Sleep spasms of the macbook

Technology is so fragile and precise like clockwork, that the slightest alteration can make everything go haywire.

For some time now, I had the pleasure of trying to diagnose a macbook that would never fall to sleep, or really not wake up either. It was some times impossible to shut down, and once in a blue moon just as hard to start up. Furthermore the cd drive would make weird noises, and the computer in general seemed to be growling. Very odd behavior from a machine.

The great thing about computers is that there is ALWAYS a perfect reason for even the oddest symptoms. In this case I through much research found out, that the USB constantly felt like someone or something unplugged something. Or maybe even plugged something in. In any case, that normally causes the mac to wake up. Or halt whatever it is doing. Which was probably why the whole experience felt a little like driving in heavy rain, on an ice surface buttered up with grease.

By restarting and holding down the apple and s key, the problem became apparent. The computer kept repeating this line:

"IOUSBFamily could not enumerate a device."

I whipped out my screwdriver set and took off the top case, disabled the cd drive and behold: No more growling, or misbehavior.

a macbook with no cover

You can always judge a good cook, from the meals he makes for himself. A gourmet cook probably lives off fries and fast food. The mechanic that is highly regarded for his unique skills, drives around in a converted old worn out VW. And I, as a mac doctor, have the crappiest old Macbook that I've taken apart one too many times. Literally.

The fan was driving me nuts, as it had become misaligned and was emitting the sound of an old single engine airplane getting ready to take off. I cranked open the hood while I was working on the computer, to try to realign it so the horrible noise would seize. But that didn't work. What it DID do though, was that the connector cable between the keyboard and the physical computer snapped in half, rendering my keyboard and trackpad completely unusable.

Sigh. The death of my trusty old Macbook had long been underway. Just really had hoped that the day, wouldn't have been today. I had shut the computer off, before I realized what the problem was. And was now unable to turn it on again. Crap.



Well, fear not. If you ever get in this situation, it is certainly rectifiable. By using a flathead screwdriver and inserting it into the connector that used to be for the keyboard, I was able to simulate the short circuit that the power button is normally responsible for thus bringing my mac back to life.

For now I have to live with an external keyboard, and wait until I receive a new top cover for my mac. Those cost around 139 dollars.

Time travel is wee bit difficult...

I like to start all my articles differently, but basically I'm just keeping this blog for my own purposes so I will remember how I finally fixed something. If you who are reading get something out of it too, then I'm only glad to have helped.

In this case, I had a client who had purchased the Time Capsule in the belief that it would help him backup. But that was hardly the case, as it hasn't really worked for at least a year now. Or something in that order. The problem wasn't that it wasn't working, it was just working exacerbatingly slow. Like it would take days, just to copy a few megabytes. And when you have 80 gigabytes to go, it can be a patience test to endure.

Up until now it has been postponed again and again. But finally this week, I got around to trying to figure out what was wrong. To sum it up, the result was that it now works pretty fast, and reliably. But there was a lot of trial and error to get there.

So without further ado, these are the settings that I found to be working best.

1. Make sure that if you have an airport network with more units than the time capsule, that they are ALL compatible with 802.11n.

2. Make sure that the other devices are NOT extending the range of the network. This can be checked off in a checkbox under wireless, in the apple airport setup utility, under the specific airport base.

3. Make sure that the MultiCast rate is set as high as possible. In a nut shell: Higher multicast rate, means higher speed, but less range.

4. Check mark "Interference Robustness" on the internet connected, or first, airport base station.

With those settings I was able to get a pretty good throughput. My test file was 4.5 GB and would take 15 minutes to copy over to the mounted Time Capsule drive.