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

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

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/

User Library in Lion and Mountain Lion

After upgrading to Lion you will notice that your user's Library's folder is missing.  Don't worry, It's still there.  Apple decided to hide it so users don't mess around with this very important folder.  To unhide it, simply open Terminal (Applications ==> Utilities ==> Terminal) and input the following command:

chflags nohidden ~/Library/   #to show the Library folder

To change the setting back, input into the Terminal:

chflags hidden ~/Library/ #to hide the Library folder

You can also click this link to access this secret on Blacktree's Secret's page.  Secrets is a preference pane that gives you a graphical interface to access all of your Mac's hidden treasures.  You can download the software here

Clean out your Windows PC computer

I was asked not too long ago to clean out an increasingly slow Windows computer.  CCleaner (formerly Crap Cleaner), developed by Piriform is a utility program used to clean potentially unwanted files and invalid Windows Registry entries from a computer.  A beta version for the Mac OS X has been released, but if you want a free, fully developed software package for the Mac, give Onyx a try

Macs can write to NTFS volumes now

I just recently bought a portable hard drive that was formatted with the NTFS filesystem and I was wondering if there was a way to write to the drive with my mac.  Well, not natively, Macs can only read such a filesystem, but fear not!  Go to MacGuy4.Us for the full solution.  Basically, you have to download two pieces of software (one if you already have Parallels Desktop installed).  For an added bonus, the new extension, NTFS 3G, you install will give the Disk Utility application the option to partition a drive with NTFS

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