Wipe my machine

I need to wipe my Macbook Air, however I know by doing this I will loose my iTunes software which in turn means I have to wipe my iPhone. How do i wipe my computer without either having to wipe my phone or if there isn't a way to do this how do i backup my txt messages etc.
I hate the fact that when needing to wipe my computer my phone gets dragged into the process!
I'm not sure if this is in the correct section.
Thank you for your help

can I ask what would be the process you would follow if you needed to wipe a computer but didn't want to have erase your iPhone after reinstalling the oppersting system and iTunes please.
Thanks

Similar Messages

Recommended programme to wipe my machine?

I have treated myself to a new iMac and want to give my old one to a friend. It's a 2006 intel processor model.
Can anyone recommend a good programme to clean up the machine and take all my personal stuff off?
Thanks in advance

Hello Tracey:
I would erase and then install OS X from the software install DVD that came with your system.
Disk utility>erase also has a secure erase (takes awhile). If this is a friend of yours, the secure wipe is probably not necessary.
Barry

Can I Wipe a new machine that came with Leopard and install Tiger

I like Leopard at home but at work on our network Leopard does not play well. I have a dual 3.2 Quad Core. Can I do a format and start with a fresh install of Tiger?

My question was answered. I can not wipe my machine clean and go back to Tiger until my IT department decides to embrace the fact that the graphics departments within our company use MAC's and always will. All was well with Tiger and our network or at least we had worked through all of the issues we had and then me and the guy I work with got new machines with Leopard on them. We have one guy in IT that claims to be the go to MAC guy but sometimes I wonder, seems my partner and I know more about MAC's than the IT department but our suggestions when we give them do not seem to be welcome. Thanks for the answers.

I am going to throw this machine out the window! STATIC!

This static is driving me CRAZY! A little background on what is going on: I am using 2 USB microphones to record a podcast (30Something Podcast). I have recorded 11 shows without any issues on my Macbook Pro and now I am getting static on ONE of the microphones. There is not static all the time, and I have yet to see a pattern on when it happens. I thought it was due to the 10.5.2 update, so I completely wipped my machine and reinstalled leopard with 10.5.1, not 10.5.2 and reinstalled iLife08. I think I did the update to Garageband 4.1.1 after the fresh install. Set everything up again, and about 22 min into the show, static happened. Again, this is on a totally fresh machine. If I restart it, it goes away. The only thing I saw that was weird was after a while during recording, the Garageband counter (the timer) seems to come down to a crawl even though the vocals seemed to be recording. It was like the entire machine was slowing down, but nothing else was running. Again, I have recorded fine a bunch of other times without issue or changes on the machine. I looked and there are no drivers for the logitech 250 headphones, so I am at a total loss at this point. PLEASE HELP ME!!!

Many usb and firewire interfaces have had some static and audio out problems with os x updates. I have a Alesis Firewire Multimix and a M-Audio BlackBox that have between the two have experienced pretty much all the problems. I e-mailed both manufactures during these problems and they told me that they were working hard on fixes but as soon as they put up a fix Apple made more changes. They said apple was aware of the problems but need to make changes. I bought a Presonus Inspire because it was reported to work flawlessly "hardly" but it did work.
To make a long story endless in the past few months Alesis and M-Audio and Apple pushed updates that totally fixed my problems. Best thing to do is contact M-Audio with your Mac's specs and os version and see if they have or are working on a fix.

Can somebody help me to restore my iWeb domain file from Time Machine (at the moment my whole life history is frozen online)?

I had to wipe my machine and create a new account. Now I can't restore my iWeb domain file and thus can't edit my site. When I do try to restore the file I'm told:
The operation can’t be completed because some items had to be skipped. For each item, choose File > Get Info, make sure “Locked” is deselected, and then check the Sharing & Permissions section. When you are sure the items are unlocked and not designated as Read Only or No Access, try again.
I've changed the permissions of the domain file/folder itself (within Time Machine) but I gather it wants me to change the permission of everything in there, which would presumably take hours and hours.
I've tried just dragging the domain file from the hard drive where the Time Machine backup is stored but the result of that is:
Can’t open file “~/Library/Application Support/iWeb/Domain.sites2.”
This is quite urgent because I am applying for a new job and can't display my latest work online. Any help much appreciated in advance.

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.
Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.

Time Machine Crazy

Since upgrading to 10.7.3 (combo upgrade) on my iMac Time Machine has been causing crashes or kernel panics if it happens to come on while I am using iMovie, iPhoto or Photoshop Elements. I then cannot restart even in Safe Mode and have to force a shut-off and pull the plug.
I have been trying to wipe out all traces of Time Machine and going back to SuperDuper and SmartBackUp which always served we well before.
I switched it to "off" in system preferences, removed it from the menu, reformatted the external hard drive and selected NOT to make it a time machine backup, and trashed the time machine preferences. But there has to be one more thing to do because in spite of all that time machine continues to try to start up - I get messages that it cannot find the backup drive, that the backup is delayed and then the beach ball comes back and everything crashes.
Can anyone advise what else I must do to completely wipe time machine out of the operating system?
Thanks.
iMac 24-inch early 2008
3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Lion 10.7.3

Again, I really appreciate all of this. However I may have done something already in brashness which I may live to regret. My son-in-law (a Microsoft employee - sorry) recommended I get "Find Any File" which allows me to find invisibles. I did a search for "timemachine" and came up with over 30 files which Spotlight had not brought up. In mad desperation I trashed all I could, except for several which would not allow me because they were "used by other programs" etc. I restarted all right but haven't had the chance to see if it is going to work or not. Haven't been at the computer long enough.
But here are the responses I received to each terminal entry. My problems all began with OS 10.7.2
Step 1
com.AmbrosiaSW.AudioSupport (3.2)
Step 2
com.google.keystone.daemon
com.barebones.textwrangler
Step 3
com.google.keystone.root.agent
com.adobe.ARM.c0710a3bbc1f7b43a9487efa35b9142c1acc4fbd27f79fa7f26c3632
com.adobe.AAM.Scheduler-1.0
Step 4
/LaCie DVD Profile/LaCieProfile_Feb2004.dmg
/Library/Components:
/Library/Extensions:
/Library/Frameworks:
.FBCIndex
AEProfiling.framework
AERegistration.framework
Adobe AIR.framework
AudioMixEngine.framework
HPDeviceModel.framework
HPPml.framework
HPServicesInterface.framework
HPSmartPrint.framework
HPSmartX.framework
Headers
KodakCMS.framework
MacFUSE.framework
MacOSX_USMLib.framework
MicrotekEssential5.framework
MicrotekImgProcess5.framework
MicrotekScanWizard5Advance.framework
MicrotekScanWizard5PCP.framework
MicrotekScanWizard5Standard.framework
MicrotekUISupport5.framework
MicrotekUtilities5.framework
NyxAudioAnalysis.framework
PluginManager.framework
Resources
SEGlue.framework
StuffIt.framework
TSLicense.framework
USMFramework.framework
iLifeFaceRecognition.framework
iLifeKit.framework
iLifePageLayout.framework
iLifeSQLAccess.framework
iLifeSlideshow.framework
/Library/Input Methods:
/Library/InputManagers:
QuicKeysIM
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins:
AdobePDFViewer.plugin
DRM Plugin.bundle
DirectorShockwave.plugin
Disabled Plug-Ins
Flash Player.plugin
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin
Google Earth Web Plug-in.plugin
JavaAppletPlugin.plugin
OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin.plugin
Quartz Composer.webplugin
QuickTime Plugin.plugin
RealPlayer Plugin.plugin
Silverlight.plugin
VLC Plugin.plugin
flashplayer.xpt
huludesktop.webplugin
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
/Library/Keyboard Layouts:
/Library/LaunchAgents:
com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist
com.google.keystone.agent.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons:
com.apple.remotepairtool.plist
com.barebones.textwrangler.plist
com.google.keystone.daemon.plist
/Library/PreferencePanes:
BIAS Key.prefPane
Flash Player.prefPane
Flip4Mac WMV.prefPane
Iomega Active Delivery.prefPane
MacFUSE.prefPane
/Library/PrivilegedHelperTools:
com.barebones.textwrangler
/Library/QuickLook:
GBQLGenerator.qlgenerator
iWork.qlgenerator
/Library/QuickTime:
AppleIntermediateCodec.component
AppleMPEG2Codec.component
DivX 6 Decoder.component
DivX Decoder.component
Flip4Mac WMV Advanced.component
Flip4Mac WMV Export.component
Flip4Mac WMV Import.component
Save as AVI.component
/Library/ScriptingAdditions:
Adobe Unit Types
Adobe Unit Types.osax
/Library/Spotlight:
GBSpotlightImporter.mdimporter
LogicPro.mdimporter
Microsoft Entourage.mdimporter
Microsoft Office.mdimporter
PeakPlaylist.mdimporter
iMovie.mdimporter
iWork.mdimporter
/Library/StartupItems:
Aladdin
HP IO
HP Trap Monitor
Icon?
MxBtDaemon
RetroRun
/etc/mach_init.d:
/etc/mach_init_per_login_session.d:
/etc/mach_init_per_user.d:
Library/Address Book Plug-Ins:
SkypeABDialer.bundle
SkypeABSMS.bundle
Library/Fonts:
Brush Script
DorisDay.ttf
Riddle.ttf
YanoneKaffeesatz-Bold.ttf
YanoneKaffeesatz-Light.ttf
YanoneKaffeesatz-Regular.ttf
YanoneKaffeesatz-Thin.ttf
encodings.dir
fonts.dir
fonts.list
fonts.scale
Library/Frameworks:
EWSMac-GC.framework
Library/Indexes:
FindByContent
Library/Internet Plug-Ins:
Google Earth Web Plug-in.plugin
Macromedia
Move-Media-Player.plugin
Library/Keyboard Layouts:
Library/LaunchAgents:
com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist
com.adobe.ARM.c0710a3bbc1f7b43a9487efa35b9142c1acc4fbd27f79fa7f26c3632.plist
com.apple.AddressBook.ScheduledSync.PHXCardDAVSource.AD84ECA2-1687-4120-818A-E4C 45C58B985.plist
Library/PreferencePanes:
.91B0E6BCD58D831B7F5D0E1024
Opera Preferences
Perian.prefPane
Library/QuicKeys:
Abbreviations
Clips
Equation Functions
Global Variables.qkvariables
Instant Shortcut.qkshortcutd
PlugIns
Saved Searches
Shortcuts
Toolbars
Trigger Functions
Library/QuickTime:
AC3MovieImport.component
Perian.component
Library/ScriptingAdditions:
24U Appearance OSAX.osax
Character Palette.app
Character Palette.scpt
Keyboard Viewer.app
Keyboard Viewer.scpt
Library/Services:
WordService.service
Step 5
2012-02-19 15:15:15.299 osascript[880:707] Error loading /Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Unit Types: dlopen(/Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Unit Types, 262): no suitable image found. Did find:
/Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Unit Types: no matching architecture in universal wrapper
osascript: OpenScripting.framework - scripting addition "/Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax" declares no loadable handlers.
2012-02-19 15:15:15.332 osascript[880:707] Error loading /Users/MYNAME/Library/ScriptingAdditions/24U Appearance OSAX.osax/Contents/MacOS/24U Appearance OSAX: dlopen(/Users/MYNAME/Library/ScriptingAdditions/24U Appearance OSAX.osax/Contents/MacOS/24U Appearance OSAX, 262): no suitable image found. Did find:
/Users/MYNAME/Library/ScriptingAdditions/24U Appearance OSAX.osax/Contents/MacOS/24U Appearance OSAX: mach-o, but wrong architecture
osascript: OpenScripting.framework - scripting addition "/Users/MYNAME/Library/ScriptingAdditions/24U Appearance OSAX.osax" declares no loadable handlers.
Growl, GrowlHelperApp, TCCengine, GetBackupAgent, SMARTReporter, Canon IJ Network Scanner Selector2, Canon IJ Network Scan Utility, ClamXavSentry, iTunesHelper, iCal, Dropbox, Microtek Scanner Finder

Time machine restore after reformat, Leopard reinstall

I'd like to completely wipe my machine and reformat it, but not do a complete restore from Time Machine. If I were to plug in a Time Machine backup on a fresh system, would I be able to explore this now "foreign" backup and selectively restore the items I want? Or will the new system not read the backup as it was not configured for this particular Time Machine backup?

Yes, you can. Connect your external drive, and then double-click to open it. The first folder you see will be the Backup DB folder. Open that, and you will see dates. Click on any date, then your HD should be in the next folder. You can look around it just like your own HD.
You can also use the MIgration Assistant, and you can select your own account items, settings, Applications, or other items.

Please help! Major problems (performance and lock-ups) with brand new W520 with Intel 520 SSD

My company primarily uses HP machines but I've been a long time IBM (now Lenovo) fan so I recently had IT purchase me a new Lenovo W520 (product ID 42763LU).
Once the machine arrived I had them do the following:
Remove the 500GB HDD and replace it with an Intel 520 series 240GB SSD
Remove the optical drive and install the 500GB hard drive that came with the machine in the optical bay (with the bay adapter of course)
Format both drives and put a preconfigured windows 7 64-bit image on the SSD
A general summary of the system is the following:
Intel i7-2860QM CPU
8GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro 1000M
Intel 520 240GB SSD (primary HDD) [SSDSC2CW240A3]
Hitachi 500GB HDD (optical bay) [HTS727550A9E365]
Intel Advanced-N 6205 network adapter
TouchChip Fingerprint Scanner
The machine was a few days delayed getting to me due to "hard drive driver issues" (that's what I was told). When I received the machine I immediately noticed that it was much slower than I expected (I have a custom built i5 HTPC at home running windows 7 on a Crucial SATA III SSD that I was comparing it to) and I was experiencing frequent hangs (ranging from 30 seconds to multiple minutes), super long boot times, general “slowness” at times, and occasional lock-ups. Since our "baseline" laptop here at work is the "equivalent" HP workstation my IT guys have been less than helpful in helping me to solve this issue. Being reasonably computer savvy I decided to try to try to fix the issue myself. I performed the following “troubleshooting” steps:
1. One of the first issues (errors) I noticed in the event viewer was errors related to the optical drive. Clearly the image they installed on the machine was not from a machine with the same hardware configuration. So, I decided to just wipe the machine and perform a fresh install of windows 7 from the disks (well, USB). After spending multiple days installing windows, performing updates, making sure all the drivers were current, and installing only the critical software I need, I was disappointed to realize that although I fixed the optical drive errors the machine was still slow, was hanging, and locking up regularly.
2. Removed the cover on the machine and removed/reinstalled the drive to verify it was secure.Everything looked good.
3. Verified the latest firmware is installed on all my Intel hardware. Everything seemed up to date.
4. I performed a number of troubleshooting steps like booting the machine with/without the battery, with/without the HDD in the optical bay, installed/removed from the docking station, etc. and none of these things helped (also a note – occasionally when running on the battery I was hearing a strange “buzz” or “static” sound coming from the area around the SSD).
5. Next I did some internet research and learned quite a few things. First, it sounds like others have had similar problems with this machine and/or SSD combo and there were quite a few options suggested to “fix” these issues. The general consensus for troubleshooting steps were:
5.1. Download and install the latest Intel chipset drivers and AHCI controller drivers (overwriting whatever windows installs during updates).This didn’t fix anything.
5.2. Turn off PCI express link state power management in the power manager. This didn’t fix anything.
5.3. Disable superfetch, prefetch, indexing, defragmentation, page file, system restore, and hibernate. A few of these were already disabled by windows so in those cases I just verified they were disabled in the services and application editor. These things may have slightly increased performance but did not fix the major hang/lockup issues I was having.
5.4. I followed online steps to edit the registry to disable the PCI link power management by adding ports, adding the required variables, and setting them all to 0. This did seem to have fixed the hangs and/or lock-ups but the machine is still much slower than I would expect (boot times are still pretty slow and it does “stutter” when I’m doing more than one thing at a time. Also a note here – I have the Intel SSD toolbox installed and I noticed that it was giving me a warning for DIPM not being optimized. I made the mistake of clicking “Tune!” and then started having the hang/lock-up issues again. I went back into the registry and sure enough the PCI link power management variables for ports 0 and 1 were set back to 1. I set them back to 0 and the hangs have gone away. I will not be “tuning” the DIPM through the Intel SSD toolbox again…
6. I also fixed a couple of other minor errors I was seeing in the event viewer by disabling benign services and/or making slight timeout modifications (I researched each issue on the internet to verify they were benign before I implemented any changes). These fixes didn't seem to do anything other than make some of the errors/warnings go away. So, the list of errors/warnings has become much smaller but I’m still getting the following (maybe an issue, maybe not?):
Event ID 37 for every processor saying that they are in a reduced performance state for xx seconds since the last report
Event ID 10002 - WLAN Extensibility Module has stopped
Event ID 4001 - WLAN AutoConfig service has successfully stopped
Event ID 27 – Intel® 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection link is disconnected
I suspect the WLAN errors have something to do with windows fighting with the Lenovo access connection tools?
7. Since the machine still seemed slow I downloaded the program AS SSD and checked the performance of the SSD. When I compared my performance numbers to the benchmark numbers I found onlineI was very surprised to discover that I’m getting about 50% of the performance that I should (values below are read/write).
Seq: 262.11 / 188.32 (s/b 504.58 / 298.28) [MB/s]
4K: 15.83 / 44.92 (s/b 21.70 / 62.60) [MB/s]
4K-64Thrd: 165.23 / 154.46 (s/b 241.38 / 234.08) [MB/s]
Acc.time: 0.218 / 0.294 (s/b .0186 / 0.208) [ms]
Score: 207 / 208 (s/b 314 / 327)
Overall Score: 533 (s/b 797)
One more note - it seems like my cooling fan is running at a high speed almost all of the time. This is probably one of my power settings (I think I have it set for max performance) but it's even doing this when there is no load (i.e. I'm using IE and just vieweing webpages - like right now).
So, I apologize for such a long post but I’ve spent countless hours researching and troubleshooting this problem and haven’t been able to figure out what the heck is wrong here. Am I missing something simple or do you guys think I have a SSD and/or problem with the machine itself? To say that any and all help would be greatly appreciated would be a massive understatement – I’m on the verge of pulling my hair out and I really need this machine working as quickly as possible!
Please let me know if you have any suggestions and/or need additional information. Thanks in advance for your help!
-Erik

Lol gotcha about the drive as an option. I didn't go SSD with mine. Do you have the latest firmware on your drive? It is supposed to be v1.97. Just checking (ah and I see item 3 so guess so). Do you have the SSD drive toolbox software installed?
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Solid+State+Drives+and+Cach...)
Seems some useful tools are in there. I can't say much beyond that with the drive. Oh. Why does your fan always run at high speed? Can you describe that? I mean, are we troubleshooting the right kind of issue? Is there anything else going on with your system? I saw about the reduced core speeds message. what are your system loads like? Anything causing high cpu utilization? Could be something other than the drive causing your low numbers and lockups.

Help me catch my hacker...please!

Hi. I have an old Mac Pro 1,1 (2007 I believe), OSX 10.7.5 that has been hacked. I have read some of the questions here so I'll try to include all the necessary info. some of the things that have happened are that a new admin user account is on my computer where I have never created any other account and was using my admin account solely which I now know is not smart. I see the new account at the login screen although it tries to look like it is my account, same icon, but it thankfully can't shut down or restart the computer. I am the sole user of my computer and no one else has access to it physically. also, I can no longer throw anything into the trash. Everything just gets moved somewhere as I can see this from the dialog box that pops up. Also, I have to enter a password just to throw anything away(!), but the trash bin always remains empty so nothing ever makes it there but is obviously going elsewhere. The other thing is all my files are now locked and password protected which of course I didn't do. So, hopefully this all shows my computer has indeed been hacked. In fact, I do know who has done this and he's hacked my iphone as well. He currently lives in another country and when I did wipe my phone and enable location services I started getting ads for the nearest major city of that country where he lives and he is the only person I know who lives in that country. I have other info too as to how I know who it is but won't go into it here. He is some guy I used to know who somehow thinks I'm responsible for him losing his job which is completely preposterous. I know he's gone after my finances but thus far has not been able to access them. My email, which I never check on my home computer or phone anymore, will even on my home computer keep trying to connect to paypal. When I've logged into AppleID on my phone to download apps he has changed my AppleID password & security questions but I was fortunately able to change it and get back into it. He put security questions I would never use like asking something about dates and I never remember dates.
Anyway, I really need to catch this guy as I have info that he has done this to others as well. I know I could just wipe my machine but that is not something I want to do. While my mac tech guy is normally great he doesn't even believe a mac can have a virus and wants to debate that so for him to believe my computer could have been hacked is impossible so he wouldn't help me. I have contacted a couple other techs I know but one was PC-oriented and the other who does some work on macs said he didn't have enough mac experience when I told him the litany of things happening on my computer and phone. So, I am turning to the good people of this forum to help me do this myself as I know you guys are great from past experience with minor computer issues.
What I've done so far, mostly from reading these forums: I ran EtreCheck and the only thing that came up looking off was a version of Adobe Flash Player I downloaded that EtreCheck says was a mismatch in their red type. I believe that is how the hacker got his software on my computer. I made visible all the users/accounts and nothing looked funny but a lot of this stuff is greek to me as I have never used the Terminal before. I did find a root user and so disabled that. I have looked through all the Processes, and ran that 5-step terminal thing you guys recommend here that shows preferences & launch agents, etc. and looked and looked but see nothing off. I unfortunately had my computer rather wide open before and so now have done all the normal user things to tighten my security and have Little Snitch and Avast Security on my computer. Oh, I did find the Genio-L bug through MacScan and deleted that. My computer had been running at a crawl but is now faster. Also, I had read something about hackers getting access through Bluetooth and saw besides my keyboard and mouse (my modem is wired so I don't have WiFi) some third item listed. I deleted it as it looked suspicious with very little info on it compared to my other devices. (I forgot to take a screenshot of it.) I have also made all files visible through the Terminal. I was looking around in the Private/Etc files but I don't really know what i'm looking at. Also, I found 3 applications that were loading automatically on login so I deleted them: Adobe Resource Synchronizer, Optimism Agent (Optimism software I have) and FontExplorer.
Anyway, I would love recommendations for how to find this hacking software which I'm assuming can be found through the Terminal. I did try to use Deeper but when I tried to get it to show all the IP addresses for the users on the login page it had an applescript error come up. It said:
FSPathMakeRef (/System/Library/CoreServices/HelpViewer.app) failed with error -43. (1)
i'm sure this guy probably has some pretty sophisticated hacking software, which I understand can even be parental control software. I have reason to believe he has put a keylogger on my computer. So, if there is a way to catch this guy please, please give me some tips but do explain everything really simply & step by step as I know nothing about using the Terminal despite the few things I've done. I was reading under the ssh and it says something about -x being used to disable keyloggers from forwarding info. I do seem to have the applicaton X11 on my computer which I never noticed before. There was also something under ssh about ~# which can list all forwarded connections. Of course I don't know how or where to do these things but if you guys think it would help then I'd totally appreciate directions on how to do these things.
Sorry for writing an essay but I may not be able to get back to this computer for 3-4 days so wanted to give plenty of info for the questions you guys usually ask. Thanks in advance for any and all help!

I went ahead and repaired the permissions and the disk itself didn't need any repairs. I still really don't want to wipe my HD, and haven't yet, because I want to catch this guy. can you guys give me a code to enter into the Terminal to show all hidden admin users? I tried something I found on these forums to unhide all 500users but i'm not sure if it was for Lion. (btw, the descriptions for this forum are off. i have a silver tower, it's definitely a mac pro 1,1 and am running Lion 10.7.5) anyway, the terminal said in response:
sudo: /private/etc/sudoers is mode 0446, should be 0440.
this response was before I repaired the permissions.
to address Kurt's question of why i'm convinced I have a hacker I didn't share everything in my OP partly because it was already so long and party because some info I don't feel comfortable sharing online. suffice it to say I have solid knowledge that I've been hacked. I was 99.9% sure of who it was and when the location-based ad on my iphone came up for the country this person currently lives in I knew I was right. think of it like this, if you knew one person who lived in Latvia and suspected he was for sure the person who hacked your computer/phone because you know he's done it to others you know, and suddenly your phone in the US starts getting ads for the nearest major city to where the person lives in Latvia, right after you enabled location-based ads, you'd be pretty sure you suspect the right person. as to how I know this is for sure a hacking I am not comfortable going into on a public forum. suffice it to say, I know without a shadow of a doubt. obviously, the fact that I have an additional admin account on my computer when I live alone and no one, and I mean no one, has physical access to my computer is quite a good indicator.
just earlier today I had additional problems on my iphone 4. (in the last week I've reset the settings several times whenever I have like one or two bars for my connection which is definitely not normal. resetting the settings seems to be really helping the connection.) this morning I was reading on safari (on the NPR site) and suddenly my phone goes black and the same screen I see when my phone is resetting shows up (all-black screen with white horizontal progress bar). something was being reset so I immediately tried to turn off the phone and it wouldn't turn off, but it did not let the progress bar continue with whatever was happening as long as I held the power button down. then after awhile of doing this, the screen suddenly went back to my usual NPR page. I immediately turned off my phone and will reset it when I turn it back on.
so, my question is how protect my phone? I have erased it previously, but don't want to do that again as I can't risk logging into Apple ID on it again, to download apps, as last time I did that my Apple ID password & security question as got changed and I had a hard time getting back into it. what I have done so far is to use a password, set a restrictions password and I have turned off most locations settings and limited ad tracking. when this all started awhile ago the app I use the most, a newspaper, suddenly popped up with a survey that it tried to force me to click on and take. there was no option not to take the survey and the website address it showed ended in .xyz as if that is a real legitimate site. what I did was close the app and delete it as I knew this had nothing to do with this major newspaper app. it was directly after that that the location-based ad in this guy's country started coming up. so, how the heck can I keep this guy off my phone now? I still want to catch him and am hoping I can somehow do that either on my computer or phone. no one should be allowed to do this to another person. it's been a nightmare. again thanks for any and all help.

File Server Slowdown with Illustrator(only) saving and opening

Hello,
I have a problem i have been struggling with for years.
When we save a file to the server, the time to open, save or export can be anywhere from 1-5 minutes. Its killing our productivity.
I have changed out every component. We have Eight illustrator CS3 13.0.2 users on C2D/i3/i7 iMacs running 10.6.7. They are connecting to a Mac 10.6.7 Server with AFP - mac mini 2.53 with a lacie 5 drive raid.
We have had this problem going back to at least 10.4.6 i think it was. (I did not write good troubleshooting logs back then)
What appears to be happening:
open a file in the finder or in illustrator
if a font is missing, it immedialy pings you, so its like illustrator looks at the files and then is looking for something else (problem exists if no fonts are present)
the mouse then beach balls and illustrator shows as not responsive
the server shows some activity on the cpu/network/hard drive side but its very minor. like a get info command on lots of files
local user shows very little to no activity
then it stops doing nothing after the few minutes and it opens quickly.
the content of the files does not effect the problem. A 10 meg files with lots of stuff takes maybe 4 minutes vs 3 min 50 seconds for a empty file
my solution so far:
I can clear the problem by running a script that deletes the illustrator prefs, mediabrowser.plist, deletes illustrator cache files, deletes apple quarantie events, bridge prefs. and a restart. Then files open in under 5 seconds. After a couple of hours or some times a day, the open times creep up to a minute, after a few days, they are 2-5 minutes. Sometime clearing these files does not work and i have to then wipe a machine and do clean installs of everything. Some Macs will not have the problem, and function great for a month and then they have the problem for no explainable reason.
All other functions work great, no problems anywhere with anything else, excempt saving illustrator files to the server.
We have tried moving the files locally and then copying them back, but we loose too much work with the errors associated with version control problems. Also a synced folder to the local machines of the server (yes that was intense on the machines) some how had the problem follow it on some macs but not others
I have tried illustrator CS4 and CS5 and it has the same problem
I am currently trying to brute force attack the problem, I figure i can reduce the wait time to maybe 20% with a Mac pro and a bank of SSD's. my cost is almost 8k. I am not happy giving up on fixing the bug, but we have at least 1-2 people waiting around at any given time.
Any thoughts on the problem or a solution?

To create a new Swatches panel to store pattern swatches you have to:
a) Open the Swatches panel and delete all the swatches that you don't want (optional)
b) Choose Save Swatch Library as AI (not ASE) from the Swatches panel menu (I suggest you to save it on the Desktop! So you can easily find that!).
The saved file is actually a simple (blank) Illustrator file.
To use this file with other Illustrator projects choose Window > Swatch Library > Other Libraries and navigate to the saved Illustrator file (Desktop).
At this point another swatches panel is opened on the screen.
Drag the desired swatches from this new panel to the document one. Then close the new panel.
I hope this help

After installing ios 8.0.2 internet is extremly slow and doesn't work at all half the time. I have done several reboots when it got stuck again. The touchscreen does only sometimes work on safari, half the time I can't navigate and cant open new tabs

IOs 8.0.2 internet stuck and no touchscreen

The following has gotten good results from users here ... a reset to factory default condition ...
Back up and Restore your iOS Device with iCloud or iTunes
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1766
iTunes: About iOS Backups
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4946
Use iTunes to Restore your iOS Device to Factory Settings
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1414
Here's someone who posted his results ...
keithfrommariettaOct 12, 2014 3:25 PM Re: IPAD2 very slow after IOS 8 upgrade
Re: IPAD2 very slow after IOS 8 upgradein response to pacoKAS
SOLVED: IOS 8 Issues on iPad 2:
I just returned home from a visit to the Genius Bar. Like you and many others, when I upgraded my iPad 2 to IOS 8, it became practically unusable. It was VERY slow, lagged whenever trying to to do anything. Lots of screen freezes and apps spontaneously crashing. I was convinced that the processor on the iPad 2 just couldn't handle the new IOS and I went in to see about restoring to IOS 7.
Thankfully, I was hooked up with a very sharp guy at the bar. The problem is not with the OS, it is with it being an *upgraded* OS. He used the analogy of when you had an older Windows computer and how over time (and over upgrades), they just tended to get slower and slower because of all of the garbage that was carried forward in the upgrades. At those times (and if you've ever had a Windows computer, you get this), the only thing that would speed it up would be to wipe the machine and do a fresh install of the current OS and then reload your apps, and the viola, everything would be fast again. Well, it turns out that IOS can suffer the same problems.
THE FIX: FIRST, be sure you have a current iCloud backup of your device. Connect your iPad to a computer that has a clean fresh copy of IOS 8 on iTunes (this is best done with a computer other than the one that you sync your device to because you DO NOT want to restore it from a back up just yet). Ideally, if you do this at an Apple store you'll be assured of the right version there and someone to answer any questions you might have along the way. You then hold the power and home button down to hard-reset the device and continue to hold them down until it reboots into recovery mode. You then follow the instructions on the computer to reinstall the OS on the device (which wipes everything from it and then reinstalls a clean copy of it). Once this is done (which only takes about 15 minutes), your device will reboot and ask you to set it up. Answer the questions about language, location, etc. and continue until it asks you to log into your iTunes account. Once you do that, it will ask if you want to either 1) Set it up as a new device, 2) Restore from iCloud, or 3) Restore from iTunes. Choose (2), restore from iCloud. This will ensure that it brings down "clean" copies of all of your apps and preferences rather than the potentially corrupted ones that might reside in your iTunes backup. That's it! It will take a few hours depending on how much data and apps you have, but I am happy to report that my iPad 2 is now running IOS 8 and it's running as fast as it ever did when it was brand new!
To sum it up, this process 1) Wipes your device and the garbage causing your problems, 2) Loads a clean and bug-free version of IOS 8 to your device, and 3) restores your apps and data so that it looks just like it did before the wipe, with the exception that it works now! :-)
Note also that by following this process you don't have to go through the painful and laborious process of reloading all of your apps, data and/or settings. iCloud takes care of all of that for you.

Can I convert a new account into my master account?

Hi everyone, first post, thanks for taking the time to look and hopefully answer . So I just bought a new Mac Pro and was thrilled to discover I could use the ol' Migration Assistant to transfer all my crap from my Power Mac AGP. It didn't work in the initial startup process (it just spun and spun and spun - I let it go overnight and still nothing); I had to create an account on the new machine, and then run the Migration Assistant after.
Well it worked for the most part. My problem is that I have absolutely no need for the new account I created; I just want to use the one that migrated from the old machine. Even though it's set to admin rights, I don't have certain permissions, like parental control, and can't save to the 'master desktop'. Trying to be clever I deleted the new account. It didn't seem to screw anything up, but it didn't fix the problem either. I still don't have permission for everything.
Does anyone know a way around this? Thanks so much!

If you still have the G4, I suggest starting over. Review http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1872713 for starters. Then, boot with the restore disk, wipe the machine, and restore the MacPro to its original status. Finish as described in the linked document.

Advice needed for reinstalling iTunes and restoring my library from backup

I have some issues with my PC (Windows XP) that are not related to iTunes. But I am about to wipe my machine clean. Here is what I plan to do:
0) Sync iPhone with iTunes
1) De-authorize my computer with iTunes
2) Wipe my hard drive, reinstall XP
3) Reinstall iTunes from scratch
4) Restore my music library (my documents) folders from an external hard drive.
5) Authorize my computer again
I know that authorizing the computer is necessary in order to play purchase songs. Is there anything I have do in order to use applications on the iPhone? Any steps I have missed here?
Advice appreciated. Thanks in advance.

You better ask this question over in the iPhone forum, too - I don't have an iPhone, so don't know where the iPhone apps are stored.
Anyway - the first thing to do is deauthorize your PC.
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/authorization/
Second, make sure you have a good backup of you itunes library database.
It's the ITL file mentioned here
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
When you reinstall XP, make sure you use the same Windows username as before.
And make sure your exHD has the same drive letter as before.

Can I create a Bootable LION install disc from my laptop?

Basically, I should have done this when I got the laptop. I have a macbook pro with OSX 10.7.5 on it (this must have upgraded from 10.7.3). It did not ship with a OSX install DVD as did my previous units. I never made a recovery disc. Lion is no longer in app store. I do not wish to upgrade just yet.
Is there a way to create a disc with just the OS on it? A Bootable disc I could do a fresh install from? A disc that would essentially make the machine look like a new from the factory unit. I dont want to do a full restore disc, in case there is any malware lurking I am unaware of. Also, I have installed lots of stuff I no longer use and could certainly live without. If the need arises (this is a precautuinary measure) I would like to be able to just wipe the machine clean back to a fresh OSX 10.7 Lion only install, and reinstall only what I want.
Is it possible to create such a disc with only the existing laptop, as Apple had pulled Lion from App Store? What would be my options if I had a HDD failure and were desparate?
Thanks,
Rich

Cloning your hard drive is the easiest way to deal with it. Carbon Copy Cloner is it.
Creating a custom boot volume from the invisible boot partition is harder.
http://www.macworld.com/article/1165337/create_a_bootable_lion_install_drive_for _newer_macs.html

T42 hangs, extremely slow performance

I have a T42 that I no longer use, but I would like to have for occasional web browsing and e-mail. It currently operates very slowly, and after maximizing memory and trying several different solutions, I would like to just wipe the machine clean and re-install the Windows XP Professional and MS Office.
Can someone recommend the easiest way to do this? I have the XP OS CD and Office s/w. What will I need to have/do re: other things like wireless and network connections (drivers?), etc., etc.
Thank you!

thank you again for your answer,
I've done that but hard drive health is also ok as you can see from the screenshot.
IAt the time of the screenshot I had just fineshed to boot up the laptop and it wasnt hot at all.
I am getting desperate here, I am unable to work with my T410s
Link to picture
Thank you
Nuno
Moderator note; picture(s) totalling >50K converted to link(s) Forum Rules

Wipe my machine

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