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Hey IT Nerd! Can I Get Rid Of The Check Engine Using A Scan Code Tool?

Posted in Tips on September 11, 2015 by itnerd

I got this question in my inbox a few days ago:

Hey IT Nerd! You seem to know a lot about cars, so let me ask you this. My check engine light is on, but I know my car is perfectly fine. So I’d like to get rid of it. Do I need to use a scan code tool to do this or do I have to take it to the stealership? 

Thanks!

Thanks for your question.

A scan code tool is what a mechanic uses to read a “trouble code” (which in turn may or may not throw a check engine light or some other indicator on your dashboard) that is stored in the OBD (on board diagnostic) system inside your car. To illustrate this, I borrowed one from a local mechanic who’s computer systems I fix from time to time and plugged it into my Toyota Matrix:

IMG_1497

If you click to enlarge the picture, you’ll see that it says “No Powertrain DTCs or Freeze Frame Data is presently stored in vehicle’s computer.” In English it means that there are no “trouble codes” stored in the car’s computer which implies that the engine is fine. If there were codes, the codes in question will either point a mechanic to a specific part that is causing an issue, or to a particular part of the engine where he or she can start looking for a problem. Now besides looking for “trouble codes,” you can also use a scan code tool to check performance data in real time. And yes, you can use one to clear a code. But here’s why you don’t want to do that. If you have a check engine light, there is something wrong with your car. You need to have it looked at to see if you did something simple such as not tighten your gas cap when you last filled up your car (which will generate a “trouble code”) or if you have a more serious (read: expensive) problem. So do yourself a favor and have it checked out. It may cost you $60 at a mechanic or “stealership” as automotive dealerships are sometimes known as. But if you have a problem with your car, you better find out about it now before it either costs you a pile of money or leaves you stranded at the side of the road.

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Dude! Where’s My Guest Account?

Posted in Tips with tags on September 4, 2015 by itnerd

After writing this article to give readers a overview of FileVault 2, I noticed something on my MacBook Pro. I was missing the Guest Account which is a special type of user that has very limited access to your Mac. That was a bit of a fail because that’s actually a good security feature as it allows a thief who steals your Mac to connect to the Internet, which in turn allows you to find your Mac using the functionality found in Find My Mac and you then have the option of sending the cops to get it, locking it, sending a message to it (example: “If found, please return it. Reward offered”) or erasing the contents remotely.

When I looked in System Preferences and Users And Groups, I found that the Guest Account was activated.

I was left scratching my head for a bit as that should mean that everything should be working. So I decided to try an experiment by deactivating and reactivating the guest user. That worked. I can only conclude that when I transferred my data over from my old MacBook Pro (which had the Guest Account working) to my new MacBook Pro, something must have gotten trashed. Thus turning it off (which kills the account) and back on (which creates a new account) would cure that. Weird.

Hopefully this is the last thing that I have to fix on either of the MacBook Pros. But at least this experience is giving me all sorts of topics to share with you in case you hit similar problems. That way you don’t have to make a trip to the Genius Bar to get them solved.

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How To Fix Instant Hotspot On OS X And iOS

Posted in Tips with tags on September 4, 2015 by itnerd

My wife noticed that a function that I take for granted on my MacBook Pro wasn’t available on her new to her MacBook Pro. The Instant Hotspot feature which is part of the larger Continuity feature set. This allows a MacBook Pro for example to use a iPhone that is in Bluetooth range to surf the net using the data plan of the iPhone. It’s a handy feature to have if you have a MacBook, and it should “just work” but it wasn’t in her case. So I spent some time diagnosing the issue and here are the things that I tried that I hope will help you if you encounter this issue:

  1. Reboot everything: I’ve found that this can help to re-establish whatever connections are required for this feature to work.
  2. Turn off WiFi and Bluetooth on both devices: This is another thing that can help  to re-establish whatever connections are required for this feature to work. Also, you need both Bluetooth and WiFi enable for Instant Hotspot to work.
  3. Log out and back into iCloud on both devices: Instant Hotspot requires you to have devices using the same iCloud account. So I am guessing that something in the way that the Mac and iOS interact with iCloud keeps this from working properly. It’s also worth noting that a reboot sometimes won’t cure that. Thus for whatever reason logging out and logging back in seems to clear that up.
  4. Reset network settings on your iPhone or iPad: Resetting the network settings on your iDevice is a brute force way of fixing this if the first three items don’t work. Keep in mind that this will clear out all wifi hotspot passwords and connected Bluetooth devices as well, so you’ll have to re-enter those. Tap Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings. Then type in your passcode if asked. Finally, confirm you’d like to reset your network settings.

In my case, I got as far as item three before things started working again. But sometimes when I get calls from clients, I have to use some or all of these before I get things working.

If you have any other tips that help fix Instant Hotspot problems, please leave a comment below and share your knowledge.

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Setting Up 802.11ac On A Linksys WRT1900AC Router

Posted in Tips with tags on September 3, 2015 by itnerd

Now that I have a faster MacBook Pro, I wanted to leverage the fact that I had a Linksys WRT1900AC router that was capable of doing 802.11ac and my MacBook Pro also does 802.11ac. If they played nice together, I could get a theoretical maximum speed of 1300 Mbps. In reality it would likely see something north of 600 Mbps to something around 1024 Mbps because your environment may limit the actual speed that you get. But upon my initial testing, I discovered that I was only getting 802.11n on the MacBook Pro. I found that to be weird because when I checked the router I had these options selected under the 5GHz band section of my router’s wireless configuration:

Capture1Please take note of the Network Mode. To me, that meant that I was set up to let devices that were 802.11a and 802.11n compatible work on the 5GHz band. That explains why I wasn’t getting 802.11ac speeds. As I didn’t have any 802.11ac devices at the time, this was the most logical setting for me to use. So I did.

What made the situation even more confusing was the fact that nowhere in the user interface of the router does it specify an option for 802.11ac:

Untitled1

That was baffling to me seeing as this router is capable of doing 802.11ac according to Linksys. Thus I figured that I was doing something wrong or I was not looking in the right place. I checked their FAQ and found nothing there that could help me. I also did what I tell my customers to do which is to read the manual and found no assistance there. So on a hunch, I flipped this setting to Mixed. After a reboot of the router and a check of my MacBook Pro, I had 802.11ac speeds.

This is an area that Linksys should consider improving because their typical users may not invest the time to experiment with these settings. As a result they could get frustrated and ditch this router for a different brand, or flood their tech support lines with questions that could easily be answered if the router’s user interface were clearer and/or the manual and FAQ provided better guidance on this front. So my advice to Linksys would be to clean up the user interface so that people who don’t bother reading the manual can easily set up their network for 802.11ac, and clean up their documentation because other than mentioning that the WRT1900AC is 802.11ac capable, I couldn’t find any mention on how exactly to do that. Those two things would be a big help to their users. But in the absence of that, I hope this post helps someone who finds themself in the same situation as yours truly until Linksys gets around to doing the things that I mentioned above.

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FileVault 2: What It Is And Why Every Mac User Should Use It

Posted in Tips with tags , on September 3, 2015 by itnerd

I got a few questions asking me to explain what FileVault 2 is and why I decided to go with using it on both MacBook Pros in my home.

FileVault 2 is a full disk encryption system offered by Apple in OS X that encrypts the entire hard disk using XTS-AES [Warning: PDF] 128 encryption and performs encryption and decryption on the fly in a transparent manner. Now this isn’t the absolute strongest form of encryption as there is a 256 bit variant of this, but it is strong enough to keep 99% of the universe away from your data. It also takes away the most common way of breaking into Macs which is to use Recovery Mode that is built into every Mac to change the password to your user account.

The advantages beyond encrypting your data include the fact that you can use Find My Mac to silently wipe your drive in seconds remotely if your Mac is stolen (just make sure you always have a current backup). Or you can issue a command to remotely lock the Mac. But you need to keep this in mind. Once you’ve used the Remote Lock option, the Remote Wipe action is no longer available. Another thing that I should point out is that you should always enable the Guest Account option so that it entices a thief to use the Mac. By doing so, he’d have to connect to the Internet and that will allow the Mac to report its location as well as allow you to send commands to lock or wipe the Mac.

Another thing to note is that FileVault 2 works with all your backup software and with utilities like DiskWarrior. So all that means is that you’re protecting your data and your life doesn’t change at all.

Enabling it is easy. The link that I have included on FileVault 2 shows how easy the process is. But there’s a couple of things to keep in mind:

  • Once you start the encryption process, there’s no stopping it. You need to leave it alone to complete. Depending on the Mac that you have and how much data it has to encrypt, it may take an hour or two, or several hours. My advice would be to pick a day where you won’t need the Mac for anything and leave it alone to do its thing. It also goes without saying that you should do a backup of your data before you turn on FileVault 2 because however unlikely it might be, something bad could happen.
  • During the setup, OS X creates a Recovery Key for your drive. This Recovery Key is something that you need to hold onto because without it, you are screwed if you need to recover your data from a lost password or the like. You have two options in this regard:
    • In OS X Yosemite, you can store your FileVault key in iCloud. You can then use your iCloud account name and password to unlock your startup drive or reset your password. This is the option that I went with and you should as well as this is the best way to get your data back if you forget your password or the like. The only catch is that because the contents of your hard disk would be tied to your iCloud account, the possibility exists for someone to get access to the contents of your drive if they ever gained control of your iCloud account.
    • You can also create a recovery key that consists of a combination of numbers and letters. You can use this key to unlock your drive or disable FileVault. Keep a copy of this key somewhere other than your encrypted startup disk. If you write the key down, be sure to exactly copy the letters and numbers that are shown, and keep it somewhere safe that you’ll remember. If your Mac is at a business or school, your institution can also set a recovery key to unlock it. This is a more secure option, but does you little good if you do not have access to to this key or you wrote it down wrong.

When it comes to who should use it, here are my thoughts:

  • If you have a MacBook of some description, the answer should be yes as MacBooks specifically and portable computers in general tend to be high value targets for theft as I can attest to. In fact, when you buy a new MacBook, the Setup Assistant offers to turn this on for you during the initial setup process.
  • If you own any other type of Mac, I would strongly consider it. Mac Mini and Mac Pro computers for example are small and easy to steal. For users of those Macs I would recommend turning on FileVault 2. But if you are someone who has work related or confidential data on your Mac, then the answer should be yes as well.

The next thing that I will highlight is speed. In the past, speed has been an issue when it comes to encryption because the process of encrypting and decryption data would slow the computer down to such a degree that some would ditch encryption to make the computer perform they way they wanted it to. But in the age of fast processors and SSD storage, this is a non-issue. Even with mechanical hard drives this is a non-issue as well. I have FileVault 2 turned on both my wife’s MacBook Pro which I put a 7200 RPM hard drive into it, as well as my new MacBook Pro that has a SSD. I cannot tell on either that FileVault 2 is enabled. Though I will admit that it took almost 6 hours on my wife’s MacBook Pro to do the initial encryption 90GB of data. By contrast it took about 90 minutes on my MacBook Pro to do the initial encryption of 225 GB of data. But once that was done, there is no speed penalty that we can detect.

The final thing to highlight is that there is one thing that you should be aware of when you use FileVault 2. Some law enforcement types aren’t thrilled with FileVault 2 because that they can’t get into it at will. Thus if you travel and customs decides to search your MacBook for whatever reason, they might want you to hand over your encryption keys or de-crypt your drive. That’s a big hint that there aren’t any backdoors (that we know of) in FileVault 2. But for that reason, it could cause you some grief if you travel. My best advice is to follow this piece of advice that I wrote in regards to US customs and avoid any conversation about the fact that the drive is be encrypted.

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Migrating From My Old MacBook Pro To My New MacBook Pro… And More [UPDATED]

Posted in Tips with tags on September 2, 2015 by itnerd

A lot of you might be wondering what I did with my old MacBook Pro now that I have this new one in my hands. I was going to Craigslist it. But then my wife suggested that I give it to her as it is still under AppleCare and she wanted a portable computer. I did point out the three hard drives failures as well as a failed screen as a reason to not go that route. Her response was that there was not a whole lot of risk because of the fact that it was still under AppleCare and she could use it as an upgrade from her late 2012 Mac Mini which was no longer under AppleCare. Then she could sell the Mac Mini on Craigslist. Since my wife is always right, I decided to go for it.

First, I had to move the data off of my old MacBook Pro to my new one. Fortunately, Apple has a piece of software called the Migration Assistant that allows you to move data from one Mac to another easily. You can do it over a network, via a Time Machine backup, via FireWire, via Thunderbolt, or from a Windows computer. In my case, I chose to use Thunderbolt as I thought that would be the fastest way to get this done. Here’s what I did:

  1. I booted my old MacBook Pro while holding down the “T” key which activates Target Disk Mode which allows it to be used as a hard drive.
  2. I plugged in my old MacBook Pro to my new MacBook Pro via a Thunderbolt cable.
  3. I started my new MacBook Pro and went through the setup assistant. When it asked me if I wanted to migrate data from another Mac, I said yes.
  4. When it found my old MacBook Pro, I confirmed that I wanted to migrate from it and entered my password.
  5. At this point, it asked me if I wanted to use FileVault 2 which encrypts my data and if I wanted to use iCloud to unlock my account if I lost my password. I chose to do both. At that point, I had to enter my iCloud username and password and then use two factor authentication via my iPhone to validate my identity.
  6. I then watched for 45 minutes as it pulled my data across to my new MacBook Pro. One reboot later it was done migrating.
  7. I then had to re-enter my iCloud username and password and validate my identity again via my iPhone and do a few other things to finish the process.
  8. My new MacBook Pro then booted to the finder and prompted me to enter app specific passwords for iCloud, iMessage, and FaceTime.
  9. I had to then activate Find My Mac.

At this point, all the data was on my new MacBook Pro. I then had to do a few more things:

  • I had to reactivate Microsoft Office. (Two minutes)
  • I had to partially rewrite my Carbon Copy Cloner backup scripts. (Two minutes)
  • I had to update to OS X 10.10.5 (Fifteen minutes)
  • I had to reinstall Undercover and delete my old MacBook Pro from the Undercover portal. (Five minutes)

At this point I was up and running on my new MacBook Pro. Once I checked out everything to make sure I was in good shape, I then had to erase and reinstall OS X on my old MacBook Pro. Here’s what I need to do on that front:

  1. I signed out of iCloud and deleted my iCloud related data.
  2. I then de-authorized my computer in iTunes.
  3. I booted the old MacBook Pro while holding the Option and “R” keys. That boots me to the Recovery Volume.
  4. I then used Disk Utility to reformat the hard drive so that it erased everything.
  5. From there, I used the OS X installer to install OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite. As part of this, I got my wife to enter her iCloud username and password.

After 45 minutes, I had a fresh install of OS X Yosemite. Now I could move on to my wife’s Mac Mini. I followed the 9 step process above and it didn’t quite work. When I got to step 6, the Migration Assistant hung up at the end of the process. It sat there saying “about 1 minute remaining” for 20 minutes. After thinking about what to do next, I reminded myself that the Migration Assistant was just another application. So I decided to use Command and “Q” to exit the application.

It worked!

The rest of the process unfolded as I described above, with the exception of having to update to 10.10.5 as I suspect that when reinstalling OS X on this MacBook Pro, it pulled down the latest version. I did some checks to make sure all the data was intact, which it was. I’m not 100% sure, but I’m thinking that this is a bug.

I then moved on to the “few more things” that I had to do on my MacBook Pro, but this time I had to do them on my wife’s new to her MacBook Pro. After that, the only thing that was left to do after was to let FileVault 2 do its thing. On my new MacBook Pro, this process took about an hour. But on my wife’s MacBook Pro it took 6 hours, likely because of the mechanical hard drive in it.

Something that I didn’t expect was that I had to pair my new MacBook Pro to my iPhone 6 so that it would forward text messages as I noted that it broke when I made the swap. The quick way to fix this is to turn off iMessage on the iPhone and the MacBook Pro, then turn them on. Then you follow these instructions, specifically the ones under the SMS section to pair them. Strangely, I did not have to do this on my wife’s new to her MacBook Pro.

Finally, I ran Diskwarrior on both computers to make sure the data was fine by optimizing the directory and repairing permissions as well as checking all the files. No problems were found. Then I rebuilt the mailboxes in Apple Mail to make sure that they were as efficient as possible from a space perspective and were generally healthy.

Net result, both my wife and I have upgraded to a faster (in my case) or migrated to a (in her case) MacBook Pro. I call that a win-win.

Does anyone want to buy a mid-2012 Mac Mini by chance? It’s got 8GB of RAM and a 500GB HD and comes with Yosemite. Ping me if you’re interested.

UPDATE: The Mac Mini has been sold.

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Windows 10 Reduces Your Privacy…..Here’s How To Gain It Back

Posted in Tips with tags , on August 4, 2015 by itnerd

On Windows 10’s launch day, I spoke about WiFi Sense which shares your WiFi access with others by default. That’s a serious lack of privacy. But there are other options that are just as bad as WiFi Sense and unless you made the effort to turn them off while installing Windows 10 by not using the “Express Settings” option during the installation of Microsoft’s latest OS, then you’ve given up a fair amount of privacy right out of the gate. But fear not! You can get it back if you’re willing to put in about 10 minutes of work to do it. Here’s what you need to do:

  • Go to the Settings app and click the Privacy button. Then you need to turn off everything but the SmartScreen Filter. This stops Microsoft from gathering info on how you use Windows 10 and offering you everything from tips to advertising. Plus it stops allowing Microsoft to use your usage of Windows 10 to improve the product. And if you’re wondering why I am telling you to leave the SmartScreen filter on, that is supposed to stop you from downloading malware or visiting websites known to be infecting PCs. But only if you’re using Internet Explorer, Edge, and apps from the Windows Store.
  • Next you have to stop apps from divulging your location. Inside the Privacy app, click Location and turn everything off.
  • At the bottom of the Privacy app, click Feedback. Then set the Feedback frequency to Never. What this does is stops Windows 10 from reporting back to 1 Microsoft Way every time an app crashes or anything else that might be considered to be negative happens to your computer.
  • The next thing to consider is if you want to disable Cortana or curtail what (she?) it can do. I admit that not everyone will want to turn off or limit how much Cortana is capable of. But consider that everything that you do with Cortana gets sent to the cloud which means that Microsoft is potentially collecting info. Now that’s no worse than Apple’s Siri which works exactly the same way. But if the way that Siri works bothers you, then Cortana should as well. To tweak Cortana or turn (she?) it off, hit the Start button. Type Cortana and the Start screen will be replaced by a grey search window. Click the cog icon to reveal Cortana’s settings pane. You can turn Cortana off from here or scale back what (she?) it can do.
  • The last thing is WiFi Sense. In my case, I simply turned it off as there is no logical reason why it should be on. I did that by going to the Start button and tying Wi-Fi and then clicking on Change Wi-Fi settings. In the settings app, click Manage Wi-Fi settings. You can then turn off WiFi Sense. But if you wish, you can tweak your settings to limit sharing to your Facebook, Outlook, or Skype contacts. But if I were you, just turn it off. You’ll thank me for that tip once hackers figure out how to leverage WiFi Sense for their own evil purposes.

Have you got any other Windows 10 tips? If so, please leave a comment and share what you know with all of us.

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Solving Bluetooth Problems Between Your iOS Device And Car Infotainment System

Posted in Tips with tags on June 23, 2015 by itnerd

Since getting the GTA Car Kits Pure Bluetooth Kit last week, I’ve had some intermittent problems pairing my iPhone 6 to the car kit. The core symptom is the iPhone 6 would pair, but not completely. I could make and receive phone calls via the car kit, but music would not stream. I knew that the car kit wasn’t the cause as a reboot of my iPhone would temporally fix the issue. Plus my wife’s iPhone 6 was fine. Thus it had to be my phone. Bluetooth problems in relation to car infotainment systems seem to have surfaced when iOS 8 appeared. Even though Apple acknowledged the problem and issued a fix in iOS 8.1, the problems still persist in iOS versions up to 8.3 if you do Google searches on the issue.

Now this is not new for me as I’ve been hired by car owners to dealerships to assist in pairing iOS devices to the infotainment systems in cars because for whatever reason, things go sideways with a process that should be very simple. Based on those experiences, I’ve come up with a list of things to try if you’re having problems pairing or using a iOS device in your car that consistently work for me:

  1. Confirm that the issue is not the car: The quickest way to do that is to reboot the iOS device. If it instantly pairs and works properly, then you know that the car is not responsible. Another way to do this is to turn off and on Bluetooth on the iOS device in question. But I find that the reboot option is far more effective at isolating the problem.
  2. Try forgetting the device: Once you’ve confirmed that the iOS device is the problem, try going into Settings –> Bluetooth and find the name of the infotainment system in the list. Click the “i” and then click on “Forget This Device”. That deletes the profile from your iOS device. Then simply pair it up again and see if it pairs properly.
  3. Reset the network settings: If option 2 doesn’t work, you’ll have to reset network settings. One thing that I need to warn you about is that any passwords for WiFi networks and the like will be erased and you’ll have to add them again. But the benefit of doing is that it cleans up all the network settings including Bluetooth and make some issues go away. Simply go to Settings –> General –> Reset –> Reset Network Settings and follow the prompts and wait for your iOS device to reboot. It’s also a good idea to do option 2 over again to make sure everything is cleaned up.
  4. If all else fails, do a restore of your iOS device from iTunes: This sounds like a brute force method to solve a simple problem, but I can say that this does work if all of the above options fail to work. The process is quite simple and is detailed here. The key thing to remember is that you need to back up the contents of your iOS device. The process to do that is detailed here. You’ll need to restore from that back up once the restore is complete. Budget for about an hour or more if you have a lot of data on your iPhone. The good news is that you’ll get some space freed up in the process.

In case you were wondering what worked for me in my case, I had to go to option 4 to get this problem resolved. As I type this, there have been no issues since. But I continue to monitor the situation as I fully expect the upcoming iOS 8.4 to either make this problem manifest itself again or make things better. Thus Apple may want to invest some time and effort into fixing the issue once and for all.

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World Backup Day Is 7 Days Away….. Will You Back Up Your Digital Life?

Posted in Tips with tags on March 24, 2015 by itnerd

March 31st is World Backup Day. And as I’ve said many times before, everyone who uses a computer or a smartphone should back up their data. No, ifs ands or buts. Now if you need help backing up your Mac or PC, I’ve provided a couple of links for Mac and PC for your reading pleasure. I’ll also write something up in terms of backing up iOS and Android devices as well. But please have a backup strategy for your digital life as you never know when disaster will strike.

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Watch Out For This Debit Card Phone Scam

Posted in Tips with tags on March 15, 2015 by itnerd

While I was away on business, we got a phone message on our voice mail that said that our debit card was locked and to press 1 to speak to someone to unlock it. Since it was on our voice mail, I had the opportunity to listen to it. There was no bank identified in the message. The other thing that I noted that there was no phone number captured by the call display on my phone.

A bank would identify itself and there would have been a number for the bank that I would have recognized. Since both were absent, this screams scam. I am guessing that if you press 1, there’s going to be a person on the other end of the phone looking to grab your debit card number and your PIN so that they can clone your card and steal your money. Perhaps they’ll go after other personal info as well. A Google search confirms that this is a scam that has been around for some time. My advice to you would be to ignore this scam if it hits your phone.

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