El Capitan and iTunes major problems

So if you read my blog you know I have been having major issues with El Capitan, so much so that I did a fresh install on another hard drive, but it did not fix either my Messages issues or my issues with iTunes.

iTunes has just been incredibly slow. Like so slow it is unusable with constant beachballs. It just barely functions, and even then not much. It is just a mess. I tried what I could, running Diskwarrior and TechTool Pro as well as fixing permissions to see if it would fix anything, but it didn’t so I decided to re-import my Library.

This should not be a hard process as it just involves removing the iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Library.xml file from the iTunes folder (SAVE THEM THOUGH), then restarting iTunes. One step they don’t tell is that if you Medua is on an external drive, then open itunes and set the Media to that location and the go to Library and import the XML you moved .

Now this took quite a long time for me as it basically brought up a dialogue for every iOS app saying it was already there, either older, newer or the same, and the do the same for all check box did nothing. So about 12 hours later I had my library imported again, and low and behold, while everything i back with proper metadata, iTunes is once again unusable.

Just frozen with a beachball.

It is all also pegging my processor (or at least some of them as shown from Activity Monitor.

 And is sending up a slew of messages in the console, including that it is pegging the processor.

And is is basically beachballing and unusable!

I don’t want to lose my whole iTunes Library, which I have literally worked years on! WHAT THE HELL! This is ridiculous, between the iCloud issues and iTunes being completely fucked, El Capitan is the worst update to OS X I have ever used, and I have used them all!

El Capitan Clean Install still can’t authorize Messages!

So I decided it had been too long since I have done a clean system install, and since I am having so many OS X problems, I decided to do a clean install. I found an old small hard drive, and wiped it and installed El Capitan on it.

After re-install I tried Messages, and low and behold, I still am getting the can’t authorize iMessage message! WTF! And I have a serial number in my about this mac, and have no replaced the motherboard or processors or even ram! THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING! It worked fine until El Capitan!

Honestly I can only think of one thing it could be, and I hope it isn’t. I have this Wifi and Bluetooth Card from MacVidCards to enable Handoff, Continuity and Airdrop. It worked fine in Yosemite, but maybe Apple did something to stop it in El Capitan, and that is stopping me from being able to use Messages in El Capitan. Maybe.

Going to also go through all my internet accounts and see if paring them down helps. I don’t know, this is so damn frustrating!

Larry Jordan has a good article on how Disk Utility has been emasulated in OS X El Capitan

Larry Jordan has a good in depth article on the emasculation of Disk Utility in OS X El Capitan. He goes into how Soft Raid is the best solution to create software Raids in El Capitan.

Of course Soft Raid has always been a better solution than Disk Utility, but it is also a $179 solution to something that you used to be able to do for Free in Disk Utility!

Major Problems with El Capitan: Continued Again

My problems have been continuing with El Capitan.

Now it is iTunes that is really a mess. It is so slow, that it is barely functioning, with a beach ball lasting hours at times. My wife and I were trying to stream a movie from my computer to my Apple TV, and it froze up and stayed that way for hours. iTunes is just wrecked at this point.

I might have been able to fix Photos, so it goes to the correct Library. I had to use Fat Cat Software’s iPhoto Library Manager to do it though. When I opened iPhoto Library Manager 4, it showed 2 Libraries, and one was the one that Photos was trying to use, and it was an empty Library that I never created, and was showing up RED. So I deleted it, and iPhoto seems to go to the correct library now.

Still have been unable to get Messages to function at all, though I was able to make it go further by repairing permissions using Onyx, since that functionality has been removed from Disk Utility (as well as the ability to create Software RAIDs). And since it doesn’t even work for a brand new account, or after a re-install of el capitan I am kind of stumped.

My next step is to format another drive and install El Capitan on that and see if I can get Messages to work on that. I don’t really want to do that, but I can think of no other way to get Messages to work. My current system does go back quite a ways, so a clean install might be in order, though I don’t want to, as I have all the programs I want installed, but it looks like that may be my only recourse at this point.

Will keep updating to tell you how things are going.

Major Problems with El Capitan: Continued

So I forgot some things in my last post and have since upgraded to 10.11.1 and wanted to share some more on my issues with El Capitan.

Photos no longer remembers my photo library and instead asks every time which one to use, though if it just used the last one it used it would be fine, but instead it starts up and says it can’t use the current library and I need to chose one. Fun fun fun.

Next continues from a problem I mentioned the last time. Because of the new security features of El Capitan, of which there are no fine controls, certain applications must ask permission to function, and you must give that permission every time you use them. One such program is iTeleport Connect, which I use to VPN into my computer. So when I restart it no longer can log into it, I must type in my Admin password to make it work. The problem arises when I must remotely restart my machine, or even worse when I do a system update.

Since I run a PC based NVIDIA GTX 670 as my graphics card, when I do a system update, it doesn’t function until the latest NVIDIA driver is installed. Previously what I had done, is install the update, wait for it to restart and then use iTeleport Connect to VPN into my computer and install the newest NVIDIA driver, and walla, when I restart my video card is working fine and I can go about my day. Since El Capitan no longer allows iTeleport to work without first entering my Admin Password, and since after a system update I can no longer see my computer, I have to pull my video card and re-install my old GTX 270 the machine came with, and then update the NVIDIA drive, restart to make the driver work, then shut down and install my GTX 670 and then start up. Then I have a working video card. Much more of a pain than being able to VPN in and install using my iPad. If I had money I would get a new video card that is flashed for Mac, so I could install the new driver, but I can’t afford that.

And now we come to the 10.11.1 update. Not only did I have to do the swapping video cards rigmarole to get my computer up again, but when I restarted the system was lets shall we say funky. I couldn’t open some programs and many of my system preferences didn’t work, they just wouldn’t launch. And the best part was the fix. I ran the latest version of Onyx, and repaired Disk Permissions, and when I restarted everything functioned again. So obviously the new internal Permissions Repair did not work correctly, and with Disk Utility no longer having that functionality I had to use a 3rd party software to fix the System Install and allow things to work again!

And I was hoping this would fix my Messages not being able to log in, but no of course it didn’t. I still get the stupid activation error when I try to sign into iMessages in the Messages app.

So far El Capitan is a nightmare, and nothing has wowed me to show me that this is a worthwhile update.

Major problems with El Capitan

http://www.apple.com/osx/

Well Apple recently released it’s next OS X upgrade, OS X El Capitan, and for me at least it has nothing but trouble.

I run a MacPro 4,1, which is rapidly again, but still works well for video work (especially with an NVIDIA GTX 670 with 4GB of RAM of it), and so far my upgrade to OS X El Capitan has been a nightmare.

First off Messages no longer works for me. I cannot log into Messages with my Apple account, it says that I can’t activate my account. I have been trying solutions since it came out, including deleting preferences, resetting my keychain, setting up a new account (and it still wouldn’t work there), and re-installing El Capitan, but still it does not activate. So Messages is just completely broken for me. And I am not running a Hackintosh, nor have I changed mortherboards and lost my serial number (it still shows up in about this Mac).

And then there are the problems with Mail. While my accounts have come over, it seems it has removed the passwords from the outgoing mail servers, and since they are so badly hidden within Apple Mail (in advanced and you have to select custom in a drop down menu to get to them), it is a super pain to go in and re-enter all of my passwords so that I can actually send mail! And this seems to have happened with my mom’s computer as well, and I can’t easily fix it, since I can’t log into Messages to do video chat and take over her computer! ANNOYING!

And while the startup seems quicker now, my finder is very slow and so is iTunes! And my first step on any repair has always been to repair permissions, but you with Disk Utility at least, you can’t do that anymore. That feature has been removed as the system is supposed to do that itself when you install a new program, but I would like to be able to do that myself. Now Titanium software’s Onyx still says it does that, I am not sure you should anymore, though I am going to try it.

Now Alsfot’s Diskwarrior works on El Capitan, but it’s repairs have not helped my system at all. And TechTool Pro needs to be updated to work so I can’t try that.

And another annoyance is that iTeleport Connect, which I use to VNC into my computer from my iPad needs you to enter your admin password every time it starts in El Capitan, so if the machine restarts I can no longer VNC into my computer without first being there to enter the password! I am sure this is a security feature, but I have saved my Machine using iTeleport when some driver screwed up and I was still able to VNC in, but with it not able to log in on it’s own I can’t do that anymore! FRUSTRATING!!!

And that is to say nothing of pretty much the whole Adobe Video suite not working at all in El Capitan! And there is no word from Adobe of an update (other than some word that their previous demo of After Effects running on Metal [of of the new big features of El Capitan] and running 8 x faster will likely not be coming to consumers) that will fix this. Hopefully they are working with Apple and an update is coming, but so far there is no word.

So far El Capitan is a huge bust for me, and I wish I hadn’t upgraded at all. Apple should not have released this until the bugs were worked out, and important software like Adobe’s Creative Cloud actually worked!

Finally someone else si also getting my “system_profiler quit unexpectedly” crashes in OS X

For a while now I have been getting “system_profiler quit unexpectedly” crashes in OS X, and I get them a lot, but have not always been able to figure out why. I have a thread at Apple discussions on it, and finally someone else has run into the error.

And the thing we both have in common is that we both have PC NVIDIA cards as our Graphics cards, so it is quite possible that this is the issue. The other user has reported this as a bug to apple, but since we are not using approved video cards it will likely be ignored.

He also has a temporary solution, to disable the system profiler app, but this seems excessive in case you need the system profiler, but if it keeps bothering me I might try it.

sudo chmod -x /usr/sbin/system_profile (To revert this, use “+x” instead)

This is really an annoyance, and sometimes happens a lot in rapid succession, so I really do wish I could figure out a permanent solution to this problem.

Diskwarrior 5 Issues in non standard configurations: UPDATED

Well I for one was very excited about Alsoft Diskwarrior 5, and it’s new USB Stick to run off and repair Macs, but unfortunately it has not worked out so well for me.

Now admittedly I am likely a strange case on this one. I have been trying to use it on 2 slightly out of the norm cases, and haven’t been able to to boot to the USB stick in either case. And though I have gotten it to run, it was via other means, and was not too impressed by the new 64 Bit Speeds.

The first case is my own computer, which is a MacPro 4,1, but the exception here is that I run a PC NVIDIA GTX 670 with 4 GB of RAM, so I am unable to hold down option and select a startup disc on boot, nor able to get into the recovery partition because I don’t get a screen booted until the desktop starts up. And these are the two methods to run diskwarrior from the USB Stick. The USB Stick does show up as a startup disc and I have tried starting up off of it, but the computer never boots this way for some reason.

To get it to work on my MacPro I used a competitor product in fact. Micromat’s Tech Tool Pro 7 has a way to create a recovery partition. And I was able to create it on one of my additional hard drives so as not to mess with the OS X recovery partition, and it allows you to install software there, so I installed Diskwarrior 5 and ran it.

Once running the new Diskwarrior worked fine, just like the old one, and in fact did not seem any faster. I do have a very full 3 TB main hard drive though, so it has a lot of files to check, but still it did not seem exceptionally faster than version 4.

A second place I run diskwarrior is at one of the offices that I work at (being freelance it isn’t always the same place, but I work here allot). And I got them to purchase a DVD of Diskwarrior 4.

Now I wanted to test Diskwarrior 5 here, to see if we could use it. Now while they do have one MacPro with a NVIDIA GTX 680 Mac Edition which I will be testing on later, they also have a QUO computing Hackintosh that I have been using mostly. Already to run Diskwarrior on it, I can’t boot from the DVD, but have to run from a Carbon Copy Cloner backup of the system SSD that has Diskwarrior 4 installed. Still I thought I would try the USB Stick.

And once again no, with the QUO it seems that I can’t hold down option to see the bootable hard drives, so I can’t boot from the USB stick to repair this system. I could install Diskwarrior on my backup, but would not do that with my serial number. I will test it later on the regular MacPro, just because I want to see if I can get Diskwarrior 5 to boot from the USB stick in any situation!

Now the one thing I have not tried is is the new Diskwarrior 5 Diskwarrior Recovery Maker, which updates the USB Flash to the latest OS that your system is, since new Macs have new boot requirements, but I know my MacPro can boot from 10.6.4, and I believe that is the starting system for any Hackintosh, so I though that would work for for the QUO.

I will updater his after I see if it works on the other more standard MacPro, but so far I have not been too impressed with Diskwarrior 5

UPDATE

Well I tested the Diskwarrior USB in the MacPro 4,1 with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition, and it froze on the startup screen. I started it by holding down option and selecting the Diskwarrior Recovery partition, and starting up. I left it there for an hour, and the Machine was just stopped.

Here is the Startup screen. It spun for a while then froze.

And the red light was solid on the USB Key so not accessing the disc
And when I tried it on my Quo holding down option, this is exactly what happened, it showed the startup screen and spun and then froze. And the same happened when I selected the USB on my home Mac as a startup disc.
Looks like it is time to contact Alsoft and see what is going on.
SECOND UPDATE
I was writing an e-mail to Alsoft Technical support, and think I figured out the issue, and will test it soon. The GTX 680 Mac Edition requires 10.8.x Operating system to run, and all 3 machines I have tried it on have either that card or a PC GTX 670, so it is likely that the system needs to have at least that system to run. So it looks like it is time to try out Diskwarrior Recover Maker and update my USB.
My only problem is that my home system is Yosemite already. Maybe I can find a system with 10.8.5 and run it, so it doesn’t get too new of a system on it.

Alsoft has released Diskwarrior 5

After a very long wait, Alsoft has released DiskWarrior 5. It has been a long time since anything but a point update, but that hasn’t kept DiskWarrior from remaining the single best utility for Mac OS X repairs around. And I am excited to see how good this next version is, especially now that it ships on a bootable USB Flash Drive, so it can start up faster and be updated more easily (the CD/DVD upgrade process always took a while).
Check out the new features, including 64 Bit for speed, the ability to update your Diskwarrior Recovery Flash to to the latest OS X, it can even run from OS X Recovery.
This is great news, as this has always been the best repair program! I do like TechTool’s emergency repair partition feature (on my machine I created it on a second hard drive and have Diskwarrior installed), but the USB will make this really use, especially to do repairs on my wife’s MacBook Air!

Looks like a Bluetooth LE Adapter will not enable handoff in older Macs

MacRumors is reporting that Bluetooth LE Adapters do not add Handoff support to older Macs.

If this happens in the final release (which seems likely) it is really shitty of Apple, and just a way of trying to get users who want the feature to buy new Macs.

Especially annoying when something like the IOGEAR Bluetooth 4.0 USB Micro Adapter adds full Bluetooth LE support out of the box without software. So it looks like it is a physical lockout on the part of Apple on older machines instead of a technical issue.

Hopefully if it is the case someone will release a 3rd party hack that enables this very cool feature.