Technologgie

Failed Boot Camp Installation

Once you click the Start Installation button within Boot Camp Assistant, it is assumed that your Windows install disc is in your optical drive, either a drive on your system or an external drive. Thereafter your Mac will reboot, and start off the Windows install disc to begin installing Microsoft Windows to your newly created Boot Camp partition.

If all goes fine, then that’s great. But if you see an error; maybe there is an error reading your disc or some communication error. First, ascertain that you are indeed stuck and cannot proceed. Then hold the Power button on your Mac to shut down the computer. Thereafter, hold the Option (Alt) key while you restart your computer. Most probably you will see a menu with a single option that lets you boot to your Mac OS. Choose this option and boot into your Mac OS X partition.

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Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: Boot Camp Installation, Mac OS X, Windows 7

Using Boot Camp to Create a New Partition

First make sure that you have the additional software you need, such as Windows drivers for your Mac hardware. Then, once you launch Boot Camp Assistant, you will get to the screen that asks you to partition your Mac hard disk to carve out a Windows partition, as shown in Figure 1, below.

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Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: Boot Camp, Create a New Partition, Mac OS X, Windows 7

Launching Boot Camp Assistant

If you have fulfilled all requirements for installing Microsoft Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp, then spare an hour or two and get started:

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Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: Boot Camp, Boot Camp Assistant, Mac OS X

Requirements for Installing Windows 7 Using Boot Camp

If you want to install Microsoft Windows 7 on a Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Lion, using Boot Camp, you will need to fulfill the following requirements:

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Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: Boot Camp, Mac OS X, Windows 7

What is Boot Camp?

Boot Camp is a technology built into Intel chip-based Macs that allows you to create a separate partition on your Mac OS hard disk that can run Microsoft Windows. This separate partition is created from within the existing Mac OS hard disk without deleting any of your existing Mac data — it goes without saying that you need plenty of hard disk space to create a Boot Camp partition.

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Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: Boot Camp, Mac OS X, Windows 7

Fun Stuff: Make Einstein Say It

This is a really cool idea. You can create your own quick picture of Albert Einstein teaching a class and writing something with chalk on a blackboard. You just type in your text, and pronto, the picture gets created, and it does look quite authentic–although not authentic enough to stand witness but good enough to bring a few laughs!

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Filed Under: Fun
Tagged as: Free, Images, Pictures

Burn a CD or DVD on Mac OS X

Burning a CD or DVD is very easy on Mac OS X. First, you insert a blank CD or DVD in your Mac. You will see a dialog like the one you see in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: How do you want to burn your CD or DVD?

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Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: Burn a CD, DVD, Mac OS X

Backup your OS X Lion Download on DVD or External Drive

You already learned how you can pause and resume your OS X Lion download from the Mac App Store. But as soon as your download is over, you will see the OS X Lion install screen that you see in Figure 1, below. Resist installing this upgrade for now, and choose the Install Mac OS X Lion | Quit Install Mac OS X Lion menu option for now.

Figure 1: Install screen for Mac OS X Lion

Why did I ask you to quit the install? That is because it is best that you first create a backup of the 3.74 GB download! Yes, it is true. As soon as you finish installing OS X Lion, the downloaded install file will be cleaned up! You might want to install OS X Lion on other computers, or just retain a backup of the install file; after all, 3.74 GB is not a minuscule size, even by today’s standards.

So head to launch Finder, and go to your Applications folder; it is here that you will find the Install Mac OS X Lion app, as you can see in Figure 2. Note that all applications in this folder, as shown in Figure 2 have the app file extension. This is because I have globally enabled file extensions on my Mac.

Figure 2: Install Mac OS X Lion app

Right-click or Ctrl-click this app, and choose the Show Package Contents option in the resultant context menu. Within the Contents | Shared Support folder, you will find the InstallESD.dmg file, as shown in Figure 3).

Figure 3:InstallESD.dmg file

Select and Alt-drag this file to any location on your computer. Remember Alt-drag will make a copy, just dragging will remove the DMG from the package; you don’t want to do that! Once extracted, you can burn this image to a DVD. You can also make a backup of this image on an external hard disk.

Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: Backup, Mac OS X, OS X Lion

Burn Image to CD or DVD with Disk Utility

You really don’t need a separate CD or DVD burning application on your Mac OS X, especially if you want to do something as simple as burning an image to a CD or DVD. Mac OS X’s Disk Utility is all you need:

1. Minimize all your application windows and click an empty area of your desktop. Click the Go | Utilities menu option. In the resultant Finder window, click the Disk Utility icon to launch the program. You will see the interface shown in Figure 1.

   
   Figure 1: Disk Utility

2. Click the Burn button on the toolbar. This will bring up the Select Image to Burn dialog. Navigate and select a DMG or other image format that Disk Utility can work with. Select the Burn button.
3. Disk Utility will ask you to insert a blank disc, as shown in Figure 2. Insert a disc, and in a while, your image will be burnt to a disc.
   
   Figure 2: Insert a disc

Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: Burn Image to CD, Burn Image to DVD, Mac OS X

Show or Hide File Extensions on the Mac for one file

You already learned how you can show or hide file extensions for all files on Mac OS X. Now let me show you how you can enable the visibility of the file extension for just one file:

1. Select the file within Finder or your Mac OS X desktop for which you want the file extension to be visible (or not visible).
2. Now right-click (or Ctrl-click) the file, and choose the Get Info option from the resultant menu.
3. This opens the Get Info dialog for that file, as shown in Figure 1, below.
   
   Figure 1: Get Info
4. You’ll see the Name and Extension pane within the Get Info dialog. Here, there is an option to check: it’s called Hide extension. If you want to show the file extension, you will uncheck this option, and then keep it checked, if you want to hide the file extension. Checking or unchecking this option overrides the global settings to hide or show file extensions in Mac OS X.

Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: File Extensions, Mac, Mac OS X, Show File Extensions, Show or Hide