Sorry to hear that.
I tried the brightness and it also turned off the apple logo, so i hoped that it was the problem.
Do you still have the discs which shipped with the computer?.. try to put the install disk in and start holding the Alt key..
Failing that, I will have to hope someone else has some ideas..

good luck...

Smallfry
No apologies needed, you have been very helpful. Your post led me to a Mac troubleshooting site, but still no luck.

It definitely seems to be the DVD that is whirring away. I get no start up chime and no screen visuals at all, just black screen.

I do know that the battery is buggered, it holds its charge for maybe 20 mins, so I normally just use the macbook with the power lead connected. There is power going to the computer, even without the external connected. Battery underneath is showing 4 lights, so I guess 75-80%.

edit
sorry meant to say, there is a disk (dvd movie) in the drive and I cannot eject it, so can't try anything with original disks etc.

Gentleman Jim

Is there a pinhole in the front of the DVD player? You should be able to shove in a (straightened) paperclip (with the power off) to open the tray.

SD

You could try starting up holding down the mouse/trackpad button. This should eject a disk on startup if there aren't any other problems. I've had this once where it didn't work, but it turned out that Applemacster Nº1 Son had managed to put two DVDs in the MacBook's drive...

Applemacster

Remove the battery and power lead then hold down the power button for more than five seconds. Then replace the battery and power lead and try starting. This will reset the power management settings back to default - they may have some how got corrupted.

If this does not work try switching on whilst holding down CMD, ALT, P and R. Do not release these keys until you have heard the chime noise a second time then allow it to restart normally. This will reset any corrupted display setting etc. that might be preventing a normal start up.

Hope one of these fixes your problem.

As stated by a previous poster switching on whilst holding the track pad button down should cause the DVD drive to eject after a few seconds - do not release the button until the drive actually ejects. This is probably not your problem though (unless the DVD in the drive is a recognised start up disk).

I had a very similar problem with the screen which turned out to be a lead problem requiring a new screen (under warranty). It was possible to see very faintly items on the screen but no brightness was possible. If you have the facility to plug in an external monitor you may be able to check this.:ok:

BusyB

I tired plugging in to my projector, to check that, but no joy. The problem is at the moment I am nowhere near an Apple repair centre.


Gentleman Jim

Try a bit of cardboard - see here.

Quick Mac question - Blu-ray
 

Guys and gals, I can't seem to find the answer anywhere on the Apple website. Can I play Blu-rays on the newer iMacs?

No, Mac does not support BluRay because of disagreements concerning licensing issues.

Oh poo.....

Thanks for the heads up.

Steve Jobs described it thus:


So, never say "never". I think the Apple aim is to download HD movies via iTunes, cutting out the middleman of physical media altogether.

Applemacster

Gents,

After 10 years of PC, I've been persuaded that Mac is the way ahead by legions of colleagues and friends. I propose imminently to get a 21.5" iMac for all the usual purposes. As ever, the start is the most confusing, so I would be grateful for basic advice on the following points for Day 1! (I have read as much of this thread as I have time for):

Any need for antivirus yet?
The best way to transfer 20Gb of iTunes music from PC to Mac (it is backed up on a 30G iPod)
Office for Mac or Open Office or iWork for docs/WP etc.
Any need to tweak my Netgear DG834Gv3 to operate the iMac wirelessly?
Likewise the Canon Pixma MP520 Printer which is wired to the main household PC(which will stay)?

Many thanks
mcdhu

mcdhu,

Welcome to Macintosh! :ok:

No. It invariably makes the computer slower and is *totally* unecessary.


Migrate iTunes from PC to Mac

For maximum compatibility, Office is the best choice, if you are exchanging a lot of work between PCs and your Mac. OpenOffice is free and does a really good job, but it still has a slightly "weird" feel to the user interface. iWork is the easiest to use with your Mac, giving very professional-looking results with the least effort. "Keynote" presentations are far, far easier than using Powerpoint (and look better imho), and adding pictures and other media to your documents simpler than in Office. You get a trial of iWork included with your iMac, so you can try it out and see if fulfils your needs.

No. It's the same as mine. Works great. Due to being on O2, who changed the way their servers allocate IPs, I had to put some non-Netgear firmware on the router so that it didn't drop the connection all the time. It was an O2 thing, not a Mac issue, though.

The driver for your printer is included in the Mac OS 10.6 (which will be pre-installed on your iMac). It should work fine, both printing and scanning. You may have to check that the PC to which the printer is attached is set up to share the printer.
Canon Printer Drivers in Mac OS 10.6

Applemacster

As an addendum, I'd propose you get the LARGEST iMac you can afford and / or fit on your desk and read comfortably. The resulting screen area is gorgeous.

I have seen problems (admittedly with MacBooks - the small plasticy white ones) with a specific model of Netgear wireless access point - the laptop crashes needing a reboot, but no problems on plenty of Macbook Pro living in the office. You shouldn't have problems but this was a bugger to track down.

Also, spend some money on, or reuse an existing, USB hard disk as the "Time Machine Backup" - automated easy to use backup and restore.

Thank you both AppleMacster and The Nr Fairy for the advice. I've had the tape measure out to see if a 27" would fit on the desk!!! Tight, but as one's eyesight fails perhaps there is merit in it!!

mcdhu

I would most certainly endorse that.

I have a 24" IMac and it's simply stunning.

Also, if you need to run Windows programs then Parallels 5 makes Windows on the mac better than the native Windows in my opinion.

I'm convinced!! Hopefully off to order tomorrow!!

mcdhu

Hope you have fun !

Bear in mind that it works differently, not better / worse than Windows / Linux, but differently.

Keep that in mind and the initial frustrations will soon become trivial.

Time Machine Question
 

I have a 3 year old MBP 17" which I want to swap for the latest model.

Does anyone know if I restore from Timemachine backups whether my Parallels 5 + WINDOWS + MS Office applications will be restored perfectly? What about the Mac MS Office programs?

Thanks.

BF

Two schools of thought here. First is to reinstall everything from scratch on the new laptop and migrate only the data across.

Second is to use the Migration Assistant. Worked for me with a whole bunch of software including VMware and some more esoteric stuff.

Yep, worked perfectly for me.

But you have to boot from the Mac OSX disks that came with the machine, I'm assuming you were using Mac OSX 10.6 before.
Then select utilities when the system disks boot up on your new machine.
Then select RESTORE from there.
I do that between my IMac 24 and my MacBook Pro whenever there's a big change between the two (happens when I go away).

Time machine has saved me months of time and both my computers are absolutely synched.
If you use the method above your Windows programs carry on as if nothing happened.:ok:

Time Machine
 

Thanks Nr Fairy and ZEEBEE.

Timemachine is a godsend indeed!

i-keptthereceipt
 

Seems all is not well with the ipad...

iPad launch marred by technical glitches - Times Online

Not anti Apple in particular, although I do think their gear is horrendously overpriced, but it does add weight to the argument that being an early adopter is a risky thing to do...

Yup. When I worked in the IT world, our CIO was very keen not to be on the bleeding edge. His head of development loved the bleeding edge, but loved his bonus even more.

On the pricing issue, Apple i-whatevers seem to have created a new "aspirational pricing ceiling", to which all the other bl**dy manufacturers aspire. Top-end Nokias used to be not too far over UKP100, now they are up there with bl**dy Apple.

They've also learnt from Mont Blanc, and trips to Sin and Hkg don't yield much cheaper prices, unless one is happy with the knock-offs.

Apple are losing it...
 

I've had a Mac Book for some time and have almost stopped using it. I've come to find Windows 7 just easier to use, especially when dealing with a lot of file operations. OSX has always had, and still has, all kinds of annoying bugs and one that gets me often is it's habit of barfing over a single file in a large copy or move operation then ditching the entire process. Have to drop to a terminal prompt! Safari is simply a dog in most respects and iTunes is a terrible piece of software IMHO.

Then Mrs T got an iPhone. Seems to be riddled with bugs also (it's a 3G 2.2 firmware). In three days of usage:

• The email inbox has screwed up showing just a black screen with none of the buttons operational - needs a soft reset
• The SIM contact import simply doesn't work - it says "importing" for about 2 seconds then stops with no message or feedback and no contacts copied from the SIM
• Auto-redirect on web pages doesn't work at all
• Safari has crashed several times
• On O2, have had to switch to Edge and back to 3G once to get HSPDA

My next phone will probably be HTC running Android and I won't be hurrying to spend a lot of pennies on another Mac PC....

To expand on the horrendously overpriced hardware topic, I'm mulling over buying Snow Leopard to run on a standard PC. I have seen many conflicting statements on the legality of this but the majority concur that it's verboten.

Can anyone comment authoritatively? If I buy a full retail copy of Snow Leopard, can I run it on my own hardware?

Thanks for any insights.

Help please chaps.

Got the nice new iMac sitting on the desk here so I thought I'd set about transferring all the iTunes music so put all 20Gbs on a big 30Gb iPod from the Windows PC iTunes and had a look at iTunes on the Mac expecting the library to be blank. Yup, you 'Macficionados' will already know - it was already there!! How did it do that?

The setup is the Win Xp SP3 PC hard wired to a Netgear Wireless Modem Router with all the family iTunes music on it (circa 20GBs)

The iMac has connected to the wireless network. PC and Mac on iTunes 9.1.
The Mac has the library but not the playlists. Is there any way I can 'import' the playlist structure to save me redoing them on the mac. Home sharing?

Any help is gratefully received.

Cheers
mcdhu

You can run it - I loaded Snow Leopard onto a Dell Mini for travel - But by doing so you violate the End User Licence Agreement (EULA), which everyone installing Leopard is supposed to read and accept, says:

"This Licence allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so."

I actually have an Apple logo sticker on the Dell - although I'm not sure that this is what Apple had in mind when they talk about an 'Apple-labeled computer' ;)

Jet II, thanks for the definitive reply.

MAC Excel
 

Just got myself a Macbook air. I have office mac 2008 installed. My logbook is a excel spreadsheet, which is now converted to an xls.x file. The file can't be opened on a windows based pc now. Anyone with any idea how the file can be reconverted to a xls file for windows to open. thanks in advance

Either update your PC Excel, or save your Excel files in .xls format: the same will apply to Word docs and Powerpoint. Office:Mac will default to the .xlsx, .docx and .pptx file format.

Go to Preferences for each programme, 'Save' tab, then change the preferred "Save .... files as" to the 97-2004 option.

Resave your logbook file and it should now be in .xls format.

Microsoft has a compatibility pack that will let older versions of Office open the new file formats. Google will find it: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack

Mac Software
 

None of my airbus CBT discs work on the Mac. I don't know what language the discs are written in.

My only option at this stage is to make the mac a dual boot system. Are there any better ideas out there?. Thanks in advance.

Aspen 20,

You could try using Crossover. It may or may not work. However, there's a free trial before you buy it, so give it a go and see what happens. It lets you run Windows applications without having to install Windows. A cleaner, leaner way of running Windows applications.

Applemacster

Aspen20

It may or may not work with CrossOver (probably not).

However, I'll take a bet and say that it will definitely work with Parallels5
You can download a fully working trial copy and run it for a month. I believe they have a special going at the moment for about $69.

For what it does, it represents awesome value. Lets you run any of the Windows OS's and in many cases gives you more control over the Win programs than a native Windows installation.

I try to use the Mac OS for as much as is possible, but when I have to soil my hands with Win32 software (as is inevitable) then Parallels5 makes it do-able.
There's no doubt that there must be some programs that won't run under it (Geosoft Montaj V7 is supposed not to, but I have found a way to do it and it's not difficult) but there's often a solution even then.

I use Parallels to run my CBT programs - works like a charm :ok:

Parallels requires a true-blue copy of Windows which it runs in a virtual machine on the Mac.

CrossOver does NOT require a copy of Windows but seeks to emulate the Windows environment that programs expect.

They are thus very different animals.

Parallels will pretty much run any Windows program (as expected)

CrossOver (and Wine) is getting better and better, and a lot of Windows programs will run under it, some more successfully than others.

But MS keeps moving their proprietary goalposts so CrossOver/Wine will always be a few steps behind in terms of compatibility.

Mac

:ok:

I think here is a case of serious finger trouble. Parallels 5 seems to be loaded. Cant find the cd rom with the CBT disc in. Other times I get the following message. Can't open 16 bit programme. I have windows 7 installed

Aspen

It's possible that the CDRom drive isn't allocated to your virtual machine.

You should select "Devices" from the parallels menu and ensure that the CDROM is ticked.

Also, if you haven't done so, please ensure that Guest Services are installed under your virtual machine.

It provides a much greater access to the system resources than those without.

Good luck...Z