Fixing Mac Tiger OS 10.3.9 To Windows XP Pro Networking

I kept getting a message that says that the shared alias "could not be opened because the original item cannot be found" whenever I tried connecting my Mac to my Win Laptop through my home network. I could see the shared items but could not connect.

After doing a little searchng and reading forums, I found the solution here.

To skip all the things that don't work, I am reprinting the useful part below, because IT TOTALLY WORKED!

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. Type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet
\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
4. In the right pane, double-click the IRPStackSize value.

NOTE: If the IRPStackSize value does not already exist, use the following procedure to create it:
a. In the Parameters folder of the registry, right-click the right pane.
b. Point to New, and then click DWord Value.
c. Type IRPStackSize.

IMPORTANT: Type "IRPStackSize" exactly as it is displayed because the value name is case-sensitive.

5. Change the Base to decimal.
6. In the Value Data box, type a value that is larger than the value that is listed.

If you created the IRPStackSize value using the procedure described in step 4, the default value is 15. It is recommended that you increase the value by 3. Therefore, if the previous value was 11, type 14, and then click OK.
7. Close the Registry Editor.
8. Restart the computer.

Repair Permissions

One the most important things you can do, if you are a Mac owner/user, using OS X, (and assuming you have admin permissions, is to Repair Permissions every few weeks. You will need to do this more often under any of these circumstances:

• You install any new application or software
• You use Apple's Update to install anything new
• You just want to keep things running nicely

Since it doesn't hurt anything to do it, do it often. Little insignificant things get messed up along the way, and installations (even from Apple) can tweak some important things out of whack (and you want them in whack).

Find Disk Utility in Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Drag it to your Dock as a visual reminder to use it often.

How to Make a Macintosh Disk Image (.dmg) Smaller

Do you have a disk image (filename.dmg) that is taking up too much disk space, or storing unwanted or redundant files? You can delete some of the files and resize the .dmg file to save space.

The easiest thing to do is just open/mount the .dmg file and copy everything in it to a folder of the same name on your hard drive. Toss out what you don't need anymore, and then open Disk Copy from your Applications > Utilities menu, and choose the menu items below:



Then, find the folder you just created with the disk images items in it, and choose it for the new disk image.

Save the new one with a different name elsewhere on your hard drive, and you will now have a resized disk image.

Now you can toss out your larger one.

OS X Mail Disappears - How to Fix it

I received an e-mail from my best friend yesterday and when I went to read it, it said:

"The message from "My Friend's Name" concerning “his message Subject” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it."

But I am always online. I have DSL.

So I rebuilt the Mailbox, and then all the messages from 1.5 years of use disappeared!

Ahhhhhhh!

Nevermind what I did over the next 3 hours to figure it out... If you are having the same problem, you likely have a "Permissions" issue. How the permissions get/got changed is irrelevant. Do you want your mail back?

Here's what you do to fix it:

1. Quit Mail.app
2. Go to Home > Library > Mail > Mailboxes and Control-Click (hold down the Control Key while clicking) on the name of the mailbox that has the problems.
3. Choose Show Package Contents
4. Get Info on the file called mbox (It is likely the largest file in the Package)
5. Display Ownership & Permissions
6. Reset the Owner to Your Home account (mine was assigned to System)
7. Close the Get Info dialog
8. Re-open "Mail.app"

Your formerly blocked mailbox should be fully readable, now, with two caveats: all mail in that box is marked Unread. (No huge deal) Secondly, the mails that were giving you the message:

"The message from "My Friend's Name" concerning “his message Subject” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it."

will still say:

"The message from "My Friend's Name" concerning “his message Subject” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it."

So, ask that sender to re-send that message, if possible.

Mac or PC: Filemaker Pro

Converting Data To Use in a Filemaker Pro Calculation Field

Used to convert data for making it easier for me to calulate the correct HTML information to embed Quicktime videos, RealOne (RealMedia, RealPlayer) Videos and/or Windows Media Player videos into my web pages.

My problem: I had no idea how to embed videos in a Web page and get them to display on another page in a controlable player. Once I found samples of web pages that did what I wanted, I examined their source to try to understand it better.

I realized that there were many variables one needs to set and change, depending on the Media (RealMedia, Quicktime, or Windows Media Player).

Knowing I would eventually want to be able to add many little clips to my site, I decided to create a Filemaker database into which I could enter a mimimum of unique data, and have Filemaker offer me a field full of data, which if I simply copied all data in that field, and then pasted that into the right place in a new HTML document, would create a properly formatted <object>, depending on the Media.

So here's what I did:

I copied the entire "object/embed" item from a working web page to paste into a Filemaker Pro calulation field, with the intention of replacing all the variables with field-names.


But Filemaker doesn't like HTML code... it gets frustrated with the quote-marks, and so on... so I had to determine a method of converting a large block of text to a format that would not confuse Filemaker's Calculation Field editor.

Here are my steps.

I assume you have a text editor that will allow you to Find and Replace, and more importantly that you can replace invisible characters such as Carriage returns and the like.

Note: whenever I refer to a "quote" or quotemark, I am referring to the double tickmark as seen "here" — not the single one seen 'here'

In a Text Editor, Paste the Code you want to convert into a new document then, in this order:

(Make sure "Smart Quotes" or "Publisher's Quotes" is turned off in your preferences)

1. replace all variable data with

_&_######_&_

for finding later. (The underscore character stands for "Space character")

2. Replace all

"

with

""

(That's two "Double-quotes" in a row, no spaces)

3. Put a quote mark at the beginning of line 1 and at the end of the document, too.

4. Replace

[cr]

with

"_&_"¶"_&[cr];"

(be sure to end it with a quote, which will place a quote mark at the beginning of the next line. The [cr] represents the invisible carriage return character. The ¶ is the actual ascii character 182 that Filemaker likes to see between quote marks to force a new line in that calculation's output.

5. Replace all

_&_######_&_

with

"_&_######_&_"

(The difference is, there are now Quotes on either end.)

6. Copy all resulting text and Paste into Filemaker Calulation field.

7. Before attempting to close, replace all

######

with the variable you want in each instance.

You should now have a successfully formatted Filemaker Calculation, with variables where you want them.

To make this field easy to COPY and PASTE, in Layout Mode, right-click that field and choose Field Format and check the box that says something about selecting the entire conents of the field. In Browse Mode, all you have to do, now, is click it and execute a copy command.