Filed under: Troubleshooting

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about MacBook power adapters, Windows 7 in Boot Camp and virtualization in general, resetting the Mac Setup Assistant, the next iWork refresh, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.

I make part of my living as an Apple consultant, so one of the first thoughts that went through my mind on Wednesday when I first saw the iPad was "would I be able to use that to help support my clients?" After a bit of thought yesterday while waiting for files to be loaded onto a new server I was installing, I think the answer is a resounding yes.

Usually when I'm visiting my clients, I lug along a computer bag filled with various tools along with my MacBook Air. The rest of the time, I'm either in my office with my iMac, or away from a Mac enjoying myself. Unfortunately, Mac issues tend to arise at the worst possible times, and so there are many situations where I only have my iPhone available for support.

One of my tricks of the trade is to talk with clients while looking at their Mac screens using a remote support tool, and the iPhone screen has always been too small to be useful. When you're trying to control someone's computer through Jaadu VNC or some other remote control software, screen real estate is very helpful. I can see using the iPad for remote support in many situations where an iPhone just won't work.

A friend's MacBook had slowed down to a snail's pace. Despite looking everywhere for the issue, streamlining everything I could, and yelling at it, it failed to accelerate to usable speed. So I recommended we start from scratch and build it back up with only the things she was using, free of all the other downloads and aborted installs of various software she never used or cared about. It also housed a prior system, and a PC migration from a few years back. All told, the computer was a bloated, duplicated whale of files and applications for what was essentially a light-load writer's computer.

So I backed up the essential parts of her system using Time Machine: documents (including her novel and decades of prior writing, published and unpublished), ten years of family photographs, a 41GB iTunes library, among other things, and then....backed it up again elsewhere, outside of Time Machine.

And again.

And just for good measure, once more time, to yet another drive. I wasn't going to be the (ex-)friend who lost her novel.

What I wanted to do was do the ol' "erase and install" that prior system software discs allowed you to do. But clicking around Snow Leopard left no obvious method for this. But instead of booting Snow Leopard while inside of Mac OS X, if you just directly reboot the computer off the disc itself (holding down the "c" button after the system chime, letting go when you see the Apple logo) you get a few more options. Once you've gone into the installer program, you'll see "Utilities" at the top, and if you select Disc Utility, you can see your hard drive. If you click on "erase" (like I did, with one hand over my eyes) you can wipe the drive clean with various security options, and then you can do a fresh install of Snow Leopard on your computer on a pristine hard drive.

Once you've done that, you can either transfer your files back in directly, or use the installer program's built-in migration utility to restore any or all files from Time Machine.

And now? The world awaits the Next Great American Novel, untragically unlost by yours truly.

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about preparing a Mac that you're transferring to a new owner, updating Boot Camp, adding words to the built-in spell check, dealing with flaky network disks, FTP clients, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about automatically sorting downloaded files, using Disk Utility to change partitions and format external drives, using a KVM in a multi-platform environment, replacing an iPod touch battery, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.

Now in its fifth iteration, iChat has gained a host of features as it has matured. However, the addition of new features has brought on new complexities and requirements, including both hardware and bandwidth issues. For instance, at the time of its release, iChat 3 users needed a minimum of a Dual 1 GHz G4 and a 384 Kbps Internet connection to initiate a four-way video conference on iChat 3. Photobooth and Backdrop effects, which came along in iChat 4, call for a minimum an Intel Core Duo processor. And then, of course, one must climb the proverbial firewall.

Fortunately, there's iChat's Connection Doctor. Besides telling you what your system is capable of (for example, screen sharing, multiperson video conferences and video recording) and the audio and video quality of your video chat (resolution and frame rate), the Connection Doctor can also tell you if networking issues (i.e., a firewall or port issue) are the source of your video conferencing maladies. To launch iChat's Connection Doctor, click on "Video" on iChat's menu and then select "Connection Doctor." It's just what the doctor ordered.

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about firewall settings, SSDs, MacBook battery life, faxing in Snow Leopard, and much more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.

Welcome back to a new year of Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about cheap scanners, encrypting backups, recovering deleted files, troubleshooting new hardware, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about Mac minis running as HTPCs, eliminating duplicate photos, using an iPhone to access MobileMe's FInd My iPhone feature (for another iPhone), automatically mounting a network disk, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about syncing photo libraries, compressing and transferring large files, creating a virtual PDF printer, increasing screen readability, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify).

Got a new Dell Mini 10v for the holidays? Looking to find a little peer support while you Hackintosh it? Grab your shrinkwrap Snow Leopard or Leopard DVD and join us for an informal clinic on getting your new system set up as a Macbook mini. If you've already finished your hackintoshing, come share your experiences and insights.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the liveblog! The event is now complete; however, you can 'replay' the chat in the continuation of this post.

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about sharing peripherals, simple spreadsheets, backup configurations, using a NAS, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify).

More Mac 101, our tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

Update: You cannot install Snow Leopard on an 8 GB flash drive. I was incorrect in writing that an install of Essential System Software would take 3.81 GB. As a few of our commenters pointed out, and as is the case, in testing I erroneously tried to install Snow Leopard on a flash drive that already had a version of OSX on it, making the installation much smaller than installing on an empty flash drive. According to readers, installing Snow Leopard on an empty flash drive will take 8.01 GB requiring a 16 GB flash drive. I'm very sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.

It's a good idea to have a strategy in place in case of emergencies. If your hard drive tosses you errors, behaves badly or doesn't even appear, what to do? If programs crash at random, you need to be ready. You can prepare for this by creating a bootable flash drive containing some diagnostic and repair utilities.

This is not meant to replace or in any way affect backing up your hard drive. Time Machine makes it so easy that not having a backup plan is just silly... but so much for the disclaimer.

To make a diagnostic and repair flash drive, I'd suggest buying an 8 GB flash drive, 16 GB flash drive which can be had for around US $20 US $35 these days. When you get it, it probably won't be formatted for your Macintosh, so plug it in and run Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) to format the flash drive. In doing so, you have a number of choices. With your flash drive highlighted click on Erase and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and give the flash drive a name. Then click on Erase on the bottom right side of the screen and in a few seconds your flash drive will be ready for an operating system.

I inadvertently omitted a step! Click the icon for the drive (not the disk partition -- the one that includes the size) and click the Partition tab. Choose "1 Partition" from the pop-up menu, Mac OS Extended on the right, then click Options at the bottom of the screen and make sure "GUID" is the selected partition type. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out.

Happy holiday, and welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about upgrading an iMac processor, using the 27" iMac as a display, sharing a Magic Mouse and Bluetooth keyboard with a Linux machine, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.

I have a couple of Gmail accounts set up with Google Apps, so that Google is hosting my email using my own domain names. While those accounts have been working flawlessly for quite a while, I suddenly ran into issues a few days ago where Apple Mail couldn't pull email from the server. I could use the Gmail Web client and access the email, but using Mail or my iPhone, I'd get an error.

Both Mail and the iPhone initially reported that either my password or username was incorrect, but after restarting my MacBook Air, the message changed to what you see above. While I had been sending some large files through email last week, I wasn't using anywhere close to the 2 or so GB per day of bandwidth that Google allows.

A quick search revealed that there's a known bug where accounts are locked out for exceeding IMAP bandwidth limits when using Apple Mail under Snow Leopard. To quote Google's support page,

This is a known issue for users of Apple Mail on the Snow Leopard OS. We are working with Apple on a resolution to the issue. In the meantime, there are a few workarounds to reduce the likelihood of hitting the bandwidth limit:

1. Do not sync attachments.
2. Reduce the number of folders you sync by using the Advanced IMAP Controls tab in Gmail.
3. Close your email client when you are not using it.

For my business, I keep my email client up and running most of the day, so the third workaround was not an option. Syncing attachments is easy to turn off in Apple Mail Preferences for Gmail IMAP accounts by selecting "All messages, but omit attachments" under "Keep copies of messages for offline viewing" on the Advanced tab, but it didn't resolve the problem.

I fortuitously noticed that my MacBook Air seemed to be losing a lot of disk space, and searching the ~/Library/Mail folder indicated that the issue seemed to be in the "Recovered Items" Inbox for this Gmail account -- something I didn't even know existed! It was taking up a whopping 18.66 GB of space, so I went into Mail and deleted the "Recovered Items" inbox.

While this didn't fix the issue immediately, it did eventually allow the account to come back on line with no problems. All told, I was without Mail.app and iPhone access to the account for four days, but at least I could check my Web mail occasionally to see what was coming into the Gmail account.

If you're running Snow Leopard and get bit by the "bandwidth bug" with a Gmail account, I hope that this tip can help you out.