Google popups

If you constantly get a popup that says, "To view this page, you must log in to this area on mail.google.com:443:" when logging into your Google account, follow the instructions below the illustration

open Keychain Access (Applications => Utilities => Keychain Access) Select Passwords on the left.
Delete your Gmail keychain.  Also, if you have any Google related extensions (Google Toolbar, Google Notifier, etc) and your password gets deleted, you may get this popup.

If you not want this behavior, delete your Google add-on.  If you have the Google toolbar installed, open your preferences in Safari and click on Extensions.  Click on Apps on the left and uncheck Gmail

Completely reset Safari to fix problems

If you are constantly having problems with Safari hanging or it just refuses to quit, as was in my case, you'll want to do a FULL reset.  You will be deleting a bunch of preference files, but don't worry, Safari will recreate all these files.  Just follow the instructions below:

Open Terminal - follow this path: Applications => Utilities => Terminal  and paste the commands following the screen shot then hit return.  These commands will save your Safari folder with a date stamp on your Desktop and delete several files.

mv ~/Library/Safari ~/Desktop/Safari-`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/Apple\ -\ Safari\ -\ Safari\ Extensions\ Gallery; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.WebKit.PluginProcess; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Cookies/Cookies.binarycookies; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/Apple\ -\ Safari\ -\ Safari\ Extensions\ Gallery; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.LSSharedFileList.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.RSS.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.WebFoundation.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.WebKit.PluginHost.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.WebKit.PluginProcess.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/PubSub/Database; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/com.apple.Safari.savedState

Change the default save location in Mountain Lion

The default save location for TextEdit (and other apps that can store documents on iCloud) is iCloud. It takes a few clicks if you want to expand the save dialog and save a file locally. There is no way to change this in the GUI, but if you run the following command in Terminal, this will set the default save location to On My Mac for all iCloud-compatible apps:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false

To change this back to the default, run this command: 

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool true

Update: you can also accomplish this through the Secrets preference pane

Click here to download the preference pane

Icons galore!

If you are looking for the perfect icon for your Mac then look no further than your CoreServices folder.  This folder holds every imaginable icon your Mac has to offer, and depending on which version Max OS X you're using, you will be able find 2000+!  My folder, for example, has 2,370 icons!  To get to all these icons all you have to do is:

• launch Preview
• Go to your MacintoshHD folder (this is your startup drive and you may have renamed it).
• Double-click the System folder
• Double-click the LIbrary folder
• Now look for the CoreServices folder

• Now drag that folder on top of the Preview icon that's on the Dock

As you can see, you may get presented with 2,300+ icons, which is great for getting the perfect icon.  Now you'll want to select the icon by enabling the Edit Toolbar, if it's not already.

• click on your View menu
• Now click on Show Edit Toolbar

Now select any selection tool you wish, Lasso Selection, for example on the left side of the Edit toolbar.

• Now drag your selection tool around the icon.  

Mac compatibility

I recently came across a great site for checking for compatibility of applications for new releases of the Mac operating system (Lion, Mountain Lion to even future versions).  The site in question is RoaringApps and recently added Devices section, in which you can check which of your (many) Apple computers will run the latest versions of OS X and iOS.

You can also update your Mac's firmware to make it more compatible and functional by clicking here.  My laptop's firmware, for instance, would be here.  Another example would be an an iMac I recently upgraded.

Microsoft Windows has an equivalent in a software download and you can download it here

Easily find your Mac's model number

Last week I was asked if there was an easier way to find your Mac's model.  There is, in fact, a very easy way.  Just follow these simple instructions:

• Locate the Apple Menu and option click About This Mac so it reads System Information...
• In the Hardware section, look for Model Identifier.

• Head on over to everymac.com and scroll down and make sure the By Identifier tab is open and click on Model Identifier.
• Now look for your Identifier in the list.  My iMac, for example, would be iMac12,1.  A friend I know has a laptop with an identifier of MacBookPro2,2

Note: you may have a version of MacOS X that has System Profiler instead of System Information.

You can also download an application equivalent of EveryMac.com called MacTracker. 

If you are on a Windows system, the utility you want is msinfo32.  Just click the Start menu and immediately type msinfo32.  After you press return, the utility will show up

Profile Watcher relentlessness

Scammers are all over the place and often relentless, as is the scammer who posted the following:

"WOW I cant believe that you can see who is viewing your Profile!
I just saw My Top 10 Profile and Photo Peekers and I am SHOCKED!!
You can also see WHO VIEWED YOUR PROFILE here -->"

This message has been seen on Facebook and as soon as the scammers see that they block the URL, they change it.  I just recently posted a different scam below.

Marketing Scams

Just got a SMS from (312) 508-3521 which reads BestBuy Cust #72568 You have won the $1000 Best Buy Card! Claim your prize Today www.tinyurl.com/9xrpjts. This is a scam! NEVER go to a site with a top level domain (after the www.) that doesn't specify the company name

more on this:

http://forums.bestbuy.com/t5/BestBuy-Com/Free-1-000-Best-Buy-GiftCard/td-p/273442/page/4

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Free-1-000-Best-Buy-Giftcard-Scams-Served-Via-SMS-275817.shtml

You can even search the internet on this topic

Repair manuals galore!

Ifixit.com is a the wikipedia.com equivalent of repair manuals.  This website has thousands of manuals and it's one of this site's purposes is to empower you to fix just about anything yourself.  The step-by-step illustrations are very crisp and clear.  To help you get the job done, the even sell tools and parts!

I recently had to blow out my MacBook Pro's left fan because it was making grinding noises and was dusty.  This website walked me all the the way through.  It even told me what size tools I needed!

Every Mac spec

There is a website called everymac.com that lists all the specifications of every mac ever made. It also has specs to every iPod, iPhone, iPad and Mac clone in the world, with technical, configuration, and pricing info. Get specs on every Mac, answer your Mac questions, compare Macs side-by-side, lookup Macs, and more!

Lion doesn't come on any physical media.  Instead, you have download it from Apple's servers from the Apple store.  What if you bought a Mac with Lion already installed and you desperately need the install DVD because your hard drive got hosed.  The following will give you instructions on how to burn your own install DVD.

1. Download Lion from the Mac App Store. The installer should show up in your Applications folder.
2. Right-click on the installer and hit "Show Package Contents". Navigate to Contents > SharedSupport and look for a file called "InstallESD.dmg".
3. Open up Disk Utility and drag the DMG file into the left-hand sidebar. If you're burning it to a DVD, insert your DVD, select the disk image in the sidebar, and hit the "Burn" button. Skip down to the last step to use it.
4. If you want to burn Lion to a USB flash drive, plug it in and click on it in the left-hand sidebar in Disk Utility. Go to the Partition tab and select "1 Partition" from the dropdown menu. Choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled) on the left.
5. Hit the Options button under the partition table and choose "GUID Partition Table". You'll need this to make the drive bootable on a Mac. Hit the Apply button when you're done to format your drive (note: it will erase everything on the drive).
6. Click on the "Restore" tab, choose the InstallESD.dmg file as the source and your flash drive as the destination. Hit the Apply button and it will create your bootable USB drive.
7. Reboot into OS X and hold the option key when you hear the startup chime. You can boot into your DVD or flash drive from there.

Exclude files and folders from Time Machine

I was asked if there were any default exclusions from Time Machine a while back.  While searching the internet, I came up with the following document:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<!-- paths we do not want to include in a system backup -->

<key>PathsExcluded</key>

<array>

/.Spotlight-V100 

/.Trashes 

/.fseventsd 

/.hotfiles.btree 

/Backups.backupdb 

/Desktop DB 

/Desktop DF 

/Network/Servers 

/Previous Systems 

/Users/Shared/SC Info 

/Users/Guest 

/dev 

/home 

/net 

/private/var/db/efw_cache 

/private/var/db/Spotlight <!-- old tiger location of the Spotlight db -->

/private/var/db/Spotlight-V100 <!-- old tiger location of the Spotlight db -->

</array>

<!-- paths where we need to capture top level folder to restore disk structure, but don't want to backup any contents -->

<key>ContentsExcluded</key>

<array>

/Volumes 

/Network 

/automount 

/.vol 

/tmp 

/cores 

/private/tmp 

/private/Network 

/private/tftpboot 

/private/var/automount 

/private/var/folders 

/private/var/run 

/private/var/tmp 

/private/var/vm 

/private/var/db/dhcpclient 

/private/var/db/fseventsd 

/Library/Caches 

/Library/Logs 

/System/Library/Caches 

/System/Library/Extensions/Caches 

</array>

<!-- paths where we need to capture entire subtree folder layout to restore disk structure, but don't want to backup contained files -->

<key>FileContentsExcluded</key>

<array>

/private/var/log 

/private/var/spool/cups 

         /private/var/spool/fax 

         /private/var/spool/uucp 

</array>

<!-- standard user paths we want to skip for each user (subpath relative to root of home directory) -->

<key>UserPathsExcluded</key>

<array>

Library/Application Support/SyncServices/data.version 

Library/Caches 

Library/Logs 

Library/Mail/Envelope Index 

Library/Mail/AvailableFeeds 

Library/Mirrors 

Library/PubSub/Database 

Library/PubSub/Downloads 

Library/PubSub/Feeds 

Library/Safari/Icons.db 

         Library/Safari/WebpageIcons.db 

Library/Safari/HistoryIndex.sk 

</array>

</dict>

</plist>

You can click here to view a page with similar content, or use can go to the Finder and pull down the Go menu then Go to Folder... and copy and paste this path:

System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist

The following paths are my own exclusions.  To define your own set of exclusions, simply go into System Preferences, click on Time Machine and click on Options.

User Defined (my) Exclusions

~/Desktop/Facebook

~/Frostwire

/Users/Shared/Parallels
/Users/seanski/Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-seanski35@imap.gmail.com/