MacBook Pro left hand fan noisy

After turning on one of our 2009 MacBook Pro 17", after about 5 seconds, the left hand side fan would start making a buzzing noise. Thought it'd be something rattling around with it, or maybe catching a wire so I took it apart.

When I took the fan with the casing out I noticed nothing catching. It seemed to be rattling of its' own accord. I found this good post on how to fix the fan. Basically just take the two screws holding it together off. Then prize the fan off the motor.

Inside I found a little tiny bit of grit underneath the magnet on the main base. I tried to get it out but it proved pretty tricky. After 5 mins I got most of the bits out (very tiny bits), and I oiled the fan axle.

I put it back together and it worked a treat.

Thank you very much  ifixit.com and nofilmschool.com. This internet thing is very helpful.

Photoshop could not save because of a disk error

Well, quite recently students have been having trouble saving from Photoshop CS5 version 12.0.

It comes up with:
It's strange because if you try multiple times, sometimes it saves and others it comes up with the error.

Could not save as because of a desk error.

Looking in the console log I found these entries:

26/11/2012 16:09:36 /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS5/Adobe Photoshop CS5.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Photoshop CS5[1697] Allocator race detected: transaction is not verified for -103/2 - _mac_bind/Library/Preferences/Adobe/Color/ACEConfigCache2.lst
26/11/2012 16:09:48 /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock[1652] Allocator race detected: transaction is not verified for -103/248 - Untitled-4.psd
26/11/2012 16:09:49 kernel smb_maperr32: no direct map for 32 bit server error (0xc0000279)
26/11/2012 16:09:49 kernel smb_maperr32: no direct map for 32 bit server error (0xc0000279)

It seems to be a problem with users whose home drive is on Windows 2003 or before shares. Luckily I have my home drive on a Windows 2008 share.

Looking on the internet for the kernel error I found this down in the "Mac OS X bug: Empty oflders when browsing Samba shares on Windows 2003 Server". He gets the error when looking in sub-folders on a Windows 2003 server. Might be related.

Tried it with my login with my home drive on Windows Server 2008 share and works without problems.

So far I've tried:

• OS X 10.7.4
• OS X 10.6.6
• OS X 10.6.8
• Photoshop CS5 12.0.4
• Redirecting ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/ to a local folder

Just had a very similar problem with Windows PC's. Students trying to save from Photoshop to their home drive came up with a similar error:

Could not save as because the file could not be found

It looks like it's a server problem as it happens on both Windows and Mac. I shall update when I find out more.

HP Designjet 500 error 02:10 ribbon problems- trailing cable

I went to use the HP Designjet 500 and upon switching it on I noticed the print carriage stopping abruptly half way along the bed. Looking inside I noticed the ribbon which connects to the carriage was crumpled and had dried ink all over it. Thought this was causing the problem because it was unable to slide along with the carriage so I cleaned it.

After this it's had a few problems loading the paper, and also whilst printing. Just noticed this "System Error 02:10".

Found a few forums on the subject referring to the carriage and print heads. Replaced yellow printhead adn while it was performing an alignment it came up with:
System Error:  79:04

Found this (right at the bottom) one saying it was the connection with the ribbon cable. Looks like it's not getting the right 2.5V signal from the carriage. Needs reseating. Otherwise replace the cable.

The trouble is: How to get into the printer to reseat the cable? Looks like a bit of work.

Found a quick little tutorial on how to get the main cover off. Simply remove the three screws (hex) on the back main part. I unclipped the lift up cover, and you need to unclip the main cover by lifting it up.

Not sure how to remove the side panels.

I reseated the cables on the print carriage but after doing about 2 inches of print on a 36" roll it came up with this error again.

Found a service manual for the HP Designjet 500.
The error is found in section 2-8, carriage failure. It says to replace the Carriage Assembly, but my suspisions point to specifically the "Trailing Cable" as this was quite bent, possibly shorting when the carriage is moving.
To replace the "Trailing Cable" go to section 8-40

Looks like the trailing cable is about £15 so pretty cheap to try out.

If this doesn't work perhaps a carriage assembly. About £120 refurbished, or £350 new



Note ...................
7th Feb 2013
So, it's 3 months on and I finally got the chance to install a new "Trailing Cable". Nothing to note about changing the cable over, the manual is quite self explanatory. The only thing I found was that the torx screws were not size T20, were actually a size or two smaller.

After installation it worked perfectly!

Fixed.

Reseting a pasword in Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

Well, I needed to reset a password on a newly bought iMac (they'd forgotten what they had originally put??).

I knew how to do it back in 10.4 but thought the method might have changed a bit. Anyway, found this nice article on it. Basically:

1. Boot into Recovery Mode (hold down cmd + R)
2. Go to Utilities > Terminal
3. type:
1. resetPassword
4. a password reset facility comes up
5. Reboot the machine!

Done.

A little bit insecure. I basically means anyone reading this article can reset anyones password and access their files (unless fileVault has been used which has a lot of issues with it)

iPad 1st Gen screen displaying horizontal gray band

I have an iPad which is displaying a gray horizontal band across 1/3 of the screen near the bottom. I was told that upon switching the ipad on one morning this band just appeared. After reading a few posts looks like it is a common occurrence with a batch of iPads brought in December 2009 which is about the time we brought ours.

It appears to be a display problem as when taking a screenshot everthing appears fine.

As it is out of warranty and applecare i have the option to repair myself. I found this helpful guide of how to replace the screen and glass. And hear is the price of a new LCD with glass (about £80). Here's one with just the LCD screen.

I shall update.

I've decided to test the theory by swapping the display assembly with another working iPad, as it involves little invasive action.

Firefox not picking up the wpad auto config file

I've decided to setup firefox on the new Windows image but it turns out it doesn't like the options:

• Use system proxy settings
• this is the one I prefer as I can set it using group policy/workgroup manager
• Auto-detect proxy settings for this network

Whenever either of these are ticked you cannot browse the internet.

Had a quick search and think I've found the problem. The browser looks for the file:

http://wpad/wpad.dat

Now when I typed this in the address bar of; Safari, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome; they all downloaded the wpad.dat file. But Firefox was the odd one out as it just displayed the "Unable to connect" and "Problem loading page" errors.

Did a quick search and found this Knowledge Base Article describing how all other browser now use DHCP to help find this address, but Firefox only uses DNS. Also found it here in a blog and more importantly in Mozillas bug reports here (takes a while to load).

The fix apparently is to put a "DNS record for the WPAD server" (described here under 7.2.2)

Imaging Windows XP on a Mac - filling (expanding) the partition

So, came to a machine today which I'd just re-imaged with windows XP using DeployStudio. Windows thought the partition was only 30Gb's  but was actually 110GB's. I had seen this before but never written down how to fix it.

First thing I tried was the Disk Checking utility. This did not fix the problem.

After this I didn't know what to do. I turned to google and found this forum answer. Turns out when re-imaging there is an option to "Auto Expand" windows to fill the partition but sometimes does not work. To fix, use WinClone. Unfortunately the latest version of WinClone now costs $19.99, but the older V2.2 was free. I eventually found WinClone V2.2 here.

You also need NTFSProgs so OS X can understand NTFS partitions. WinClone downloads them automatically, here is the link it uses.

Here's a screenshot of it in action:

WinClone Expanding windows file system

Go to Tools > Expand Windows file system.

Takes around 8 mins.

Worked. Cheers.