A USB thumb drive with data created in Windows is not showing up on my desktop. Do I need a different driver or something?

OK in order to read those files you will need MS Office for Mac or install MS Windows on your Mac. You can get MS Office for Mac from anyone that sells Apple products. I would suggest the Apple Store, Best Buy, Amazon etc...For help getting the data from the memory stick I'd recommend visiting your local Apple Store or AASP and they can help you move it. It should be as simple as plugging the USB drive into your USB port and then open a Finder Window where you will see the drive on the left pane. If you don't know what Finder is or how to open a new Finder window you need the sites I've noted below!!!
Because you are new to OS X I would strongly recommend you bookmark and frequently visit the following web sites:
Switch 101
Mac 101
Find Out How Video tutorials

Similar Messages

Any TextFrame Created on Server will not show as tagged on desktop

Hi All,
related to an eariler post - if I create "any" text frame on InDesign Server, it will not show as tagged when opened in desktop.
I run the following code on InDesign Server CS3:
var doc = app.documents.add();
var frame = doc.pages.item(0).textFrames.add();
//..set geometry...save document...
When I then open the document in desktop and tag the frame, it all works functionally but the frame will not display as tagged ("ie View..Structure..Show Tagged Frames").
If I add a new frame to the same document (via UI) and tag it - it all works fine.
If I copy the server generated frame - it will still not display as tagged.
Strange, and very annoying! Has anyone else come across this issue.
Can anyone else replicate it for me so I know I'm not mad or have some dodgy install?
Cheers, Scott

Scott,
I see the same problem, so no, you aren't crazy. I tried running the same javascript from within InDesign, but that text frame draws correctly. So, it doesn't look like it is a scripting problem, but a problem unique to InDesign Server.
Susan Doan

How can I create a Lion USB Thumb Drive with the 11E2068 build?

It seems that the Lion build from the Mac App Store is not compatible with my Macbook Pro Retina 15''. It's seems I would need the the build 11E2068 for my USB thumb drive to work properly.
I don't want to go through the internet recovery and loose 8 hours.
Is there anyway for my to get that build(11E2068) on my USB thumb drive?
Thanks,

keg55's given you article that allows you to capture the installer. These are the critical portions:
Once that data has been downloaded, Lion Recovery restarts your Mac, immediately installs the OS, and then deletes the installer data. The trick is to interrupt that process—safely—so you can grab the installer data and keep it. Here are the steps to take:
IMO, Apple needs to rethink this process. Unless users with machines that had Lion preinstalled, like yourself, let Apple know this process is terrible, they'll not change their minds.
7. IMPORTANT: Monitor the download’s progress. As the progress bar gets near the end, get ready, because once the status reads About 0 seconds remaining, the progress bar will disappear, the installer will spend a minute or two cleaning up, and then your Mac will restart. As soon as the screen goes dark, unplug your external drive. If you wait too long, your Mac will boot into the Mac OS X installer on that drive, starting the installation process. Interrupting that process can leave your Mac unable to install OS X unless you restart it and—I’m not joking—zap PRAM.

Can I use a USB thumb drive with iPad

Can I use a USB thumb drive with iPad2

What do you want to do with the thumb drive?
If for picture/movie files, You can use a USB flash drive & the camera connection kit.
Plug the USB flash drive into your computer & create a new folder titled DCIM. Then put your movie/photo files into the folder. The files must have a filename with exactly 8 characters long (no spaces) plus the file extension (i.e., my-movie.mov).
Now plug the flash drive into the iPad using the camera connection kit. Open the Photos app, the movie/photo files should appear & you can import.
 Cheers, Tom

How to create bootable USB thumb drive from Lion on Mac Mini 2011?

Hello folks
Yesterday my new Mac Mini (Core i7 2,7 Ghz, 4 GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD6630M 256 MB) arrived. It replaces my old Mac Mini (Core Duo 1,83 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, Intel GMA950 64 MB). One day I'll replace the 500 GB 5400 RPM HDD in this Mini by an Intel SSD drive (just like I did with my previous Mini). I'll do a fully clean install then (formatting the SSD drive in Disk Utility and then installing Lion on it from a bootable USB thumb drive). The only problem is I can't seem to download Lion for free from the Mac AppStore (MAS) although I have bought a new Mac Mini which came with Lion pre-installed. I know how to create a bootable USB thumb drive with Lion on it when you download it from the MAS. But that's the problem... I can't seem to download Lion from the MAS for free. When I open the MAS while holding down the Option key I can download Lion but it will charge me for it. Is there any way I can download Lion from the MAS without paying for it? Since it already came with my new Mac Mini 2011 this should be possible I guess?
And will I still be able to download the iLife '11 apps (iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband) for FREE that came with my new Mac Mini when I do a fully clean install as described above? Thanks in advance.
Greetings
Jocau

After doing some research, it seems that there are only 2 WAYS to do a complete reinstall of Lion on the Mac Mini 2011 without paying for the Lion download in the Mac AppStore (i.e. recreating every partition, also the Recovery HD partition, from scratch e.g. when installing Lion on a clean HDD/SSD).
1) COMPLETELY clone the Mac Mini 2011 HDD including all of its partitions to an external drive and restore it when you want to do a complete reinstall.
2) Use the LION INTERNET RECOVERY feature built-in into new Macs that ship with Lion (this feature is present in new Macs starting from the Mac Mini 2011 and Macbook Air 2011).
OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery
Lion Internet Recovery
If you happen to encounter a situation in which you cannot start from the Recovery HD, such as your hard drive stopped responding or you installed a new hard drive without Mac OS X installed, new Mac models introduced after public availability of OS X Lion automatically use the Lion Internet Recovery feature if the Recovery HD (Command-R method above) doesn't work. Lion Internet Recovery lets you start your Mac directly from Apple's Servers. The system runs a quick test of your memory and hard drive to ensure there are no hardware issues.
Lion Internet Recovery presents a limited interface at first, with only the ability to select your preferred Wi-Fi network and, if needed, enter the WPA passphrase. Next, Lion Internet Recovery will download and start from a Recovery HD image. From there, you are offered all the same utilities and functions described above.
As with the Recovery HD, reinstallation of OS X Lion from Lion Internet Recovery requires an Internet connection. See "Supported network configurations and protocols" below.
Restoring iLife applications after Internet Restore of OS X Lion
If you reinstall Lion on a new Mac that shipped with OS X Lion installed, on an erased or replaced hard drive, you can download iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand from the Mac App Store.
After installation, start from Lion.
Double-click the App Store icon in the dock.
Enter your Apple ID and password.
Click Purchases.
If you haven't previously accepted your bundled iLife applications within the Mac App Store, you should see your iLife applications appear in the Accept portion of the screen. Click Accept.
You may be asked for your Apple ID and password once again. Your iLife applications now move to the Purchased section. These applications are part of the software that came with your Lion based computer. Your account will not be charged for them. Click Install to compete installation of your applications.
Source: Lion Recovery
It's a bit sad that these seem to be the only 2 options. Lion Internet Recovery is the preferred one here since my monthly internet traffic limit isn't a problem (but my download speed is). This problem could have been easily solved by Apple by just checking the system specs or serial number when trying to download Lion from the Mac AppStore. By using one of the 2 options in my previous sentence the Mac AppStore could see that I have a new Mac Mini 2011 that ships with Lion which would give me the option to download Lion from the Mac AppStore for free and eventually create a bootable USB thumb drive of it.

Using USB thumb drive with Parallels and Microsoft Windows XP

I installed Parallels 3.0 because I need to use a few windows applications for work. I am currently unable to find the USB thumb drive when I plug it into the USB port. It is connected and is selected, but I can't figure out how to access it. I check in "My Computer" just like I would on a PC, but the thumb drive is not listed. Any suggestions.
Macbook with Leopard
Thanks.
Jon

You're right, it should show up under My Computer. You may want to post your question over on the Parallels forums: http://forums.parallels.com as they're more geared toward the issue since Parallels is not an Apple product.

Using a usb thumb drive with a mac

So, I'm a recent windows user and when using a USB thumb drive, if you erased something, it would automatically update the thumb drive and show the right amount of free space.
I've noticed with the mac, if you delete an item, it doesn't update, and you need to go into disk utility and format in order to show the appropriate amount of free space.
Is there an easier way to do this?
I searched for a few minutes on this topic, but couldn't seem to find anything. All apologies if I missed it.

Choose Empty Trash from the Finder menu, or from the menu which appears when you control-click or click and hold on the Trash icon in the Dock.
(38516)

Can I create a Win 7 Recovery Image *Bootable* USB THUMB DRIVE? -- (Instead of cd/dvd)

Hi
Can someone share how to create a
Windows 7 Recovery Image USB THUMB BOOTABLE DRIVE? -- I mean in place of the Boot DVD that Windows Backup offers to create after you've created an image?
I assume that there must be a way to do this?
Thanks in advance!!

Juke, Thanks, but my question remains not answered,
I only want to know one thing.
***How do I create a USB BOOT "DISK" using a USB Drive.  Not the IMAGE --just the boot files
     In other words, I want my 2 gig USB THUMB DRIVE to behave just like the Recovery CD/DVD.
     I only want the steps of how to create the BOOTABLE USB.
     (Forget about the image --- I keep the image on on another hard drive, and NOT the USB)
See the following guide to make a recovery USB drive:
http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-repair-windows-7-from-usb-flash-drive-repair-without-installation-dvd-disc/
Have Questions About Installing Windows 7?
FAQ - Common Windows 7 Installation Questions & Answers

How to create a Mac OS X Lion USB thumb drive installation bootable drive on a brand new Macbook???

Hi,
As Apple have decided not to give with new laptops USB thumb drives for installation of OS X Lion (as they did with Snow Leopard), since people on the go might not have access to high speed internet when the system crashes, plenty of tutorials have surfaced about "How to Make a Bootable Mac OS X Lion USB Install Key"
Such as
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16149
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2389178,00.asp
These all assume you have upgraded to Lion from Snow Leopard thus purchasing the Lion on the App Store.
Any ideas what people who have purchased brand new Mabooks do? As the system comes preloaded with the OS X Lion and it's not considered purchased on the App store.
I think Apple's new policy to charge customers $69 for this thumb drive is wrong and outrageous since the price of the laptop includes a license for the OS!
Thanks,
Guy.

Saifan Pilot wrote:
Any ideas what people who have purchased brand new Mabooks do? As the system comes preloaded with the OS X Lion and it's not considered purchased on the App store.
Recovery Partition http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
For those Macs shipped with 10.7
Lion Recovery Disk Assistant
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433

WinXP 32- installing with drivers on USB thumb drive

So I just recieved my D10 SATA today and I'm trying to install WinXP 32, but I can't seem to get the "USB thumb stick driver fix" solution to work. I just have just one SATA hard drive in the machine currently, and I have the dvd-rom plugged in to the SAS, as mentioned on the boards.
SATA is in compatible mode, the LSI SAS controller is enabled (for the dvd). I loaded the Intel Matrix... and LSI drivers on a USB thumb drive as well as on a Sony Memory Stick (I have the card reader). Boot from the CD, push F6 when prompted, but when it gets to the screen where i'm supposed to navigate for the F6 drivers, it just says "windows can not find floppy disk... etc". If I continue with the installation without the drivers, it'll BSOD (unsurprisingly).
I've tried every solution and fix I've read on the boards, and I can't seem to get the thumb drive option to work. The machine I'm on right now doesn't seem to like nLite, so slipstreaming seems to be out of the equation for the moment.
If I disable the LSI controller and plug the dvd-rom into the SATA port, when it's in compatible mode, it won't find the dvd rom, which of course means I can't boot from CD. I'm a bit stuck as to how everyone's been able to install the drivers from a USB drive, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I'm sorry for the long first post, but after reading some threads on this forum, I figured a detailed descreption of my problems would be best. Thanks in advance!
Message Edited by 81dollar on 08-08-2008 03:28 PM

In the BIOS boot sequence make sure diskette A is on the "not included in boot sequence" category. Also, try disableling Deskette Drive A from the Devices tab (i think it is). I doubt this will work since I ran into the same exact issue as you. Your best option will probably be to integrate the drivers using nLite, see my thread on integrating drivers using nLite (Method 2, second post). Hope this helps.

Prepare an usb thumb drive, to boot windows 7 or 8 in UEFI mode

Purpose of this post:
Prepare an usb thumb drive, to boot windows 7 in UEFI mode and install the system in pure UEFI mode.
Why am I writing this:
I had a hard time finding out how to make a custom installation of windows 7 in pure UEFI mode, and avoid using the factory restore disks. After hours of research, experiments etc I finally got the point and found a solution. And I'm happy to share my research with you. I hope this will be of help. If something is not clear, or more information is needed, I will be glad to explain things further.
History:
As most of you already know, BIOS was developed for PC in early eighties and has remained unchanged in recent years. But, since 2000, Intel started working on a new firmware interface, called Extensible Firmware Interface, abbreviated EFI. And since 2005 United EFI Forum has been handling the responsibility for development, management and promotion of UEFI specifications. Bigger companies like Intel, AMD, Microsoft and Dell have already started to bring out their products in accordance to UEFI standards which has more stable, secure and easier to use interface.
How does UEFI works (in a nutshell):
Once you power on the UEFI based PC, the Pre-EFI is executed which initializes only the CPU, memory and the chipset. This followed by Driver Execution Environment (DEX) where other hardware is initialized.
Advantages of UEFI:
    It can integrate various drivers this will not require to load during booting so saves time.
   PC can connect to network without OS.
   Also integrated drivers allow rendering GUI based control panel which out dates the old school bluish BIOS screen.
   Not all the installed hard drives are scanned as boot drive is set during the installation of OS in UFFI.
   Applications like anti-virus and diagnostic tools can be stored on virtually any non-volatile storage devices attached to a PC.
For a system to boot and install in UEFI the partition table of the HDD should be GPT (GUID Partition Table), not the old school MBR (master boot record). GPT has many advantages, can have virtually an unlimited number of partitions (windows will allow only 128) and impressively big partitions.
Since UEFI has a lot of advantages why not having a system install and boot in UEFI mode? AFAIK new Lenovo notebooks/netbooks are UEFI capable and OS’s are already installed in pure UEFI mode.
So, let’s go now to the point. Do you want to have more control over your HDD? Let say, you have a 320GB HDD and you have divided it in two partitions, one of 50GB, for your Windows 7, and the remaining for your data. If something goes wrong and you need to restore your system to factory default, with the recovery disks, it will wipe your partition scheme, set the system to default and this way your data will be lost.
You may want to make a “vanilla” installation of windows from a USB thumb drive and avoid using factory recovery disks. Now here things get complicated. A standard preparation of the USB with Microsoft’s software (Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool), or other tools, will give you a bios installation, not a UEFI one. So for the system to boot, you will need to change some settings in bios, and changing it from UEFI to legacy bios. The installation will prepare the HDD in MBR partition table, and you will lose all the advantages of UEFI, described above.
Now this can be avoided, by properly preparing an USB to boot and install in UEFI mode. Here are the steps:
Step by step tutorial:
1.   In a windows computer, download a legal copy (although trial) of the windows 7 os. You can do this from here: http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/
Be sure to download the same version that came preinstalled in your computer. For example, if you have a Lenovo x120e, with a Windows 7 professional, 64bit, download an iso image of the Windows 7 professional 64bit.
2.   Once downloaded burn the iso to a USB thumb (at least 4GB) using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool.
3.   After preparing this, create a folder on your computer, name it whatever (i.e. W7pro64bit). Go to the root of your USB
and select all the files and folders there (9 in total) copy, and paste to your folder you created, W7pro64bit.
4.   Using windows format the usb again in FAT32. Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool, formats it in NTFS. We need a FAT32 formatted disk to achieve our goal. Formating again the USB in FAT32 will not touch the MBR of the USB thumbdrive. And after copying back the files (see step 6) the USB will still be bootable. (nice, and simple, isn't it?)
5.   Now go to the folder W7pro64bit and do the following:
a.   Browse to W7pro64bit\sources\ and open install.wim file. It’s a big file, and can be opened as an archive with 7zip (free software). Do not extract it, do not modify it, just browse the file with 7zip. Just to be sure you do not mess with that file, you can copy it somewhere else in your computer, and than procede.
b.   Browse this file (install.wim) to \1\Windows\Boot\EFI\ and locate the file bootmgfw.efi. Do not move, delete it, but just drag that file to the desktop. (if you have copied the file install.wim to another place in your computer, than you are safely do whatever you want with that file ) Close the 7zip program to release the install.wim file.
c.   Rename the file you just copied to the desktop from bootmgfw.efi to bootx64.efi.
d.   Now go back to w7pro64bit folder and browse \efi\Microsoft. Form there copy the folder boot and paste it one level up, on the folder: \efi. It will look like this: \efi\boot.
e.   Now copy the file you saved on your desktop and renamed (bootx64.efi) to \efi\boot (inside the boot folder you copied on step 5d
6.   Now go to the root of the folder W7pro64bit and select all folders and files (9 in total) copy, and paste all those files back to your USB thumb drive. (see step 4 for more info)
7.   Go to the computer that you are going to reinstall, and before restarting it, use the program ABR (activation backup and restore) to backup the license of your windows os. (use google to find ABR). Advanced Tokens Manager (ATM ) is great too. This link may be of help: Backup and restore W7 activation. After the program finishes its magic, it will create a few files inside the folder where the program itself reside. Copy these files to a new folder in your usb. Rename it to ABR so you will quickly find it later. (if you decide to use ATM, the procedure may be a little different. But you are smart enough to figure out how to use it)
8.   Backup to an external storage all your data before continuing.(reminder: are you sure you saved the license as explained in step 7, to a safe place? To a external drive, to another computer? If you are sure, than go on with step 9)
9.   Now restart your laptop, and enter your bios settings. Go to the boot settings, and set the computer to boot in UEFI only. Not both, not UEFI first, or legacy, BUT UEFI only. Save and restart.
10.   Press f12 (or the corresponding key for your machine) to choose the boot device and chose to start from the USB thumb drive with your windows 7 pro 64 bit.
11.   If everything is done correctly, your computer will boot from the USB.
12.   Follow the wizard and choose a custom install, not upgrade. At the disk partition window delete all the partition you see there until you have only one unallocated space.
13.   Select it, and click next to install windows, without making partition in this point. The installer will create a GPT partition table not a MBR since the USB booted in UEFI mode.
14.   Immediately after the first restart remove your USB thumb, and the installation will continue from the HDD. Wait until installation finishes.
15.   When you will be finally on your desktop, on the installed OS plug your USB go to the ABR folder and click on restore.exe. It will restore your license and your copy of windows will be activated.
16.   Now you can go in computer management/disk management and shrink the HDD to create your partitioning scheme. Make sure to leave enough space to your windows os. (30gb or more for extra programs you will install at your choice)
17.      Download from lenovo.com thinkvantage system update and update your system. Windows update too can install all the necessary drivers, if you need only basic drivers support.
Note: if tvsu will fail to work, see this:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVantage-Technologies/ThinkVantage-System-Update-Servers-down-the-wh...
It may look a looong tutorial, but once you do this for the first time, it will look a piece of cake.
Final words:
From now on, you can install windows 7 in UEFI mode with your special USB without changing your partition scheme anymore. If you have a data partition beside your os partition (see the example above), when you reinstall the system using your USB thumb drive, at the disk partition window chose the partition where windows is installed, delete it, and reinstall windows to the unformatted area. Your partition with your data will be intact and the installation will automatically mount your data partition to the system. And, all the scope of this procedure, you will always have a pure UEFI installation of the system, with all its benefits.
Have fun!
abvasili
Moderator note: changed subject to match new content. Was: Prepare an usb thumb drive, to boot windows 7 in UEFI mode
I'm just a volunteer. I like to help others where I can. Do my ideas work? I hope so. o_O
Who helped you today? Do not forget to thank him.
My hardware: TP x120e 0596-2ru. Windows 7, sp1, 64Bit, English, installed in UEFI mode.

seanare wrote:
Thank you, as I noted here, your post was the key to my getting a Windows 8 SecureBooting setup on a W530.
In the case of Windows 8, I needed to copy the files away, reformat my USB key as FAT32 and copy the files back, and viola I was able to boot from my USB install media with the BIOS set to only boot UEFI. From there, there rest was easy (for Windows 8, the copying and renaming is not necessary, the key is having a FAT32 partition on the USB media, rather than an NTFS one; the EFI files are already in the right location).
Thank you again good sir.
You are welcome... and I'm happy that the change of the file system helps with windows 8 too. Thanks for confirming that.
abvasili
I'm just a volunteer. I like to help others where I can. Do my ideas work? I hope so. o_O
Who helped you today? Do not forget to thank him.
My hardware: TP x120e 0596-2ru. Windows 7, sp1, 64Bit, English, installed in UEFI mode.

Sync USB thumb drive as if iPod?

Summary:
I want to use one of my USB thumb drives as a music library that can work on my car's audio system. What is the easiest way to do this?
Background:
My brand new car stereo can play music off of an iPod. This is convenient, but I don't want to just leave my ipod touch in my car. My car stereo can also play music right off of a USB thumbdrive. So is there a way to sync all my play lists on my USB drive? This way I can just leave it in my car and not worry about theft, my ipod melting in the sun, etc.
I don't think iTunes can do this, so maybe there's a script somewhere? It will have to prune out the m4p files since obviously I can't authorize my car stereo to play them... (grrr DRM...)
Considered Solutions:
1) Obviously, I can just copy files over manually, and write a perl script to remove .m4p files. But I'd like to get playlists...
2) I could get the 32 gb USB drive I saw, which can hold all my stuff, but then that's too much data to browse while driving my car.
3) I could manually export each playlist, and write my script to parse and copy those files... but that would still require me to manually export the playlists (so it's not automatic).
4) I could just try to remember to bring my ipod with me whenever i go somewhere, but i'd rather just leave a usb stick in my car. Then there's nothing to worry about, and nothing to forget.
5) I could plug in my ipod, and see if there's a way to access it's file system and then just mirror the usb drive off of the ipod... but i looks like the ipod is hidden in the file directory.
6) If any Apple people see this, I'd appreciate them thinking about allowing iTunes to treat a USB drive as a limited iPod.

I have the same issue. I have not had a problem copying album folders to the thumb drive from the itunes library but the problem I have is that most of my files are not in the mp3 format but in lossless or AAC.
I have been selecting the tunes I want and, after changing my import settings to high level mp3, selecting "create MP3 version" under the advanced menu. The issue is not wanting to duplicate my library. If I were to burn that selection of non-MP3 files to a CD specifying a MP3 disk I don't get the duplicates. Burning the disks and then copying the files from there to the stick works but you have to put in the album folders manually and that is a lot of disks to burn for an 8G stick. I tried using DVD's but you can only burn a data disk in that format and no MP3 conversion.
A lot of new cars come with the USB option and the usb flash drives are cheap. There will be a rapidly increasing number of people looking to get a playlist to MP3 format onto flash drives. Apple needs to give us a tweak here.

Can't install from USB Thumb Drive

I'm trying to install MacOs 10.7 from Apple USB Thumb Drive on a 2011 MacMini, but when I restart from the USB drive apper on the screen a "X" and then the computer shuts down.
What's wrong?
On the MacMini there was already MacOs 10.7, but now I formatted the HardDisk.
Sorry for my english,
Gregorio Pellegrino

Is the system able to boot into the recovery/installer from the Mac OS X 10.7 USB Drive? Is this error occurring after you've started the install process from the USB?
You may have to completely repartition the hard disk drive with 1 partition and a GUID partition table. I had a similar issue when I moved a hard disk from a Windows machine and forgot to change the partition type.
Note: Creating a new partition table will make all data currently on the disk inaccessible, effectively erasing the data.
Here's the steps to repartition using the Disk Utility application available after booting the mac from the USB Installer.
1) Highlight/select the Mac's internal Hard Disk Drive (not the volume) in Disk Utility. The disk will be named something like "240 GB OCZ-VERTEX3", depending on your specific size, make and model. Basically the format is "Size GB Make/Model".
2) Click the "Partition" tab on the right side.
3) From the "Partition Layout" pick box select "1 Partition"
4) Click the "Options" button below the drive space diagram. Select the option "GUID Partition Table". Click OK.
5) Click the Apply button and allow Disk Utility to complete the task.
6) Quit Disk Utility and begin the install process to the Mac's Internal Hard Disk Drive.
The above resolved this issue for me and it makes good sense why it worked since the partition scheme/table on my drive was MBR and I changed it to GUID.
Good Luck,
-Josh
Message was edited by: Joshua Kapellen

I need a way to get usb thumb-drive securely recognized as a apple keyboard

I posted this question over at Developer Discussions also, just to get more eyes on it, not to be disruptive.
So, I would like to utilize a maximum-length Admin. password (255 characters?) without having to manually type it in each time I login, install/update software, or for any other reason. The perfect situation would be some type of script or software installation onto a USB pen drive (2 gig sony)which is inserted into the macbook (via usb) when the Leopard Login screen appears. It logs me in, then, afterwards, it creates a clickable icon on the desktop that achieves the same goal (entering a long admin password securely). And all of the above is achieved using the built-in security of Keychain access, without having to continuously mount and unmount the drive.
Searching google produces many expensive products that do not fit: Securikey, omnikey, smart cards, tokends, and on and on. They seem to have figured this out at microsoft - not that it matters much, except that it appears to be possible.
One problem is that a USB thumb drive is not mounted until after login, it seems, but, I plugged in a friend's usb apple keyboard from the year 2000 and was able to type in my password at login. And, an email reply elsewhere suggested writing a daemon (that constantly runs in the background of the operating system) that could recognize the drive and accept a script from it that inputs the password and executes the 'enter' command.
I don't know how to write daemons yet, but I can stumble around a bit with bash and applescripts, and I can copy any Xcode project out of a book and make it run properly. I'm a beginner.
This project might create security issues for my operating system, but I'm really not concerned about that because this is a computer I don't rely on and can safely perform experiments on. And I would like to use this as an opportunity to learn - so I'm going to give it a whirl anyway - unless someone has already accomplished something similar. In that case, why reinvent the wheel and plug it into the wall, eh?
Basically I am asking for help. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

You don't need to get deep into programming to do much of this.
launchd, the background process that's responsible for launching most of the background processes on your machine, has the ability to launch a script based on disk mount events.
StartOnMount <boolean>
This optional key causes the job to be started every time a filesystem is
mounted.
So you could create a LaunchDaemon script that watches for a disk mount. When a disk is inserted your script is fired off. You'd need to perform some verification to ensure the disk is, indeed, your USB stick and not some other device, then it can trigger the rest of the login process. Off hand I'd look to osascript to run an AppleScript-based keystroke, but there may be other ways, too.
One big question relates to securing your password. Clearly you can't store it in the script, so you'd have to read it from somewhere. You also can't store it on the USB stick unless you somehow encrypt it (otherwise someone can just look at the files on the USB stick and get your password), but AppleScript can use the keychain, too, although I'm not sure what keys would be available prior to login, so it requires some experimentation.

USB Thumb Drive Size for Windows 7 Professional Image

I have a ThinkPad X100e running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. Can someone please tell me what the smallest size USB thumb drive I can use to create the installation/recovery image from the hidden partition using Rescue and Recovery? I cannot seem to find that information in the Help menu or in the online FAQs or Knowledgebase.
Thanks in advance for your assistance!

it makes 3 DVDs so maybe 15 GB
Thinkpad R61 7733-1GU
Thinkpad X61T 7762-54U
Thinkpad X60T 6363-4GU
Did a member help you today? Thank them with a Kudo!
If a post answers your question, please mark it as an "Accepted Solution"!
Regards,
GMAC

A USB thumb drive with data created in Windows is not showing up on my desktop. Do I need a different driver or something?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for