macosxhints.com install tips

Restore default bootloader without harming partitions

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:30:01 -0800

If your bootloader gets changed or corrupted, this fix will restore it without damage to your disk partitions.

This hint may be a bit esoteric, but I thought I was up for a long night of reinstallation pain before stumbling upon this fix. I made the mistake of trying to use an Ubuntu 9.04 boot CD to install Ubuntu to an external (USB) drive on my Mac.

Don't do this, unless you know the following: Regardless of the fact that you chose the external drive upon which to install Ubuntu, you won't be able to boot back into your Mac without changing the bootloader. I ended up with the dreaded question mark folder when I tried to reboot my Mac, and nothing worked to boot into my OS X partition.

Luckily, I have a bootable external drive with OS X on it, and I was able to boot into it by holding down the Option key (the primary partition still did not show up). I started searching online for the fix, and it seems that Ubuntu changes the Darwin (default) bootl...

10.6: How to install Win XP Pro Service Pack 3 in Boot Camp 3

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:30:03 -0800

Over the weekend, in preparation for an upcoming review of the newest versions of Fusion and VirtualBox, I needed to set up a new Boot Camp partition on my MacBook Pro. Because Windows 7 isn't yet officially supported by Apple, and Vista isn't widely used, I chose to install XP Pro. My XP Pro disc is a Service Pack 2 release, so after booting into Windows, the system found and downloaded a bunch of updates to apply, chief among them Service Pack 3 (SP3).

The update process went smoothly, until the system tried to install SP3. The update process started, then died with this error:

An error occured while copying file osloader.ntd. Cannot copy file to destination directory. Click Retry to retry the operation or click Cancel.

At that point, the only solution was to bail on the update, and have Windows back out the changes it ...

10.6: Resolve a non-usable disk during 10.6 upgrade

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:30:03 -0700

While attempting to upgrade my MacBook Pro to 10.6, I received the error message "this disk cannot be used to start up your computer." I only have one disk and one volume, so that disk was my only choice.

I tried running Disk Utility to repair the drive, but that didn't help. I searched the web and came up with a solution that works. Using Disk Utility from the installer, slightly reduce the partition size on the boot disk. The act of changing and rewriting the partition seems to fix whatever is causing the issue.

10.6: No way to save updates from Software Update

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:30:04 -0700

In Leopard, Software Update gave you the choice of either downloading or installing an update. Under Snow Leopard, though, the download option is gone; it's install or nothing.

[robg adds: There's a new Update » Go to Apple Download Page menu item in Software Update; every update should be available there for download. While this change simplifies the Software Update app, it does add a step for those who prefer to download updates (for updating multiple Macs, for instance).]

10.6: How to install the Logitech Control Center software

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:30:02 -0700

My Logitech mouse stopped being recognized in Snow Leopard. Logitech, in their infinite wisdom, has their Logitech Control Center 3.0 installer recognize and defeat any attempt at installing on any system other than 10.5.

The simple solution is to view the contents of the installer .pkg file (Control-click on it an select Show Package Contents), then navigate to Resources » Logitech Control Center.mpkg and double click. This launches the installer with no system version test, and re-installs the components in the correct locations. Restart and voilá -- mouse recognized!

[robg adds: I don't have a Logitech mouse to test this one with.]

10.6: Upgrade iStat Menus prior to Snow Leopard install

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:30:04 -0700

After installing Snow Leopard, all my menu bar icons disappeared. After some digging, I found out that version 1.3 of iStat Menus is not compatible with Snow Leopard (version 2.0, released shortly after Snow Leopard shipped, is compatible).

I had a problem, though, because the uninstaller is located within the iStat Menus System Preferences panel. Since the panel would crash every time I tried to open it in Snow Leopard, here's how I solved that problem. First, I downloaded the 1.3 installer from the web site, Control-clicked on the package and chose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu, and found the uninstaller tool in the Contents » Resources folder. As soon as I had this uninstalled, my menulets returned.

So make sure you upgrade to version 2.0 (assuming you're running 10.5) prior to upgrading to ...

10.6: Install QuickTime Player 7 to black out other displays

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:30:05 -0700

One of Snow Leopard's many refinements is QuickTime X, which comes with a new, simplified version of QuickTime Player. The new player focuses on elegantly displaying video, but loses most of the editing capabilities that have been a core feature of QuickTime since 1991. The new version doesn't even have a Preferences window, and you'll notice that the QuickTime pane in System Preferences is gone too.

Fortunately, QuickTime Player 7 still works. In fact, the old version of the player (7.6.3) is a custom install option, and is also available as part of the Optional Installs package. The description says "for use with older media formats," begging the question of what else QuickTime X doesn't do. On the bright side, you don't need a QuickTime Pro key any more to take advantage of the editing features in QuickTime Player 7 (more value for your $29).

QuickTime Player 7 ...

Change Terminal prefs on the 10.5 and 10.6 install discs

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:30:04 -0700

If you're like me and you need accessibility options, then you know that the install disc (this hint works with both the 10.5 and 10.6 installers) poses many problems. Fortunately, there's a work around for that tiny 12 point font in Terminal.

When you open the Terminal app from the Install Disc, you can't access Preferences. Go to the Shell menu and click Show Inspector, or use Command-I. Now click the Settings tab. Double-click on any of the view options. This will change the window and bring up preferences in the background. I use the Homebrew settings, but with a 24 point font (normally, it's 20 and I use Universal Access.). Then I can click on the Change Font button and it works just fine. You have access to the other settings as well.

Note that I wouldn't change every setting, because they won't be saved the next time you use the installer.

10.6: What to do if asked to find System Events.app

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 07:30:06 -0700

I just installed 10.6 over 10.5, and when I restarted the final time, a window came up right after login asking for me to locate system events.app.

I called Apple Support, and their advice was just to hit Cancel. The window doesn't come back on future reboots, but this does seem to happen once for each account on the machine.

Just wanted to share that it seems to be safe to cancel it.

[robg adds: I haven't seen this on any of the four Macs I've upgraded here; not sure what might trigger the event.]

10.5: Set up Clojure on Leopard

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 07:30:02 -0700

Clojure is a hot new programming language on the Java platform that's getting lots of attention lately, but setting up a development environment on OS X can be a bit of a pain.

To make things simpler, I created ClojureX, a free set of scripts and installation instructions for this task. ClojureX can:

Download and build the source code for Clojure, clojure-contrib and JLine (a readline like library for Java)
Download editor support packages for TextMate and Emacs
Create a symlink for the Clojure startup script in /usr/local/bin
Install support for TextMate via the clojure-tmbundle
Configure Emacs to use clojure-mode, Slime and swank-clojure
Keep your Clojure installation up to date via a simple git submodule update && a...

10.6: A caution on changing brightness during install Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:30:00 -0700 Just a short tip for those about to install Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. When you insert the DVD to install 10.6, the installer does something a little different than previous installers -- it pre-installs a bunch of stuff onto the 10.4/10.5 machine before it reboots with the DVD to finish the installation. I guess this is done to speed up the installation. Anyhow, during this process, do not be tempted to turn down the brightness of your screen while this is happening. I did that, and when the machine rebooted from the DVD, the brightness of the screen was turned down to zero and I couldn't see anything. So, do not turn down the brightness, even one above zero (which is what I did), or you will be faced with a black screen because the brightness keys do not work in the installer boot. Fortunately, I had another drive with an installation that was able to boot my Mac, an... Triple boot a Mac mini with OS X, Ubuntu, and Windows Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:30:01 -0700 Over the last few days I, have been struggling with installing Windows XP and Ubuntu on my Mac Mini, while of course retaining Mac OS X as the primary OS. Why triple boot? Well, because only Ubuntu can repair ext3 filesystems. Or because only Windows can run Mobipocket Creator. But most of all, because it is possible. Here I will describe the process and caveats I ran into. Goal: Install three OSes on the Mac Mini, which is a March 2009 Mac Mini (2.0GHz. 2GB 1066 MHz DDR SDRAM, GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, 320GB HD, 8x SuperDrive, Mini DisplayPort and mini-DVI, five USB ports, one FireWire 800 port). The objective is to install Mac Os X 10.5.8, Microsoft Windows XP Professional, and Ubuntu 9.04 64-bit (using ubuntu-9.04 desktop--amd64.iso). Read on for the step-by-step how-to... Start up with you normal Mac OS X system. Before you start, make sure you have a backup, for example by using Time Machine. Hopefully when you follow these i... 10.5: Create an updated OS X install on a to-be-sold Mac Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:30:00 -0700 When reselling or gifting a pre-owned Mac, it's convenient to ship it without any accounts, but with all updates and legally-included packages. This is actually quite simple to do. This process uses a number of well-known techniques, which are listed in the order that they are executed. Boot the Mac's original or retail Leopard Install DVD (Hold the 'C' key during startup). When selecting the drive during the OS X install, click the Options button and set it to 'Erase and Install' for a clean install. Once the initial install is complete, reboot again to the Install Disk. After selecting the default language, immediately choose Reset Password from the Utilities menu. Set the password for the System Administrator (root) user and click the Save button. Quit out of Password Reset, and quit again out of the Installer to restart the Mac. Hold Command-S during restart to enter Single User Mode. Enter the following to turn off the Welcome sequence: $ /sbin/fsck -fy... An AppleScript app to force Setup Assistant to run Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:30:00 -0700 There have been past hints (in 10.5; from 2001) about how to force the initial Setup Assistant to run again, but these methods were both very manual and required booting in Single User mode. I've created an AppleScript app -- Clean Install.app -- that will allow you to 'clean' any attached OS X volume (other than the current startup volume). The script removes all the home folders, and the netinfo database (Tiger) or user info plist's (Leopard+), then forces the initial Setup Assistant the next time the 'cleaned' volume is booted. The application is completely written in AppleScript and can be edited, so feel free to make whatever customizations and modifications you want. This allows you to take a fresh OS X install, add any software and run any updates you'd like, and then give it... Installation tips for a 10.5/Boot Camp hard drive upgrade Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:30:00 -0700 I just upgraded my MacBook Pro to a new hard drive and wanted to share the easy way I used to get everything back on the new drive. I had researched this topic and many of the articles I found were old. This method definitely works with the latest software used as of March, 2009. In my case, I'm running OS X 10.5 with a Boot Camp partition running Windows. Assumption: You have a Time Machine backup of OS X on a separate FireWire/USB drive. Before removing the old hard drive, you need to back up your Windows installation. (OS X is covered by Time Machine, so no worries there.) Use Winclone to image your Windows Boot Camp partition to your external FireWire/USB drive. Then replace the old hard drive with the new hard drive. Begin install of 10.5, and after the language selection screen, choose Restore from Backup from ... 10.5: Restore from unsupported Time Machine backups Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:30:00 -0800 There are several hints here on how to get Time Machine to backup to an unsupported AFP share, but I found no mention of how to restore from such an unsupported share. After spending some time on Gooogle, I found this page. The essence of the solution is that once the installer has booted from the DVD, one has to go to the Terminal and mount the AFP share manually: $ mkdir /Volumes/TimeMachine $ mount -t afp afp://user:password@afpserver.local/ShareName /Volumes/TimeMachine Quit Terminal, then enter the Time Machine Restore utility. The unsupported backup volume should then show up. Install some programs without using installers Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:30:01 -0800 You may wish that all apps used the simple "drag and drop" installation, instead of Apple's installer. As it turns out, a lot of them use installers when they don't even need to -- see this hint on installing Microsoft's Remote Desktop via drag-and-drop, for instance. There are lots of others that use package installers, and then ask for admin privileges, when they don't really need to. If you're concerned that they could be running daemons or background processes that make your computer slower, or put files where you don't want them to go, here's a manual-install method to try instead: Control-click on the package in Finder and select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. Navigate into Contents, where you may see more package installers, or you may see an Archive.pax.gz file. If you see the pax.gz file, double-click on it to decompress it and you'll find your .app ... Install Remote Desktop Connection 2 via drag-and-drop Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:30:00 -0700 If you need to install Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection 2 for the Mac, the disk image that comes from microsoft.com contains an mpkg installer, not an application. To use it, you have to run the installer with root privileges in order to install the simple Remote Desktop Client application, not to mention the installer also comes with Office2008_en_autoupdate, Office2008_en_errorreporting, and Office2008_en_helpviewer. I really don't want to run the installer, I just want to install the application in the OS X way, via a simple drag and drop, and without the extra programs. Well I found out I can Control-click on the Remote Desktop Connection.mpg, choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu, and navigate into the Contents » Packages folder. In that folder, Control-click on the Remote Desktop Connection.pkg file, and again choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. Finally, browse into the Contents folder and copy the Archive.pax.gz f... 10.5: Use Apple Remote Desktop for OS X Server install Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:30:03 -0700 You can use Apple Remote Desktop to connect to a machine that is booted from the O X 10.5 server installation disk by typing the first eight characters of the computer's serial number into the password field while leaving the user name field blank. [robg adds: I haven't tested this one, and I don't know if it works with the Client installation disk as well.] Completely uninstall PhoneView Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:30:02 -0700 The procedure outlined on Ecamm Network's website for uninstalling PhoneView is not necessarily complete. The Ecamm website indicates "to uninstall PhoneView, simply drag the PhoneView icon to the Trash icon on your dock." However, by default PhoneView will enable an option in its preferences to "launch PhoneView when iPhone is Attached." The effect of this option is to create an entry in the Login Items tab, which can be found in Accounts section of System Preferences. If you just trash PhoneView Demo.app, the entry in the Login Items tab is NOT removed. Unfortunately, that means that every time you login from now on, the PhoneViewHelper.app will run. The best way to avoid this situation is to be sure to uncheck the box 'Launch PhoneView when iPhone is Attached' in PhoneView's preferences before trashing PhoneView Demo.app. If you happen to delete PhoneView Demo.app without unchecking the box, then you can cleanup in one of two ...