Troubleshooting

OS X comes with a number of fonts, and if you install third-party software such as Microsoft Office or Adobe's Creative Suite, your system may be inundated with them. This may not be that big of an issue, but if you want to see what a font looks like before picking one to use, having to slog through a large list to do so is impractical.

Fortunately, there are several options in OS X for previewing fonts that can help streamline the process, some of which may be more available or useful than others:

Font menus In most word … Read more

While using OS X, you may discover a folder at the root of the hard drive, called Damaged Files. You may wonder why it's there and what's in it.

This folder, which less commonly is found at the root of secondary storage volumes you have mounted, results from the system's automatic file system checking routines (fsck). These routines may run after a power failure, a kernel panic, or if you boot to Safe Mode by holding the Shift key at startup. In this routine, the system will check the inodes in the file system structure (folders and … Read more

The OS X Finder offers a number of different views for organizing folder contents; however, in some of these views you may notice periodically that contents will shift around. This usually is not an issue, but sometimes it may result in the window view switching to a different position, resulting in you losing your place. This can be especially frustrating when you are managing a long list of items in a folder and the view keeps returning to a specific locaiton in the list.

This generally happens because you have the Finder view listed by date modified or a similar … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer Mac-related questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week, readers wrote in asking about the inability to format a drive due to "partition map" errors, how to determine what is using up space rapidly on the hard drive, how to restore a missing Safari program, and the options for tackling an iMac that continually shuts off in the middle of use. I welcome contributions from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in the comments!

Question: Unable to format a … Read more

Unlike classic keyboards where characters were small decals stuck on generic keys, many modern keyboards, such as those in Apple's laptops, have keys built for the specific characters. The keys are made of translucent plastic with a black coating so the character can be illuminated with a backlight.

This approach to keys offers great advantage in low-light situations, but it also can be a bit of a burden if the key begins to wear out. While the keys ought to last, after extensive use you may look down to see some of the characters fading away.

When key wear … Read more

One of the ongoing malware sagas is a political fight that is targeting Uyghur activist groups in China, where spam e-mail laced with backdoor Trojan horse malware has been continuously delivered to members of these groups in an Advanced Persistent Threat attack.

This week, security company F-secure uncovered yet another variant of this attack being used.

Like prior ones, the new variant takes advantage of old vulnerabilities in Microsoft Word, by sending attachments that will embed the malware in the affected system if the document is opened in an unpatched version of Word.

The malware used has changed a little … Read more

While broadband Internet speeds let you do more online, if your system uses a lot of bandwidth, you might run into some limitations. In some cases, ISPs may throttle your network speed after you have reached a certain usage level, or may even charge you additional fees for the extra bandwidth used. In other cases, a constant upload or download from one system may saturate your bandwidth and greatly slow down Internet-based activities for the other computers that share the connection.

For the most part, programs will not use a great amount of bandwidth, but there are times when one … Read more

Bluetooth devices we attach to our Macs include everything from phones to mice, speakers, and printers. As with any connection there may be instances when the device will not connect, or continually drops its connection to the Mac. These issues can be frustrating to deal with, but should this happen there are a couple of things you can do to check the connection and hopefully increase its stability.

Similar to Wi-Fi connections, Bluetooth uses a radio as a means of communication, so if you are experiencing drop-outs then the first thing to do is check the signal strength, which is … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer Mac-related questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week, readers wrote in asking how to stop a song in iTunes completely instead of pausing it, how to tackle log-in items changing at seemingly random intervals, what to do about burned files appearing as aliases on the resulting DVD, and how to get persistent keychain prompts under control. I welcome contributions from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in the comments!

Question: Stopping a song in iTunes instead of pausing it MacFixIt … Read more