Archive: Mac Tech Support

So, there it is an Apple Mac configured to auto login is now showing a Login screen and it doesn't seem to like any of the usernames and passwords that we could think of. In other words we're locked …

It's an older platform, but there are still some around. I found this nice guide to troubleshooting startup issues on these versions of Mac's OS.

Windows users know chkdsk, linux users know fsck... users of each MIGHT have heard of SMART. These are different ways of TESTING hard drives. Well, there's also a utility called TestDisk that looks p…

One of the tools I looked at having for my expanding kit has been a usb wireless adapter that would work with minimal install on Windows/Mac or Linux. As you can imagine.... it's not as straightforwa…

ah... the joys of *nix utilities.... I've just successfully tested a "capture" of a live, running system into a virtual disk image. No, I don't mean that I booted up with an imaging utility. I took a…

Vmware has launched a tool (windows only it seems) aimed to convert a REAL running system into a virtual machine. (For use with VMWare's virtualization products. The converter also can convert images…

If you've been delaying on updating with the recent Apple Mac OS X updates.... don't, there are exploits in the wild now for at least one. It's speculated that this code may have been in the wild bef…

Apple is fixing 15 security flaws with the 10.4.8 version upgrade of Mac OS X. (There is a second update as well.... Security Update 2006-006). In typical fashion there are a bundle of issues in thes…

So, I was formatting a drive the other day. It's an external hard drive that will need to be readable AND writable by both Mac and Windows XP machines. So, the only choice (without paying for MacDriv…

I saw a comment somewhere else that zero-day was overused and in essense ANY previously unknown vulnerability in open source software is technically zero day... the intent here though is to use the w…

Do you remember the big bruhaha a month or so back about the "apple wireless vulnerability" that everybody picked apart because in the video taped demonstration they used a third party card.... EVEN …

Yesterday, of course, Microsoft released it's monthly patches. I found the Windows update site to be painfully slow (and in some cases unresponsive.) It wasn't quite a huge update day by recent stand…

Yesterday codeweavers announced a beta release of their Crossover Office product geared towards Apple Mac OS X users. The software will allow certain windows applications to run on top of Apple's ope…

A bit over a week ago Dell had a massive recall announced for potentially hazardous laptop computer battery issues. (Flaming laptops.) Now, it's Apple's turn. It seems as though Sony is the common su…

This morning I was doing a fresh install of Windows XP SP2 into a Virtual Machine. So far, things are fine I went through windowsupdate and found 3 updates the first time, then rebooted and hit windo…

A couple weeks ago the hot story was about the demonstration of a vulnerability in a 3rd party wireless card driver on a Mac. The individuals that demonstrated the vulnerability (in a video taped pre…

HDR - recently I heard someone talking about this with regards to digital imaging. The idea is that you have three identical images (landscapes) taken from a stationary (tripod) camera. The only diff…

That was a quick turn around.... It appears as though some of the multimedia streaming issues were severe enough to require a quick turnaround for Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 Sans had the initial heads u…

There are a couple notes to pass along with regards to some pretty serious vulnerabilities in various wireless network adapter drivers. First, Sans has information on some Intel Centrino updates that…

Just by way of information..... I've seperated out the www.computerrepairasheville.com and www.ashevillecomputerhelp.com domains now to point to a seperate web site with the main goal of simplifying …

From the look of it Apple has released a bunch of updates for OS X. A number of security issues are detailed. As always, SANS has some good details and links to more info on each of the ~13 issues. M…

Sometimes you run across a site that's a browser snob. You know the type.... you visit it in Mozilla Firefox or (anything other than IE) and it says, "you must use Internet Explorer version 6 or newe…

Again.... this article referring to an exploit related to the cross platform plugin capability in firefox, is a GOOD reminder to be cautious when looking at potential plugins to install for mozilla f…

On the heels of yesterdays massive update day from Microsoft, Adobe has released an update for the free Adobe Reader. The Adobe reader is one of those ALMOST essential applications that MOST everyone…

I don't know much about the dv format, except that it is a standard format that many camcorders use. For this reason, many video editors (such as kino for linux) prefer to see files coming in dv form…

I hope there aren't too many browser developers that have planned on taking July off..... I ran across browserfun.blogspot.com where it is planned to release information on a web browser vulnerabilit…

A couple days ago there was a release of Mac OS X 10.4.7 which addressed several security flaws. There is now an exploit published for one of these vulnerabilities. The attacker using this exploit co…

There are several issues fixed by a bundle of updates for OS X (for 10.4 up to 10.4.6). The new release is 10.4.7 There are a number of issues fixed in addition to at least 3 security related problem…

The Official Google blog passes along the release of the Google Video Player for Mac. I'm impressed at the universal binary which means it should work on either PPC or Intel architecture. Here's the …

It sounds like this vulnerability would take a great deal of user interaction, but cio-today is reporting on a browser vulnerability that affects pretty much every javascript enabled browser. Accordi…

To show you where the threat with bot networks is going there's a story today on Nugache (Symantec summary) which is a bot that takes advantage of a number of clever tricks to avoid having the whole …

Apple has released Quicktime v. 7.1 for both Windows and OS X to address about 12 vulnerabilities. It looks as though all of the vulnerabilities were related to either a specially crafted images or m…