Apple 10.6.3 Snow Leopard Update Trouble

Upon trying to upgrade to the newest major update by Apple for OS X to 10.6.3 I had nothing but trouble.  Some Macs upgrade fine.  Others do not.

I always download the full combo update since I have hundreds of Macs to update it saves lots of time and bandwidth to just download the full update one time instead of a smaller update over and over again.  The combo update for the client is 713 MB.

When running it on my favorite iMac 24 which I use as my main workstation the GUI installer would fail within the first minute of the install during the “writing files” stage and had some useless error saying the installer had failed and that I needed to contact the software manufacturer (in this case Apple).  I tried all sorts of things and scoured the Internet as well as Apple’s site looking for help but since the update is so new there is very little info out there.  Hopefully this will help you if you’re having the same trouble!

Yet Another System Utility

I cleaned temp files and dumped cache folders and tried multiple accounts and ran cleanup utilities including YASU (http://jimmitchell.org/yasu/) which all helped the system but didn’t do anything for the update.  I even ran the software updater from the command line using “sudo softwareupdate -i -a” but all failed.

After about an hour of searching I found that if I didn’t close the installer after the error I could go to the menu bar and view the log file.  Silly me I knew it was there!  The log file told me that there was an error 23, too many open files in system.  There is very little info on this error 23 except that it is indeed too many open files in the system.  So after some more investigation I found the sysctl command.  By using sysctl kern.maxfiles you can see what your system is set at as far as the maximum allowed open files.  My iMac was at 2000 which seemed like more than enough but this was largest update I had attempted and I have LOTS of software on my iMac.  So I changed that value to 5000 using the command “sysctl -w kern.maxfiles=5000″.  Understand this is done either under sudo or sudo su in a terminal window.

After changing the maxfiles to 5000 the updater ran without a hitch!  I’m not sure if I need to set that value back to 2000 but I’m going to leave it at 5000 since there should be plenty of system resources to handle it.  If I start to see system performance issues I will set it back to 2000.  I know most Linux systems are well under 1000 and some under 500 for max files so 5000 seems like overkill.

Please leave a comment if this fixed your issue or contact me if you need additional help!!

Popularity: 100% [?]

XBOX 360 Torn Apart

My nephew’s XBOX 360 had the dreaded Red-Ring-of-Death.  This is a common problem on the XBOX 360 that Microsoft claims only they can fix.  I just cracked open the box, removed the heatsinks and reseated them after cleaning the terrible heatsink compound that MS uses from the factory.  I used Arctic Silver heatsink compound which I always use on anything I build because it does a fantastic job.  That’s all there is to it!

Popularity: 26% [?]

I upgraded my Dell XPS M1210 laptop from Linux Mint 7 Gloria to Linux Mint 8 Helena last night. This was all done from the terminal while running version 7 and it amazes me how well the upgrade does. Even though Mint recommends downloading the 8 install CD and doing a complete wipe and fresh install I decided to try the upgrade solution. I figured if anything went wrong I would then do the full wipe.

This was the proceedure:
Open a terminal and type the following commands:

• gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list (Change all occurrences of “gloria” to “helena”, and all occurences of “jaunty” to “karmic”, remove the lines for the Community section of the Linux Mint repository, then save the file and close the editor)
• apt update
• apt install mint-info-main (choose “Y” or “I” to install the package maintainer’s version)
• apt install mint-meta-main(choose “Y” or “I” to install the package maintainer’s version)

In the terminal, repeat the following commands until both upgrade commands show no upgrades available:

• apt upgrade
• apt dist-upgrade
• apt install mint-meta-main

I had to reinstall Firefox for some reason.  Perhaps something went wrong with the upgrade from 3.0 to 3.5.  I had Google Chrome open at the time of the upgrade because I was surfing while the downloads and upgrading was going on.

Not a lot of major changes.  Clearly a nice new theme and wallpaper with a new icon set and some of the dialog boxes have added features like the popup screens telling you about your wireless network status have a timer wheel letting you see visually how log they will remain visible before automatically vanishing as well as an option to always hide the message in the future.

I’ve been running Mint since version 6 and for over 4 years on this particular laptop with stellar results.  It hasn’t crashed and I can perform any and all tasks I need to do.  I’m very pleased!

Popularity: 27% [?]

Yes, upgrade your MacBook Pro… DO IT NOW!

Of course I’m talking about the older MacBook Pro, not the new aluminum block ones.

I was always very suprised that Apple didn’t put 7200 RPM hard drives in their MacBooks.  It wasn’t a matter of them not being available and must have had more to do with their internal purchasing.  BUT after upgrading my MacBook Pro I can tell from experience that not putting the 7200 RPM drives in from the factory was a mistake.  The performance gains were phenominal!!

So I fould lots of instructions on the web about how to do it and even YouTube videos which were great.  The main trouble I had was in moving the OS and data.  After some trial and error I ended up using Carbon Copy Cloner and moving the entire old drive contents to the new drive which I had already formatted.  Anyway I’m rambling…

I ordered a 320 GB 7200 RPM HDD and a 4 GB memory kit from New Egg for under $140 with shipping.  I took extra care to benchmark prior to the upgrade using XBench (http://www.xbench.com/) and got an overall score of 108.  After the upgrades I re-ran XBench and got a score of 127!!  Nearly a 20 point gain!!  If you haven’t used XBench before you won’t realize how huge of a gain that is, but believe me- it’s HUGE.  Now my old MacBook Pro that I’ve had for over 2 years out performs the newest iMacs coming out!  My XBench results on the new iMacs can be found in another post called “Are the newest iMacs any faster?”  Oddly enough the new iMacs actually score lower than my MacBook Pro did before the upgrade.  Figure that one out…

The laptop is like a new machine!  I strongly urge you to upgrade your old MacBook Pro.  You will be so happy and giggle with delight so much that a little pee will come out.

Check back soon as I will post the XBench results from the new aluminum MacBooks.

Popularity: 38% [?]

Exactly how much faster are the new iMacs that were just released a few weeks ago?  The answer: They’re Not…

I was so excited to get the newest iMac and evidently was one of the first because my order needed to be modified from what I had ordered and upgraded to a comporable nextgen.  After moving everything over to the new iMac using Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/index.html and awesome software BTW) I ran XBench (http://www.xbench.com/).  Now it’s important to note that I had already installed XBench on my old iMac and there were absolutely no changes prior to re-running XBench on the new iMac.

To my great disappointment the XBench score was lower on the new iMac!

As you can see the only place the new iMac scored higher than the old one was under the Thread test!

The NVidia GeForce 9400 is only PCI where the ATI Radeon HD2400 is PCI Express at full x16 so even though the ATI is an older chipset and has 128 MB less VRAM it still out perfoms the NVidia.  I should also point out that the VRAM on this NVidia chip is shared with system ram where the ATI on the previous generation isn’t.  This explains exactly why the new system was using more RAM right out of the box!

So, don’t go rushing out ready to trade in your iMac for the new ones because the bottom line is that they just don’t perform as well as expected!  The exception to this would be in the new 24″ iMacs.  At least get the new iMac with the GeForce 120 or 130.  These have dedicated GDDR3 memory and are much better chipsets.

If you have one of the new 24″ iMacs please post your XBench results here!  I would love to see how much better they perform than the 20″ iMacs.

Popularity: 39% [?]

In a previous post I attempted to predict the future about the future release of Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) and also offered some insight into what the new iMacs were going to look like.  Well last week Apple released the new hardware level iMacs and it was done prior to the release of Snow Leopard which in my guestimation is right around the corner and certainly this year that the latest.  It’s almost certainly going to be at the same time as Windows 7.

Both Microsoft and Apple have been releasing more and more info about what the new OSs are going to hold in store for us and as more and more details are released I (for one) get more and more excited about both of them!

Lets take a look at what I predicted on the new iMacs and what I got right and what was wrong.

The first thing I talked about was the FSB.  The old iMacs were 800 and I predicted the new ones were going to be 1333 but unfortunately the iMac was released with a 1066 FSB.  Still, this is a major improvement and perhaps Apple felt that dependability was more important than the cutting edge hardware and the 1066 chipset combinations from Intel have certainly been time tested.  The RAM has been upgraded to DDR3, as I predicted.

The new processors start at 2.66GHz, 2.93GHz, or 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duos.  The also have 6mb of shared L2 cache.  I built a new PC for my father-in-law with this exact hardware about a year ago and it is VERY speedy.  Although I am impressed with the speed of this setup, as I said it’s about a year old and it would have been nice to have the current hardware in new new iMac.

Let’s see what I predicted for the graphics chips.  I said that we should expect something like the NVidia GeForce 9400 on the low end and to not count out ATI with something like the high performance 4380.  Well, I wasn’t perfect in my prediction.  They actually have the NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 memory or optionally the GeForce GT 130 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory.  Remember ATI?  Well you can also get the Radeon HD 4850 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory.  This is a pleasant suprise because it’s actually better than what I predicted.

All this being said, mine will arrive next week and I will certainly be one of the first to have one so I will be sure to let you know how it compares.

Here are a few things that Apple has said WILL be included in the new Snow Leopard release.  First ZFS file system.  This is exciting!  ZFS is an awesome and robust 128 bit file system with self healing technology and HUGE storage capability.  This is already a time tested and utilized file system use by the creator, Sun Microsystems, used in Solaris 10 since 2006.  The DROBO storage device also uses a modified veriosion of the ZFS file system on their handy and easy raid storage device.

It will have better Exchange support and will be 64 bit.  Quicktime X will be included giving better modern codec support.  Apple tells us that performance gains will be massive.  One of the things besides 64 bit technology and the upgraded filesystem is something called OpenCL.  OpenCL will allow processor intensive tasks to be off-loaded to the GPU.  Apple also promises that Snow Leopard will have a smaller footprint which will give back valuable hard drive space.

There you go.  Look for my next post about the new iMac after I get it next week.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Microsoft on Friday confirmed it will issue no more beta releases of Windows 7 and will instead move directly to a single release candidate (RC) and then the final release. The company offered no guidance on when we can expect the Windows 7 release, however.

“The next milestone for the development of Windows 7 is the Release Candidate or ‘RC,’” Microsoft senior vice president Steven Sinofsky confirmed in a blog post. “We’ve released the feature complete Beta and have made it available broadly around the world. The path to Release Candidate is all about getting the product to a known and shippable state both from an internal and external standpoint.”

Sinofsky notes that the RC version of Windows 7 will be “Windows 7 as Microsoft intends to ship it” and will place the OS on a fast track towards RTM (release to manufacturing), when the code is literally completed, and general availability (GA), when it is made available to the public. No timeline for the RC, RTM, or GA were provided. “The answer [to the schedule questions] is forthcoming,” Sinofsky added.

“We are taking a quality-based approach to completing the product and won’t be driven by imposed deadlines,” Sinofsky claimed. “We’re promising to deliver the best release of Windows we possibly can and that’s our goal. Together, and with a little bit more patience, we’ll achieve that goal.”

It’s pretty clear that Windows 7 will, in fact, be delivered well before the 2009 holiday and back-to-school seasons, which are key sales bump periods in the consumer market. Insiders Expect to see the RC version of Windows 7 in April alongside Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2), and the RTM release by mid-2009.

Popularity: 14% [?]

In February Microsoft will announce its plans for the various Windows 7 product editions it will sell when that OS is released to the public sometime this year. The announcement was eagerly awaited because of the confusing and broad range of Windows Vista product editions, with their overlapping feature sets.

Unlike with Vista, where Microsoft crowded the market with lots of versions of Windows, Windows 7 will ship in just a handful of common-sense product editions. And also unlike with Vista, these product editions are all supersets of each other, so there are no overlapping feature sets (which is good) and simpler upgrading (which is even better).

For this version of the OS, Microsoft and its PC maker partners will market just two mainstream product editions, Windows 7 Home Premium–the recommended choice for consumers–and Windows 7 Professional, which is aimed at enthusiasts and IT professionals.

Here’s how the complete product line breaks down (where each product edition is a superset of the one before it.)

Windows 7 Starter. This version will be sold only through PC makers to users in emerging markets. As with previous Windows Starter Edition products, it is limited in some ways: You can run only three applications at once, you don’t get Windows 7’s full mobility capabilities, and you can participate in but not create a Home Group.

Windows 7 Home Premium. The volume Windows 7 offering for consumers builds on Starter and includes Mobility Center, Aero Glass, advanced windows navigation features like Aero Snap and Aero Peek, and multi-touch, as well as the ability to both create and participate in Home Groups. Home Premium will be sold at retail and be included with new computers.

Windows 7 Professional. This version builds on Home Premium and adds features like domain join, Group Policy controls, location-aware printing, advanced backup, EFS, and offline folders. Pro will be sold at retail and be included with new computers.

Windows 7 Enterprise. As before, Enterprise is aimed at Microsoft’s Software Assurance (SA) volume-license customers. This time, however, Enterprise is a superset of Professional and adds much-heralded Windows 7 features like Direct Access, Branch Cache, BitLocker, and BitLocker To Go.

Windows 7 Ultimate. For those few customers who simply must have everything, Windows 7 Ultimate offers all of the features from Enterprise but loses the volume-licensing requirement. So you can think of Ultimate edition as Enterprise for consumers (and other retail customers).

So you may be looking back over this list and thinking, well, hold on a second there: That’s five product editions. Are they really simplifying anything? Yes, they really are. Microsoft and its partners will focus most of their efforts selling Home Premium and Pro to the retail and consumer markets, and Enterprise to volume licensing business customers. Ultimate and Starter are, by definition, niche products that are available only to address low-volume but important markets. But what really makes this work is the “Russian doll” structure where each version is a true superset of the one below it. With Windows Vista, Home Premium had some features that Business did not and vice versa. That made choosing a product edition difficult.

A few other product edition notes: It will be possible to electronically upgrade from any Windows 7 product edition to a higher-end product edition, and to do so quickly and easily. So even a Starter edition user will be able to upgrade all the way up to Ultimate if they so choose.

Vista users will face simple upgrade choices: You can go from Vista Home Basic or Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium or any higher product edition, for example. XP users? They can only “upgrade” by performing a clean install of Windows 7–Microsoft will not support an in-place upgrade–but there will be utilities to smooth the process and get data transferred over easily.

This info comes from Paul Thurrott with the Windows IT Pro magazine.  Read the article at http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/101416/microsoft-details-windows-7-product-version-plans.html

Popularity: 5% [?]

When Windows begins to run slowly (and it will..) what you need is a Windows Tune-Up!  This is a guide to those Essential Applications to keep Windows running like new.

I’m going to focus on Windows XP since the target audience of this article is those individuals that know better than to run Windows Vista.  No seriously, most of these applications will run on Vista and since Windows 7 is based upon the same architecture they should work on the next version of Windows as well.

There are four main aspects to tuning up Windows-  removing unnecessary and temporary files, optimizing file structure and location, removing ready-state programs, and removing viruses and spyware.

Step One- Remove Junk Files

Any time you have a problem with an Internet application the first thing they tell you to do is to delete the Internet temporary files and history.  This is a good tip too because Internet cache or temp files can easily exceed 1 GB on current computers.  These extra files will not only slow down Internet usage, but disk reading as well.  It’s easy enough to delete the private data in Internet Explorer or Firefox or Opera or whatever web browser you use, but that doesn’t remove any of the resident Windows temporary files that are left over after installing software or Windows updates or even during daily use.  To do this easily you need an application.  I suggest a little jewel I’ve used for years called Windows Cleanup.  This is a very small program written by Steven Gould.  I’ve tried all sorts of cleanup programs from Xclean to Advanced System Care and none are as simple and work as well as Windows Cleanup for deleting unneeded files.  The current version is 4.5.2 however I am a bigger fan of 4.0 because it doesn’t ask you to donate after each run. Oh, and this application is so good that it shouldn’t be free… but it is.  Download it from http://www.stevengould.org .

I also noticed Steven is running a website powered by Joomla and I’m a big fan of that as well.  But that’s another story.

Step Two- Fix those fraged files

Ok, so we’ve deleted all the junk files from the computer.   Our next step is to defragment the hard drive.  The internal defragmenters in all versions of Windows really blow chunks so we need a better application for this as well.  If you are in a real bind and can’t download this next tool, running the builtin defrag tool will work better than not running it.  I’ve tried all of these tools as well on every version of Windows since Windows 3.0 and Windows NT 3.51 on both the server and workstation flavors.  The ones I’ve tried are PerfectDisk, Diskkeeper and others.  Yet for all the thousands (literally) of dollars I have spent on these commercial applications none have performed as well as IOBits Smart Defrag.  Oh, and did I mention that this tool is FREE as well??  This is another one of those tools I would tell you to buy, but it’s free.  Gotta love that!  Download Smart Defrag from http://iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html.

IOBit also has another exceptional tool for the average computer user that needs an all-in-one system care package called Advanced System Care.  They have a free version but for the true all-in-one software you will need to buy it.  Buying it bundles Smart Defrag into one interface and all levels of system care are handled with just the push of a button.  This is ok for some, however I believe following the steps in this document results in a better tune-up and doesn’t cost anything.  It does however take a little more time but I think it’s worth it.

Step Three- Remove unwanted startup items

Our next step is to get rid of the “ready state” applications that run in the background and hog system resources.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t hate all applications that run in the background.  But when there are so many running it really does become a pinch point on system performance and can severely slow even the most powerful system.  I haven’t found any good software packages that take care of this aspect of a Windows Tune-up and that’s because each system is so different in the software that’s installed.

Performing this next step is not for the faint of heart nor for the computer layman.  You should have a pretty darn good understanding of how Windows works before you attempt this one.  For this step we’ll use the built in tool msconfig.  Click start and go to Run and type msconfig.

MSConfig has lots to look at but we’re only going to focus on two tabs, the Startup tab and the Services tab.

First click the Startup tab-

This will show you all the items that start when Windows starts running.  Most of these items happen in the background and most are not needed.  There are a few essential items here that you do not want to uncheck- make sure any antivirus software is left to run.

In my case here I would not uncheck VMWare tray or VMWare user because those are essential items that are needed for my version of Windows running under VMWare on my Mac.

In this case I could uncheck qtask which is the Quicktime quick launcher and Reader_sl because that is also a quick launcher for Adobe.  And I could disable the CorelPhoto Downloader.  This is the utility that allows Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo to see a digital camera and allow it to do the downloads through it.

See what I mean about needing to know what you’re doing here a bit?  For the most part removing all the items here will not hurt anything and you can always run them manually after starting Windows or run msconfig again to re-check those items.

Secondly you will want to go to the Services tab-

Make sure first that you check the “Hide all Microsoft Services” check box otherwise this tab is very intimidating.  Now your list is much shorter.  The next thing to do is make sure you remove all non-essential services from starting.  Once again, leave your antivirus software and other essential services.

Once you complete this task click on the Ok button and the System Configuration Utility will ask you to reboot the system so the changes can take effect.  You can now or later but be aware that you will see a message upon the next restart from the System Config Utility telling you that some startup items have been disabled.  There is a check box to NOT show the message again.  Check it!

Next we can move on to our next step- removing Spyware and Viruses.

Step Four- Removing spyware and viruses

The number one cause of a slow PC is spyware.  The number one cause of a slow PC is spyware.  No that’s not a typo- it’s that important!  Spyware slows down your computer because it affects all of our three previous steps and removing it is like a double bonus!  There are lots of good spyware applications our there and most antivirus software even catches the worst kind now, but to cover yourself the best for the least amount of money keep reading.  Spybot Search & Destroy is by far the best free spyware removal tool.  It’s so good that you SHOULD donate to the cause because it’s that good!  It can be downloaded from http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/ .  Ocasionally you will get some bad little buggies that Spybot doesn’t have the latest and greatest definitions for and in that case I suggest you get MalwareBytes from http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php .  This is another EXCELLENT choice and they have a version you can buy although I never have so I can’t even tell you what the difference between the free and commercial version is.

If you use Spybot make sure you imunize after downloading the latest definitions because this will help prevent spyware!  What a concept!

As far as antivirus is concerned, be very picky.  The big commercial named software isn’t always the best.  I’m a big fan of AVG Free Antivirus because it’s… well… it’s free.  AND it works very well especially for the price !  You can downlaod AVG from http://free.avg.com/ .  I’m not a big fan of McAfee, Norton, or Trend Micro.  Sophos is ok although I would suggest F-Prot because it is the by far the best and most lightweight antivirus software out there!  We ran it on the network for years before being talked into one of the “name brand” packages.  I have regretted it ever since and can’t wait until our contract expires so we can go back.  It is so light weight that you cannot tell it’s running on a 1 ghz machine running XP with 265 mb of ram.  Keep in mind however, you will need to buy F-Prot.  Visit them here http://www.f-prot.com/.

Armed with these four simple tactics you will be able to revive the weak and struggling PC back to good health!  Along with these steps make sure you are keeping Windows updated by running Windows Updates and even better opt into Microsoft’s newer Microsoft Update which updates all the MS software like Office as well as Windows critical updates.

Leave comments of email me and I will be happy to take or make suggestions!

Popularity: 6% [?]

Windows 7 Beta 1 has shown up on the Internet on various download sites and peer-to-peer sharing location and many are beginning to suspect that this “mostly complete” beta of the next latest and greatest version of Windows was leaked by Microsoft themselves!  And this makes sense.  After all there are problems, features, and issues that never show up in beta releases until released and subjected to the wide variety of hardware and software combinations.

I was able to get my hands on a version of the Windows 7 Ultimate beta.  It’s running as a virtual machine on my Mac and I must say that with what little testing I have done it does appear to be faster than Vista which was one of the main complaints.  Even with only 512 mb of ram allocated it runs fairly well and in some cases better than my copy of Windows XP Pro running with 512 mb ram.  Disk activity is an issue and certainly affects performance expecially on my Macbook with only a 5400 rpm drive.  I am almost certain at this point that I’m going to buy and install a 7200 rpm 320 gb drive for the Macbook but that is another story.  This may be a biased report because Windows Glass (Aero) is not supported under VMWare fusion 1.1 officially and even though I’m running 2.0 (the latest version) it still doesn’t work. more…

Popularity: 31% [?]

In a previous post I said how impressed I was with Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex except for one thing- I couldn’t seem to play DVD movies.  Well- I just fixed that.

more…

Popularity: 30% [?]

Hey- check this out!  I just checked and it looks like the XBOX repair has been completed and it’s in the process of being shipped back.  It’s still too early to see any tracking information but hopefully the box will arive before Christmas!!

I’m not too hopeful because it won’t ship until Monday and then it’s coming from TX so we’re most likely talking UPS ground which is 7-10 days.  The only thing that may help is that shipping is top notch right now because of the holiday rush.  So maybe there is hope yet… more…

Popularity: 3% [?]

When I asked my Apple sales rep if I should buy the current iMac or wait until a new one is released- he had the following to say, “I know there isn’t going to be a new iMac released this year… are you feeling me…?” This was his way of telling me that the new iMacs are going to be released very soon, most likely Q1 of 2009. more…

Popularity: 13% [?]

Well, I have Ubuntu running pretty well on my Dell XPS m1210 but I do have one thing happening that I haven’t been able to resolve yet. I can’t seem to play DVD movies. It’s not the player because I can read the disk and copy files from the disks, but when attempting to play the DVD I get a “seek failed” error.

Other than this error it’s running exceptionally well! Windows XP is running under Sun’s VirtualBox and works great. Ubuntu runs great and very effieiently on the m1210 at x64. Even with only 2gb of ram I can run everything I want including Windows XP.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Looks like the Google van has been through Kremmling in the recent past.  Here’s the driveby photo of my house!  You can even see our dog barking at them in the yard, although not in this picture…

I suspect the driveby took place sometime about one year ago.  The new school is still being built and the old school is still standing.  There is also no snow on the ground so it’s between 12 and 18 months ago.

more…

Popularity: 3% [?]