Hello from Anita

[honestone]

Hi Anita,

That's good news, and especially about SuperDuper!. For the things that Oynx does, you can actually run it from your internal disk to "operate" on your internal disk. But, doing it externally is fine.

You actually need to first repair your internal Mac partition. So, what you should actually do is:

1. Boot your Mac via the SuperDuper! backup.

2. Run Disk Utility from the backup to repair your internal "disk". I am certain you'll be able to Verify and Repair Permissions, and Verify and Repair the "disk", for your Mac partition. Not sure, though, about the Boot Camp partition.

3. After running Disk Utility, then run Onyx.

4. Re-boot from your Mac partition on the internal drive, and see how things are.

I would still download and apply the Combo Updater for OS 10.6.8, just to make sure. In fact, doing it on the "clean" Mac partition is good.

Once you are done with all that, and things are good, I'll help you with updating Office 2008. Assuming you have the "base" version", it will take 3 updates to complete that.

And, you should consider purchasing TechTool Pro. That is a good product to have in your arsenal.

On a somewhat more personal note, my wife and I will actually be in London (will be our 4th trip there) from January 2nd through January 7th (our oldest son lives and works there). We are actually leaving Seattle on December 22nd, flying to Frankfurt. Then, we'll go down to the southern German border, staying a place on a lake that also borders with Austria and Switzerland. Will stay there until the 29th, then go to Zurich (we've been there before, and it is one of my 3 favorite cities in Europe (other two are Paris (how can anyone not like Paris!), and Prague)). Will leave Zurich on January 2nd, and then arrive in London on that evening.

Don't think I'll have much free time, as besides visiting our son, will need to conduct some other, important business while we are there. We depart Heathrow on January 7th, for the flight back to Seattle.

 

[Anita Brennan]

Arthur

Thanks for the above instructions - will do all that stuff tomorrow given time. Didn't quite realise that I could un Onyx from internal disk boot but OK

Re personal note:

What a great trip you have planned. You seem very well travelled. Where in London does your son live? the city or suburbs?

Re us

Our daughter lived near London after she married, which is about 3-4 hours away by road from us in the NW UK. We found the journey arduous during family /baby critical times. Now that they are in Minnesota,, we long to have those times back

These days (we have been there sometimes 3 times a year) we find the extreme cold in Minnesota more than we can cope with, so we do not go there in the winter. We will be with our family in May/June next year. We do find it very hard not to be with them for Christmas.

We are also hoping to cram in a trip to Germany / Bavaria next year in our (very old but sound) camper van . A lot of coincidences here lol!

I can't tell you how grateful I am for all your help. In the "olden days" I was very MS proficient. My ex son-in- law - a somewhat computer buff (seriously) insisted I swop to AppleMac. Because he supported me, I never became responsible for my machine - therefore my present situation. (He would help but I don't feel I should ask) . Although I resisted the change, my Mac has never let me down but I am aware that things are not right. I know that it is getting old, but frankly, these days , I would not be able to replace its like.

I feel now that, thanks to you, I am getting to grips with the things which will help me to keep it on the road Think I have run out of space lol - Anita

 

[honestone]

Hi Anita,

Thanks for the kind words. I believe my son is located in the south part of London. His address is:

49a Upper Park Road
London
NW3 5SJ

That's about the best I can do regarding London geography!

Yes, my wife and I have done quite a bit of traveling, especially since 2005. In fact, in March-April 2006, we went to China (Hong Kong and the main land). We were there for 10 days, and it was fascinating! The Great Wall is definitely awesome, and it's easy to see why it is one of the wonders of the world. And, authentic Chinese food is the best! If I stayed there, my stomach would be like a balloon!

It's interesting that you mention Minnesota. Myself, I have never been there, but have been in Nebraska and Illinois, I can certain understand why you don't travel there in the winter months. On another vein, have you seen the Movie Fargo, or for that matter the excellent TV series Fargo? They both take place in Minnesota, and the TV series was on TV (both American and British) just the past late April through mid June. In the TV series, Martin Freeman, an excellent British actor, plays the villainous part similar to the part William Macy played in the movie. What amazed me was how well (and perfect) Martin Freeman spoke with the Minnesota accent. One would never know that he is British. (There is a possibility that I could meet him while we are in London, as my son's soon-to-be business partner knows a restaurant in London that Freeman frequents. That would be cool!)

Man, some of stuff he pulls off in the series is amazing. Additionally, his character, Lester Nygaard and I have another connection. Without ruining things too badly, Lester marries an Asian woman (Korean) that works in the same Insurance agency that he works at. Well, my wife is Korean! So, if I met him, I would certainly mention that!

In any event, if you have not seen the series, watch it! You also might want to ask your daughter about it.

Good luck with the tasks you will be taking on tomorrow. Just work patiently, and it will come out fine.

 

[Anita Brennan]

Hi Arthur

How wonderful to have visited China. Re Chinese food - my daughter complains about not being able to get Chinese food in her area (Minneapolis/St Paul) and any that there is, is not good. In the UK, we have lots of Chinese Restaurants and it is mostly very good/authentic.

Do you go to China Town when you visit London? It is great fun and the food is, I believe, mostly the real thing. I suppose visiting China is the only way of knowing, but we do have a lot of Chinese communities here. We also have a China Town in our nearest city (Liverpool).

We haven't seen Fargo but I remember the film being out. I believe the series will be re-released here in 2015 so I will look out for it

Update so far:

I have carried out the four suggestion from thread 17 Nov and I have also updated with the Combo

I can see a number of fixes of things that worried me. I have also got rid of a lot of stuff which I didn't use. The machine seems to be handling better (it does get very hot though!)

Safari is still broke (very) and I think I will just remove it as I have got use to Chrome (which I also use on my tablet)

I have looked at TechTool Pro and I don't understand what it does. I am also worried about the bad reviews. I would like to leave that for the moment until I am more confident with what I am doing.

I have a lot more things to do, including sorting out my MS partition but I will leave that till I am done with the Mac Partition.

Do you think I should now move on to a new OS? If so, which one. I am a bit scared of Yosemite as it looks different. What about Lion or Mavericks? What to you think?

Regards

Anita xx

 

[honestone]

Hi Anita,

I think it is best we carry on personal "discussions" off the forum. So, here is an alternate EMail address that you can "write to":

(e-mail address removed)

Once you send me an EMail to that address, I'll provide you with my "real" one. We can then correspond on personal matters off the board.

Glad to hear that quite a few of your problems are getting resolved. Perplexing, though, why Safari is still giving you problems. I'm going to assume that except for Safari, your Mac partition is behaving fine.

Regarding TechTool Pro, I have actually never read many reviews about it (bad or good). I just know from years of using it that it does quite a number of useful things, especially for disk maintenance/repairs, and it has always kept all of my Macs that I have used it on running in "tip top"shape (also with the assistance of Onyx). I do keep my Macs as "lean and clean" as possible, even between my weekly maintenance/backup routine. Part of that involves cleaning off unneeded "stuff" as soon as possible. I also keep all of the software I use up to date. One of the best sites that one can use for this is www.macupdate.com. I would recommend looking at that site once a day, to see if there are any software updates that would apply to you. If I see an update to a program that I use, I download it right away, install it, and depending on the program, will then immediately delete a "prior" version.

There is another, excellent Disk Repair program called Disk Warrior. In fact, it has been known to do some things that even TechTool Pro can't do! I have it also, but the program does not have as many additional features that TechTool Pro has. Also, I can run TechTool Pro, via its' eDrive, from the Mac partition that I am doing maintenance on. For Disk Warrior, I have to re-start from my latest SuperDuper! backup and then run Disk Warrior. That's OK, but it is somewhat slower, and certainly not as convenient.

There is one feature of TechTool Pro that can be a substantial benefit. I suspect you have a "normal" hard disk inside your Mac, and not an SSD. One of the useful things TechTool Pro offers is optimizing your drive, both at the Volume and File "levels". (For SSDs, Volume optimization does not apply, but I still run the File Optimization feature of TechTool Pro on the SSDs I have in each of my machines). Often times, optimizing will help the machine to run "smoother" and faster. Not sure if it will help with the issues you are having with Microsoft Word, but it certainly can't hurt. (I suspect such an optimization has not been done. It could be what the doctor ordered!).

In any event, the next thing you need to do is to update your Office 2008 software. To proceed with this, I will need to know the version that you are using. Perhaps the easiest (and sounds like most reliable) way to do that is to launch Excel, and after it loads, go to the menu item entitled Excel, click on it, then moved the mouse pointer to where it says "About Excel", and click the mouse. Near the top of the next screen, you should see the version number. For example, when I do that, here is what it says:

"Microsoft Excel for Mac 2011
Version 14.4.6 (141106)
Latest Installed Update: 14.4.6"

You should see something similar.

Let me know the version number, and then I can point you to the updates you need.

 

[Anita Brennan]

Hi Arthur

You are quite right, we should not be chatting personally on the forum. However, although we do have a lot in common and a lot to say, I do not feel comfortable disclosing my email. I am sure you are perfectly respectable (as I am myself) but neither of us really know - e.g I could be a male and your local housebreaker waiting for you to go to London Lol!

I am grateful for your help

Anita

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Hi Arthur

You are quite right, we should not be chatting personally on the forum.

Anita & Arthur, please feel free to continue chatting personally, in the Off-Topic Lounge!

https://www.mac-help.com/forums/off-topic-lounge.15/

 

[honestone]

Anita & Arthur, please feel free to continue chatting personally, in the Off-Topic Lounge!

https://www.mac-help.com/forums/off-topic-lounge.15/

Thanks, Spawn_Dooley. For now, I'll just leave things as they are.

Anita,

Let me know the version of Office 2008 you are using, so we can get that update going.

 

[honestone]

Hi Arthur

You are quite right, we should not be chatting personally on the forum. However, although we do have a lot in common and a lot to say, I do not feel comfortable disclosing my email. I am sure you are perfectly respectable (as I am myself) but neither of us really know - e.g I could be a male and your local housebreaker waiting for you to go to London Lol!

I am grateful for your help

Anita

Understand. The EMail address I provided is, as I mentioned, not my real one.

 

[th31mm0rt0l]

I recommend updating to OSX Yosemite!

 

[Anita Brennan]

Hi there

Thanks for your input. I have had lots of support from Apple recently and they say that Yosemite will slow down my Mac and that I should stick with Snow Leopard. This is because of the 2 gig capacity of my 2009 Mac Pro. 3 gig would cope with Mavericks however. I think I will still stick with SN

Appreciate your intput