macbook for dummies phần 9 ppt

Just because a keyboard or mouse is wireless doesn’t automatically make it a Bluetooth device.. Step-by-Step Laptop Troubleshooting In this section, I walk you through my Should-Be-Paten

 Show Bluetooth Status in the Menu Bar (Settings tab): I recommend

that you enable this feature The Bluetooth menu lets you convenientlytoggle your laptop’s discovery status as well as set up a device or sendand browse files (You can also see what devices are connected to yourMac with the click of a menu icon ’Nuff said.)

Adding Wireless Keyboards and Mice to Your Laptop

The current crop of Mac laptops arrive at your doorstep in a fully wirelessconfiguration — Apple throws in an internal Bluetooth adapter and an inter-nal AirPort Extreme wireless card Everything’s already included for you

Therefore, you can indeed work keyboard and mouse magic from across theroom from your laptop, using a wireless keyboard and mouse (Or perhapsyou just want a full-size keyboard and external mouse to use when you’reworking from your home or office.)

A number of wireless Bluetooth keyboard/mouse packages are on the market,and any one of ’em should work fine with your Mac In fact, you can buyApple’s wireless Bluetooth keyboard and mouse separately, for a total ofabout $120 Other offerings from Logitech and our old buddy Microsoft runabout the same amount

When shopping for a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse desktop, keep these facts inmind:

 Some keyboards are created more than equal Many of today’s

third-party keyboards are encrusted with extra function buttons that doeverything from opening your e-mail application to searching yourkitchen cabinets for another can of spray cheese

I like these programmable function keys — they can bring up yourfavorite applications with a single keystroke while you’re relaxing 20 feetaway — so look for the keyboard that offers the most programmablekeys in your price range

 Rodents crave energy Does the wireless mouse come with its own

recharging stand? If so, that’s a big plus Depending on how much youuse your laptop, a mouse that runs on standard batteries can go through

a set in as little as a month’s time! (Not surprisingly, many computerowners use rechargeable batteries in their wireless mice.) In fact, somewireless mice include an on/off switch to help conserve battery power

 Wireless doesn’t always mean Bluetooth Just because a keyboard or

mouse is wireless doesn’t automatically make it a Bluetooth device

Plenty of wireless RF (radio frequency) devices are out there, too Thesetoys need their own transmitters, which are usually USB-based as well,

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so things can get confusing Therefore, read the box or technical cations carefully to make sure you’re buying Bluetooth.

specifi- Bluetooth stuff isn’t self-cleaning Sure, your new wireless keyboard

and mouse can hang out with you on the sofa, but that doesn’t meanthey’re happy sharing your nacho puffs and grape soda Look for anoptical mouse that doesn’t use a ball, and check whether a prospectivekeyboard can be easily cleaned and maintained before you buy it.Most Bluetooth devices are controlled through the Bluetooth pane in SystemPreferences However, wireless keyboards and mice are a special casebecause they’re monitored through the Bluetooth section of the Keyboard

& Mouse pane, as shown in Figure 18-4 (You can even add a new wirelessdevice from this tab — geez, those Apple designers give you a dozen roads

to the same spot on the map, don’t they?)

Getting Everything in iSync

No jokes about boy bands, please iSync is the data transfer and

synchroniz-ing utility application that ships with Tiger, and it works fine with both wiredand wireless Bluetooth connections The difference between Bluetooth FileExchange and iSync is a matter of intelligence:

Figure 18-4:

Check yourBluetoothkeyboardand mousebatterylevels

294 Part V: Sharing Access and Information

 BFE merely transfers files and dumps them in the folders you specify.

 iSync copies and updates your Address Book, Safari, and iCal tion between devices iSync compares the information on both yourlaptop and your devices and makes sure they end up the same

informa-iSync also allows you to synchronize data between multiple computersusing your Mac membership so that the contacts, bookmarks, and cal-endar data on your iBook matche the data on your Mac You can controlwhat gets sent from the Mac pane in System Preferences (For more on.Mac, visit Chapter 9.)

Just because your phone or PDA supports Bluetooth doesn’t mean that iSync

is guaranteed to work I know a few Mac owners who are still seething overincompatible devices For a complete list of the Bluetooth phones, PDAs, and other devices that work with iSync, visit www.apple.com/isync/

devices.html

After your supported Bluetooth device is linked to your Mac, follow thesesteps to add the new device to iSync and synchronize your data:

1 Click the Finder icon on the dock.

2 Click Applications in a Finder window’s sidebar, and then click iSync.

double-3 Press Ô+N.

4 Click Scan to display any Bluetooth devices in range.

5 Double-click the device you want to use.

The window expands to allow you to specify the data to synchronize

Other settings might appear as well, depending on the device For ple, Figure 18-5 illustrates the available data that can be synchronized

exam-with my iPod Because you can’t surf the Web on an iPod — yet — the

Bookmarks option doesn’t appear

6 Select the check boxes for each data type you want to exchange.

7 Click Sync Devices.

Never disconnect a device while a synchronization is in progress — the data

being transferred could become corrupt or your laptop could lock up

Deleting a calendar event or a contact on either your laptop or the Bluetoothdevice deletes that same data from the other machine! For example, if youdecide you no longer need your personal contacts on your Mac at work and

you delete ’em, they’ll be deleted from your PDA when you synchronize When I

say that iSync creates a mirror image on both sides of the connection, I’m notlying — additions appear and deletions disappear

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The Magic of Wireless Printing

To your Mac laptop, a wireless Bluetooth printer is just another Bluetoothconnection — but to you, it’s the very definition of convenience, especially ifdesk space is limited next to your Mac Just set that paper-producing puppy

up anywhere in the 30 60 foot range, plug it in, set up the printer in Tiger,and let ’er rip

Not all printer manufacturers produce Bluetooth models that communicateproperly with your Mac Make sure that the Bluetooth printer you buy sup-

ports HCRP (Another jawbreaker acronym This time it stands for Hardcopy Cable Replacement Protocol.)

You have two options when installing a Bluetooth printer:

 Whenever possible, use the printer manufacturer’s software A printermight require a driver that a typical Bluetooth device doesn’t need

 You can usually successfully set up a printer using the Bluetooth SetupAssistant, which you can run from the Devices pane in the Bluetoothpane of System Preferences:

Figure 18-5:

Specify thestuff to syncwith aniPod

296 Part V: Sharing Access and Information

1 Make sure your printer is set as discoverable.

Check your printer manual to determine how to switch yourprinter to discoverable mode

2 Click the Set Up New Device button

3 Choose to install a printer.

4 Follow the onscreen instructions.

Luckily, after you successfully set up a Bluetooth printer, you can just pressÔ+P to open the Print dialog box and choose that printer from the Printer

pop-up menu No big whoop and that’s the way it should be.

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298 Part V: Sharing Access and Information

In this part

No computer is completely trouble-free — and if your

MacBook or MacBook Pro starts acting strangely(like a Windows PC), the troubleshooting tips you’ll find inthis part will help you get your favorite machine back tonormal I also provide you with all the guidance you need

to maintain your Mac properly as well as step-by-stepinstructions for upgrading your laptop with goodies likeadditional RAM or external storage devices

Chapter 19

When Good Mac Laptops Go Bad

In This Chapter

Avoiding the blame (righteously)

Putting basic troubleshooting precepts to work

Using Mark’s Troubleshooting Tree

Getting help

Iwish you weren’t reading this chapter Because you are, I can only mise that you’re having trouble with your Mac, and that it needs fixing.(The other possibility — that you just like reading about solving computerproblems — is more attractive, but much more problematic.) Therefore, con-

sur-sider this chapter a crash course in the logical puzzle that is computer bleshooting: namely, the art of finding out What Needs Fixing You also see

trou-what you can do when you just plain can’t fix the problem by yourself

Oh, and you’re going to encounter a lot of tips in this chapter — all of themlearned the hard way, so I recommend committing them to memory on thespot!

Repeat after Me: Yes, I Am a Tech!

Anyone can troubleshoot Time to put these common troubleshooting myths

to rest:

 It takes a college degree in computers to troubleshoot Tell that to my

troubleshooting kid in junior high She’ll think it’s a hoot because shehas an Apple laptop of her own (and another in the classroom) You canfollow all the steps in this chapter without any special training

 I’m to blame Ever heard of viruses? Failing hardware? Buggy software?

Any of those things can be causing the problem Heck, even if you dosomething by accident, I’m willing to bet it wasn’t on purpose

 I need to buy expensive utility software Nope You can certainly invest

in a commercial testing and repair utility if you like My favorites areTechTool Pro from Micromat (www.micromat.com) and Disk Warriorfrom Alsoft (www.alsoft.com), but a third-party utility isn’t a require-ment for troubleshooting (I do, however, consider an antivirus applica-tion a must-have, and you should have one already Hint, hint.)

 There’s no hope if I can’t fix it Parts fail, and computers crash, but your

Apple Service Center can repair just about any problem And (ahem) ifyou’ve backed up your laptop (as I’ve preached throughout this book),you’ll keep that important data even if a new hard drive is in your future

 It takes forever Wait until you read the number one rule in the next

sec-tion; the first step takes but 30 seconds and often solves the problem.Not all problems can be fixed so quickly, but if you follow the proce-dures in this chapter, you should fix your laptop (or at least know thatthe problem requires outside help) in a single afternoon

With those myths banished for good, you can get down to business and startfeeling better soon

Step-by-Step Laptop Troubleshooting

In this section, I walk you through my Should-Be-Patented TroubleshootingTree as well as Tiger’s built-in troubleshooting application, Disk Utility I alsointroduce you to a number of keystrokes that can make your Mac jumpthrough hoops

The number one rule: Reboot!

Yep, it sounds silly, but the fact is that rebooting your Mac can often solve anumber of problems If you’re encountering the following types of strangebehavior with your laptop, a reboot might be all you need:

 Intermittent problems communicating over a network

 A garbled screen, strange colors, or screwed-up fonts

 The Swirling Beach Ball of Doom that won’t go away after several minutes

 An application that locks up

 An external device that seems to disappear or can’t be opened

Always try a reboot before beginning to worry Always.

302 Part VI: The Necessary Evils: Troubleshooting, Upgrading, Maintaining

Try to save all open documents before you reboot That might not be ble, but try to save what you can.

possi-If you need to force an application to quit so you can reboot, follow thesesteps to squash that locked application:

1 Click the Apple (Ú) menu and choose Force Quit.

The Force Quit Applications dialog box appears

2 Click the name of the offending application, and then click the Force Quit button.

If you can get everything to quit, you should be able to click the Applemenu and choose Shut Down without a problem

If your laptop simply won’t shut down (or you can’t get the offending tion to quit), do what must be done:

applica-1 Press and hold your Mac’s Power button until it shuts itself off.

You have to wait about four seconds for your Mac to turn itself off

2 Wait five seconds to allow your hard drive to spin down.

3 Press the Power button again to restart the computer.

After everything is back up, check whether the problem is still apparent Ifyou use your Mac for an hour or two and the problem doesn’t reoccur, you’velikely fixed it!

Special keys that can come in handy

A number of keys have special powers over your laptop No, I’m not kidding!

These keys affect how your Mac starts up, and they can come in handy whilsttroubleshooting

Tricks you can do with your friendly Shift key

The Shift key has a number of special functions:

 Disable automatic login Hold down the left Shift key and the trackpad

button down after the screen lights up

 Prevent your login items from running If Tiger displays a multiuser

login screen, hold down Shift at the login screen while you click the Login button If your laptop doesn’t display a login screen, hold down

Shift either when you push your Mac Power button or immediately afterthe screen blanks during a restart

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Startup keys

Table 19-1 provides the lowdown on startup keys Hold the indicated keydown either when you push your Mac Power button or immediately after thescreen blanks during a restart

Table 19-1 Startup Keys and Their Tricks

C Boots from the CD or DVD that’s loaded in your optical driveMedia Eject Ejects the CD or DVD in your optical drive

Option Displays a boot menu, allowing you to choose the operating

systemShift Prevents your login items from running

T Starts your laptop in FireWire Target Disk modeÔ+V Show Mac OS X console messages

Ô+S Starts your laptop in single user modeÔ+Option+P+R Resets parameter RAM (PRAM)

Some of the keys in Table 19-1 may never be necessary for your machine, butthen again you might be instructed to use them by an Apple technician I’llwarrant that you’ll use at least the C startup key fairly often

Using Disk Utility to squash problemsTiger’s Disk Utility is a handy tool for troubleshooting and repairing yourhard drive You can find it in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder.Fire up Disk Utility, click the First Aid tab, and you see the powerful lookingwindow shown in Figure 19-1

304 Part VI: The Necessary Evils: Troubleshooting, Upgrading, Maintaining

Why is rebooting so darn effective?

Rebooting fixes problems because it resetseverything Your network connection, for exam-ple, may be acting up or may have timed out, andrebooting restores it Rebooting also fixes prob-lems due to brownouts or those notorious AC

power flickerings that we all notice from time totime Such interruptions in constant juice maynot bother you or me (or your less-intelligenttoaster), but they can play tricks on your Macthat rebooting corrects

In the left column of the Disk Utility window, you can see

 The physical hard drives in your system (the actual hardware)

 The volumes (the data stored on the hard drives)

A volume is always indented below the physical drive entry

 CD or DVD discs currently loaded on your laptop

 USB or FireWire flash drivesFor example, in Figure 19-1, I have two hard drives (the 149.1GB and 28.6GBentries), and each has a single volume (the Wolfgang and the Macintosh HDentries, respectively)

The information at the bottom of the Disk Utility window contains the cations of the selected drive or volume things such as capacity, freespace, and the number of files and folders for a volume, or connection typeand total capacity for a drive

specifi-Repairing disk permissions

Because Tiger is built on a UNIX base, lots of permissions can apply to the files

on your drive — that is, who can open (or read or change) every application,folder, and document on your hard drive Unfortunately, these permissions areoften messed up by wayward applications or power glitches, or by applicationinstallers that do a sub-par job of cleaning up after themselves And if the per-missions on a file are changed, applications might lock up or refuse to run

I recommend repairing your disk permissions with Disk Utility once a week,and before installing Mac OS X updates

Figure 19-1:

Thephysician

of harddrives —Tiger’s DiskUtility

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Chapter 19: When Good Mac Laptops Go Bad

Follow these steps to repair the permissions on your Mac’s hard drive:

1 Save and close any open documents, and make sure that you’re logged in with an admin account.

Chapter 16 shows you how to log in as an admin user

2 Double-click the Disk Utility icon in the Utilities folder.

3 Click the volume that you want to check.

4 Click the Repair Disk Permissions button.

I don’t worry about verifying If something’s wrong, you end up clickingRepair Disk Permissions anyway Just click Repair Disk Permissions; ifnothing pops up, that’s fine

5 To finish the process, always reboot after repairing permissions.

This shows you whether a problem has been corrected!

Repairing disks

Disk Utility can check the format and health of both hard drives and volumeswith Verify Disk — and, if the problem can be corrected, fix any error usingRepair Disk

Using Disk Utility to repair your hard drive carries a couple of caveats:

 You can’t verify or repair the boot disk or boot volume This makes

sense because you’re using that disk and volume right now

To verify or repair your boot hard drive, you need to boot from yourMac OS X installation disc by using the C startup key (See Table 19-1 forkeys that come in handy.) After your laptop has booted using the Mac

OS X installation disc, choose the Utilities menu and click Disk Utility.You should be able to select your boot hard drive or volume, and theVerify Disk and Repair Disk buttons should be enabled

306 Part VI: The Necessary Evils: Troubleshooting, Upgrading, Maintaining

Danger, Will Robinson!

Many Disk Utility functions can actually wipe your hard drive clean of data or trash your existing system instead of repairing them!

These advanced functions aren’t likely to helpyou with troubleshooting a problem with yourexisting volumes anyway Unless you’re inti-mately familiar with Disk Utility

 Don’t partition and erase drives

 Don’t set up RAID arrays

 Don’t restore files from disk images (untilyou’ve read my tutorial covering thisprocess in Chapter 21)

until an Apple technician tells you to do so