OTW – Deanna Petherbridge

Renewal: 28/1/2014
Deferred to : 27/5/2014

Hi Deanna

Welcome to your ‘On the Wing’ Support Page. Below you’ll find brief notes from our ‘On the Wing’ calls including any useful links. The calls – or Home Visits – are listed in descending order with the most recent at the top. If you have a call that takes more time and requires a recharge, or you have had a chargeable Home Visit, you will see a payment button here at the top of the page.

Home Visit charge for 03/06/2014

Please could you pay for the Home Visit at £100 + VAT (£120)

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Could you also pay the £49.99 subscription renewal for the period 27/5/14 to 26/5/15

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Calls

03/06/2014 – Home Visit to address issues arising

  • Mail and Contacts and connection to gmail – all now working though please ignore the All Mail folder
  • Checking Photoshop – works but will need to ignore the update notices
  • Review of the processes for using the HP Scanjet G4050 with Image Capture – save folder now set
  • Investigating printing in black issue with the Canon Pixma ip4000 – may be a problem with the printhead, but this has not been cleared by cleaning with WD40 (and this may have been riskier than using water – see follow up.)
  • Reset and testing of TimeMachine and running Carbon Copy Cloner to generate a new clone – to be done monthly
  • Follow up – conversations with inkjet printer repair specialists confirmed routines for cleaning printheads using water only. Online research has provided more information on this and SRS will undertake this once a new printhead has been purchased through eBay – part: QY6-0049 Print Head for CANON I865/IP4000/MP760/MP780.

20/02/2014 – Home Visit to set up the MacBook Air

  • Use of Migration Assistant to transfer data from the last MacBook clone
  • Installation of the drivers for the Canon Pixma ip4000 and HP Scanjet G4050
  • Software update to Mac OSX 10.9.1
  • Download install and test of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011
  • Download install and test of Pixelmator
  • Pulling across of files from the iMac
  • Reset of TimeMachine
  • Testing of Mail with Gmail and resetting of Contacts and Gmail

26/12/2013 – Recharge incurred

Initial phone diagnosis of the Macbook Pro’s symptoms which sound dire as it’s neither RAM check “chiming” nor booting in response to keyboard commands for a safe boot. Agreement to provide and drop off a loan machine while the Macbook Pro is examined in more detail. The loaned Snow iMac has been set with a user account and has had the printer driver loaded. (Loading the scanner driver and getting it to work is in progress.)

On getting the Macbook Pro home, I have checked that it’s not a hard disk issue, because the boot will not complete from an alternative hard disk or the DVD drive. The essential keyboard command routines that can reset a machine have all been run without success. Also swapping out the RAM in case that has become defective has been explored. The likeliest cause at this stage is a failure of the Main Circuit Board – the motherboard – and these can be expensive to replace if indeed one can be sourced for machine more than 5 years old.

I have talked to Apple W12 where I have the business manager as a contact and arranged a diagnostic session with a genius for 11.30 am on Saturday 4th January. Repair times are 7 to 10 days if a repair is viable. If a new machine is to be bought, Apple have an interest free 10 month schedule until January 10th and the choice might be between the 11 inch Macbook Air and the 13 inch Macbook Pro. the size of the icons and text on screen may be critical and should be tested before purchase.

17/11/2013 – Recharge incurred

Explanation of how to set Gmail(Labels) to map appropriately to Apple Mail(IMAP folders), following the current recipe for Mac OSX 10.7 Lion. When updating to Mac OSX 10.9 Mavericks, this will need to have the ‘All Mail’ setting on Gmail reversed. See the link to Dave Hamilton’s piece for MacObserver:

www.macobserver.com/tmo/answers/how_to_setup_gmail_imap_and_mail.app1

28/8/13 – Free

Explanation of the free Microsoft XML converter for docx (pptx & xlsx as well) and the importance of saving files first before converting them as a separate copy is generated in the same folder as the newly saved file. If the file is converted from the file copy in the mail attachments folder, this will not easily be found if needed later. The folder for the purpose is to be called ‘docx’ and is sitting in the Documents folder.

26/8/13 – Free

Set up of synching Apple Address Book and Googlemail contacts. Follow up the next day to resolve duplicates spawning in Googlemail using the Googlemail tool for this.

24/8/2013 – Chargeable Home Visit

The following items achieved:

  • New external Firewire Hard Disk set as three Backup Volumes
  • Drag & Drop Backup and Clone Backup successful. [Intego Anti-Virus software had been preventing cloning. It is now switched off.]
  • Snow Leopard safely installed
  • Printer and scanner and key apps updated and checked
  • Time Machine backup set to run in the background using the Time Machine Backup volume on the Hard Disk.

Thank you for paying for your Home Visit £120 (£100 + vat)

16/8/2013 – Recharge incurred

Visit to install Leopard/ Snow Leopard – foiled by a difficulty with completing a clone back up, but Disk Warrior check completed, issues with the DVD drive considered and possible purchase of another external hard disk dedicated to backup, the potential for upgrading OS to 10.7 discussed – it would involve the expense of updating Microsoft Office – and a quick look at issues in Photoshop (adjustment layers and selection tools), Google’s new irritating web Inbox (a wish to remove the tabs) and in Excel (a desire to trim extraneous cells).

Follow up research: the cloning problem seems to relate to being unable to read corrupted Adobe files which corroborates error messages at Photoshop start up. SRS to explore Adobe’s co-operation in reloading CS3. Once the clone is safely made, the hard disk should be zeroed before cloning back and updating so that all files are written to safe blocks on the disk. Then we can proceed with the update to Snow Leopard. Excel can in fact have extraneous cell grid lines turned off. Apple’s Numbers just might be more fun, so SRS will install a trial version. As for Google, it’s possible to use Settings just to select the Primary tab and therefore to switch off the others. See this article in lifehacker.com.

The problem with the DVD drive, if it doesn’t yield to cleaning, might be resolved more cost effectively by purchasing Apple’s small external DVD drive for MacBook Airs at £65. The external Hard Disk for backup should be a Firewire 800 capable device if it’s to do the job properly. I’ve found suitable drives from Seagate and Iomega. See amazon.co.uk links:

Apple USB Super Drive £59
Seagate GoFlex 1TB £78
Iomega eGo 1TB
Firewire 800 cable if not included

26/1/2013 – FREE

Loss of control over the mouse and dimming of the screen making it impossible to work on the Macbook Pro running Tiger. Found the keyboard brightness controls – F1 & F2 – on the keyboard. Also talked about a visit to install Leopard/Snow Leopard and give the Macbook tender loving care.