Archive for the ‘Mac OS X’ Category

Troubleshooting A Wireless Network

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

I just finished helping a family member across the country with their wireless network setup. Neither the local ISP or Netgear technical support were able to help.

Problem: An iMac plugged directly to a Netegear router via Ethernet connected to the Internet just fine, but a wireless connection from a MacBook didn’t work.

First we figured out that the router was a Netgear WPN824v3 and the devices we are trying to connect are an iMac, a MacBook and an iPhone.

The problem was that the MacBook was connected to the wireless network but wasn’t properly getting an IP address via DHCP.

We verified that plugging the Ethernet cable into the Macbook worked, so we knew that the Internet connection to the ISP worked fine, and the problem was only for wireless.

First we tried temporarily turning off all wireless security but that made no difference.

Next I found a simulation of the UI for that unit here. This made it a lot easier to see what options were available for that router.

We changed the default password for the router and enabled Remote Management. Now I could log in to the router and see the router’s actual settings.

The first thing I noticed was that the Mode for the wireless network was set to “Auto 108Mbps”. Did this router support 802.11n? And did it work with the built-in Airport card? A couple of Google searches turned up no answer.

So next I decided to try to get things working with just 802.11g.
First I set the Mode to “g and b” and set the Channel to “Auto”. That didn’t change anything. The MacBook could still connect to the wireless network, but not get an IP address.

Under Advanced/Wireless Settings I noticed an “108Mbps Settings” area. I checked “Disable Advanced 108Mbps Features” and un-checked “Enable eXtended Range(XR) Feature”

Success! The Macbook could now successfully get a DHCP IP address!

Before finishing, we made sure that the bottom of the router had a piece of paper with the router’s password and we disabled the router’s Remote Management feature and re-enabled the WPA2 password and re-verified that everything was still working as expected. We also made sure that the iPhone could also connect without any problems.

Happy Troubleshooting!

Follow us on Twitter

Posted in Mac OS X, Technology, iPhone | No Comments »

Fixing TweetDeck and Adobe Air Apps in OS X

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

Update (7/21/09): TweetDeck finally speaks up about this issue, offers the same exact advice as below: http://tweetdecksupport.posterous.com/fixing-the-blank-tweetdeck-problem?

Yesterday I launched TweetDeck to get my Twitter fix and was surprised to see TweetDeck stuck with a blank empty screen:

TweetDeck stuck, launches blankSearching around I discovered that there are two places where TweetDeck stores it’s data:

Preferences Folder

  • This contains preferences like your columns, layout, etc.
  • To find this folder go to your Home directory -> Library folder -> Preferences folder then find the folder that starts with TweetDeck.
  • The actual path on my machine is:
    ~/Library/Preferences/TweetDeckFast.F9107117265DB7542C1A806C8DB837742CE14C21.1

Adobe AIR Encrypted Local Store (ELS)

  • This contains your login info to Twitter
  • To find this folder go to your Home directory -> Library folder -> Application Support folder -> Adobe folder -> AIR folder -> ELS folder then find the folder that starts with TweetDeck
  • The actual path on my machine is:
    ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/AIR/ELS/TweetDeckFast.F9107117265DB7542C1A806C8DB837742CE14C21.1

I tried moving/deleting the Preferences folder, but that did nothing. I ended up deleting the Adobe AIR ELS folder and leaving the Preferences folder as is. TweetDeck asked me for my Twitter credentials again, but then everything was back to normal, including all of my preferences.

If you are on Windows you can find these folders here (courtesy Christopher Grant):

  • C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\TweetDeckFast.[guid]
  • C:\Documents and Settings\[guid]\Application Data\Adobe\AIR\ELS\TweetDeckFast.[guid]

Posted in Leopard, Mac OS X, Technology, Twitter | 17 Comments »

Copy printers between machines in Leopard

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

To copy the list of installed printers from one machine to another, copy the following files:

/etc/cups/printers.conf
/etc/cups/printers.conf.O
/etc/cups/ppd/*
~/Library/Printers/*
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.print*

Make sure the files in /etc/cups retain the proper owner and group (root:_lp) and permissions (’u=rw,go=’ for the conf files and ‘u=rw,go=r’ for the ppd files).

You’ll also have to re-install any printer drivers that you installed on the old machine.

Restart after you’re done and System Preferences -> Print & Fax should now show your printer list.

Posted in Leopard, Mac OS X | No Comments »

Leopard Migration Assistant Bug

Friday, October 26th, 2007

After installing Leopard and restarting, Migration Assistant offers to transfer your data:

Leopare Migration Assistant

If I chose “from another volume on this Mac” (connected via USB) or “from another Mac” (connected via Firewire disk mode), I’d immediately get one of these errors:

  • “Mac OS X was not found on the volume you selected.”
  • “There are no version of Mac OS X on your old Mac.”
  • “You can only transfer information from a Mac that has OS X installed.”

The error comes right away, before I actually selected anything. The drive booted without any problems either.

So here is the very non-intuitve fix in case any one else runs into the same problem:

  • When the error comes up, just let it sit there for a while (a good 10 minutes in my case).
  • You’ll then start to notice that the information from your drive/machine starts showing up (Account info, size of the Applications folder, etc)
  • After all the information is populated, click Cancel in the dialog box which will take you back to the previous screen.
  • Select “from another volume on this Mac” or “from another Mac” again and this time there will be no error.

Posted in Leopard, Mac OS X | 2 Comments »