ProjectMix I/O, Firewire, iMac, & Pro Tools

September 25th, 2008

Got a good one this morning.  I’ve recently taken a job at Belmont University and I’m part IT, part studio troubleshooter.  The studio director called me this morning and said his M-Audio unit wasn’t playing nicely with Pro Tools and wanted me to come down and troubleshoot it before a class needed to use that studio.

Problem:

Pro Tools opened and would playback audio, but the ProjectMix I/O controller wasn’t controlling the volume, faders, or anything else.  Since Pro Tools was able to open and play audio, this told us the firewire cable is ok and that Pro Tools is able to communicate to the board (otherwise Pro Tools wouldn’t open).  The display on the ProjectMix said it was in Pro Tools mode, so it wasn’t that the control buttons were mapped to the wrong settings.  All the settings in the applications provided by M-Audio were normal and were showing audio coming out, so Pro Tools didn’t have any conflicts with the M-Audio drivers or software.  We had the latest version of Pro Tools.  We had the latest version of the firmware for the ProjectMix, we even reflashed the unit to be sure.  The board itself was working; the setup buttons allowed us to navigate the settings and change them.

Solution:

I found the article below, which was part of the setup for M-power Pro Tools and M-Audio units.  In order to have the ProjectMix controlling things, it must be setup as a MIDI controller in Pro Tools.  Go to Setup > Peripherals > MIDI Controllers.  Change the Type field to HUI, the Receive From and Send To fields to ProjectMix Controller.  When I made those changes, the faders popped into place, the tranport controls began to control playback, and the volume finally worked.

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.faq&ID=ae08e64ea79305d648985cdcbe561edc

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Posted in Hardware, Pro Tools, Troubleshooting | No Comments »

XP Service Pack 3 and Boot Camp

September 22nd, 2008

I’ve run into an error twice now with two different installations and I thought I’d share the solution.  Today, I setup a Boot Camp partition on a Mac Pro.  Installed Windows XP, and went to do the Windows Updates.  The first update (after updating Windows Update itself) was XP Service Pack 3.  It had already downloaded this update, so the installation began right away, but gave this error:

“There is not enough disk space on C:Windows/$NtServicePackUnistall$ to install Service Pack 3.  Setup requires a minimum of 4 additional megabytes of free space or it you also want to archive the files for uninstallation, Setup requires 4 additional megabytes of free space.  Free additional space on your hard disk and then try again.”

Since the drive I was installing to had 111 GB of free space, I figured this was really a disk space issue, especially for a quibbling 4 MB, but rather something else.  Searching on the internet revealed that my suspicions where correct and that Boot Camp needed to be updated in Windows.  There’s an update available from Apple that takes you from Boot Camp 2.0 to Boot Camp 2.1.  After I updated Boot Camp, Service Pack 3 installed without any further errors.

One would think that Apple Udpater would update Boot Camp as well, but it appears not.  There also isn’t an option in the Boot Camp manager to tell it to check for updates.

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Posted in OS X, Troubleshooting, Version Update | No Comments »

How to Set the Default Font in Word 2004

August 28th, 2008

So you want to change what font every new document uses, right?  It’s pretty easy, try this:

Open Word

Open a new, blank document (choose this option from the Project Gallery if that opens first for you)

picture 2 How to Set the Default Font in Word 2004

Go to: Format > Font

picture 3 How to Set the Default Font in Word 2004

Choose whatever font and options you want (like bold, font size, etc)

Hit that Default button down in the bottom left corner.

That’s it, you’re set!  If you want to test it out, close Word and open it again.  Open a new, blank document and check the font settings.  They should be exactly what you just choose in the Format Font menu.

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OS X Directory – can’t sync PHD

March 4th, 2008

I’m moving users onto an OS X Directory server, which will save my life as an admin. However, I’ve also discovered that it will bring up a whole different set of issues that only I will be able to settle.  This is one of the ones that stumped me and I had to call our Apple Tech rep to get help.

Problem:

User tries to log in.  They enter the password correctly and it comes up with the following error message:

You are unable to log in to the user account “UserAccount” at this time.  Logging in to the account failed because of an error occurred.  The home folder for the user account is located on an AFP or SMB server.  Contact your system administrator for help.     

Solutions:

Check your client’s time. This is the killer for me. If the client’s time is off from the server’s by more than 3 minutes, then you’ll get this error. Kerberos is very picky about who gets through and who doesn’t (which is really good) and the time of day plays a big part of that.

Check your DNS server.  Make sure you have one setup and it’s working properly.

Make sure you turn on AFP (or SMB) on the server where your home directories reside.

I may find more solutions to this problem, if so, I’ll add them later.

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Solving the “More than one copy open” error

March 4th, 2008

Sometimes you run across an error that is just plain annoying. I mean, every error is annoying, but most you can write off because they are quick and easy to fix. Some are bugs for the vendor to work out. Some are just annoying because they are pain and won’t go away. This one qualifies.

Here’s how it goes down: you open Thunderbird or Firefox and the follow pops up:

Close Thunderbird error

So you close Thunderbird/Firefox. You double check in Task Manager/Activity Monitor that it’s not running any more. You try opening it again. Same error. No matter what you try, you get the same error.

After much research, lots of head banging, and a dash of cursing, I think I’ve licked this one. Here’s the deal. When Thunderbird/Firefox opens, it creates a files called .parentlock (or parent.lock on Windows). This file tells the application that it’s already open and cannot allow another copy to run at the same time. The problem comes from when Thunderbird/Firefox closes abnormally (read: crashes). In my case, I moved a profile from another computer and it had a “closed” parentlock file in the profile.

The solution:

  1. Turn on hidden files/folders (in Windows Explorer or use a free app like Tinkertool for OS X).
  2. Navigate to your profile folder
    1. Windows: C:\Documents and Settings\<Windows login/user name>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\
    2. OS X: ~Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/<Profile name>/
  3. Find the .parentlock or parent.lock file and delete it
  4. Now turn your hidden files/folder back to hidden and start the app.

This should fix it.  If not, try rebooting then starting the app.

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Protecting Windows Documents in Parallels

February 21st, 2008

Parallels_iconSo you’re using Parallels, but you want to the ability to wipe out your Windows installation.  Maybe you’re not using virus protection (always practice safe computing), or maybe you just like test stuff and always need to start with a fresh copy of Windows.  Either way, you need a way for documents made in Windows to still be around after you get rid of Windows.  There’s an easy way to do get this done:

In your Documents folder on your Mac, make a folder called XP Docs (it can be called whatever, this is what I use).

Open your Parallels, but don’t start Windows.

Go to Edit > Virtual Machine

Go to the section labeled Shared Folders.

Enable shared folders, if it’s not already.  If it is enabled, click the plus button to add the shared folder.

Name the shared folder XP Docs.

Click the “Choose” button, find your XP Docs folder, then clock the OK.

Now start Windows.

Open Parallels Shared Folders (it should be on your desktop) and make sure you can see “XP Docs” there.  Open that folder too.

Copy the address of the folder in the address bar, then go up to Tools > Map Network Drive.  Map XP Docs to drive M (for My Documents).

Now go to Windows Explorer (Start > Programs >  Accessories) and right click on My Documents and go to Properties.

Change the target folder location to M:\.  Click Apply and choose yes on the resulting dialog box.  Click Ok to close the properties box.

Now your “My Documents” folder has been moved into the XP Docs folder, which means anything you save in My Documents will be accessible from XP Docs on the Mac side.  If you need to wipe out your Windows installation in Parallels, just redo these instructions to point My Documents to your exising XP Docs folder and all your documents will be there.  This could be really helpful if you need to save application settings, like Firefox and Thunderbird profiles, etc.

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How to move Firefox’s profile folder

February 21st, 2008

Firefox IconHere’s the setup: A user is running Tiger 10.4.11 and Parallels and uses Windows most of the time. We already backup her documents in a way that prevents them from being deleted if we need to wipe out the Windows installation (see the posting about “Protecting Windows Documents in Parallels”), but we also want to have her Firefox settings (bookmarks, etc) to be saved the same way. In order to do that, we need to move her Profile folder for Firefox to the special folder we set up.

Here’s how to do it (from the Mozilla knowledge base):

  1. Completely close Firefox
  2. Copy the profile folder to wherever you want to store it. You can copy it anywhere except the application’s program directory.
    1. Windows XP
      1. C:\Documents and Settings\<Windows login/user name>\Application Data\Mozilla\
    2. Windows Vista
      1. C:\Users\<Windows login/user name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\
    3. Mac OSX
      1. ~/Library/Application Support/
  3. Start the Profile Manager:
    1. Windows:
      1. Go to Start > Run
      2. Type in “firefox.exe -profilemanager” and hit enter
    2. Mac OS X:
      1. Open Terminal
      2. Type in “/Applications/firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -profilemanager” and hit enter
  4. Click on “Create Profile…” and, in the dialog that opens, enter a descriptive name for the profile you copied.
  5. Click on the “Choose Folder…” button. A “Browse for Folder” dialog will open.
  6. Select the profile folder you copied and click OK.
  7. Review the path shown in the “Completing the Create Profile Wizard” dialog to make sure it is correct, then click “Finish” to create the new profile.
  8. Select the new profile and press the Start button to start Firefox using the moved profile.

There are similar instructions for moving Thunderbird’s directory.  I’ll post a tutorial for that too.

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Posted in Firefox, Parallels | No Comments »

Deleting an Address Book

November 18th, 2007

Thunderbird IconI recently got this email from a reader:

How do you remove an address book from TB?  I have added several but cannot delete them in the address book window in a compose form.

Here’s the firs thing I noticed – you’re trying to manage the address book from the compose form.  The compose form is simply for composing new emails, so you can’t manage your address book from there.

The only way to delete an address book that I know of is:

  1. Open Thunderbird
  2. Click on the Address Book icon on the toolbar
  3. Select the address book you wish to delete
  4. Click the delete button

It should ask you to confirm this action, since you may not actually want to delete that book, so if you’re sure, then click ok.  The address book is gone.

The second thing I noticed is: why are you creating more address books?  My guess (from experience) is that you’re really wanting to create a mailing list, or grouping of people that would like to email all at once, or that you just want grouped together in your address book.  The easiest way to do that is to just put everyone in the Personal Address Book and create a mailing list/group instead of creating a separate address book.  See this post for more info about that.

Keep the questions coming, thanks!

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Posted in Address Book, Lists (Groups), Management, Thunderbird | No Comments »

Text size

November 1st, 2007

Thunderbird IconI recently had a staff member approach me about increasing the size of her text in Thunderbird. Doing a quick Google search kept bringing up the same information about the wrong thing, so I’m posting to give more information about both.

If you’re trying to increase the size of the text of the email you’re viewing, go to View > Text Size, then either Increase or Decrease. You can also use the shortcut Apple + or Apple – (that’s Control + or Control – for you Windows users).

However, this staff member is looking to increase the size of the text in the message list, no the emails themselves. That requires some hacking, so I’m going to detail how to do this hack (which I only know how to do on the Mac, sorry Windows users!):

Open the following file: User’s Library > Thunderbird > Profiles > (some profile name gibberish) > chrome > userChrome.css

You can use TextEdit, although I prefer the free Taco HTML editor.

Add the following text at the bottom , if its not already there:

/* Global UI font */
* { font-size: 11pt !important;
  font-family: Verdana !important; }

This text will increase the default size of the user interface text (as in menus, dialogs, message lists, etc, button text, etc).  If you change the value from 11pt to something else, it will affect everything in the program (menus, message list, dialogs, etc) except message text size.  If you need to make a change only on a specific part (like only the button names or only the message list), you can use trees and treechildren.  Get the proper syntax and usage on this Mozilla KB article.

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Posted in Thunderbird | 1 Comment »

Thunderbird Safe Mode

September 20th, 2007

Thunderbird IconI got an email today from a staff member asking about her Thunderbird running in Safe Mode.  Since I had no idea that there was a safe mode for Thunderbird (vs. the Windows Safe Mode) I looked up info on it and thought I would share with everyone.

According to this Knowledge Base article, Safe Mode for both Firefox and Thunderbird allows you use Thunderbird or Firefox, but without any extensions or themes running.  It will, however, use any plugins you have installed.  This could be particularly useful if a theme or extension is causing problems, but you’re not able to uninstall it because it keeps crashing.

To start in safe mode:

OS X:

Go to Utilities (in the Applications folder) and open Terminal, then run (for Firefox):

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -safe-mode

And for Thunderbird, this is the line to run in Terminal:

/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin -safe-mode

If you have installed the application to another location, modify the path as such. It’s the “-safe-mode” command line parameter that’s crucial here.

Windows:

Use the “Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode)”, “Mozilla Thunderbird (Safe Mode)”, or “Mozilla Thunderbird (No Extensions)” shortcut in the Mozilla Firefox or Mozilla Thunderbird program folder on the Windows Start Menu. If you have deleted this shortcut, you can start in Safe Mode by selecting “Start -> Run” and entering

For Firefox:

    firefox -safe-mode

For Thunderbird:

    thunderbird -safe-mode

Linux:

Go to your Terminal and run (for Firefox):

/path/to/firefox/firefox -safe-mode
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Posted in Firefox, General, Thunderbird | No Comments »

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