12-03-2009, 01:21 PM

I bought a MBP 13 (first Mac the specs - 2.26 GHz 4GB RAM 500GB HDD SL 10.6.2) a few weeks ago and for the most part it's been great but there are a couple niggling issues that I'd like help with.

1- I have an admin account and a standard account, the standard account I use for everyday stuff, occasionally when trying to login even though I enter the correct password, it takes a few seconds before telling me to enter it again.

Now i've noticed that if I enter a wrong password it will shake and immediately tell me wrong password but it's a little frustrating knowing that I have entered the correct password and I still can't login. Usually I just delete the user name and password and type them again and I can login in just fine.

So is that normal?

2 - Every few days (3-5) in folders where I have several other folders and it requires scrolling, the actual action of scrolling in that folder is laggy and jumps rather than scrolling smoothly.

My solution has been to run Onyx once a week and restart Finder.

Any thing I can do for this or is it something I need to just deal with?

3 - When installing an app from my standard account, in the application switcher on the dock the icon looks like white block with the A on it, not at like how i should be. Restarting the dock doesn't help and my only solution has been to drag the app onto the desktop then into the Applications folder. This doesn't happen in the Admin account.

Is this normal for a standard account?

4 - If I try to copy a large folder from the laptop to an external drive 75% into the process it tell me "they is a copy of "x" folder on the drive already". This isn't possible since it's usually a folder within that large folder so how can it exist already if I am now copying it to an external?

Sorry for the very long first post but as much as I really like the computer these problems really bother me, any help I can get with any or all of them would really be appreciated.

12-03-2009, 03:26 PM

G'day sonny and welcome to the forums.

When you got the machine, did the system install discs come with it and have you erased, formatted, and done a clean install of the system software? It is absolutely vital you got those discs as they are by far the best troubleshooters about.

Also boot from the install disc one and run Apple Hardware Test and if no joy, again boot from disc go to Utilities in the menu bar, Disk Utility and run Repair Disc from there.

Keep us posrted.

12-03-2009, 03:38 PM

I did get the install disks when I bought the computer but I didn't do a clean install or anything like that, SL was already installed when I bought it.

I did do a repair permissions and everything seemed fine but these little issues are a bother.

So you recommend I do a clean install?

Sorry a disk repair not clean install!

12-03-2009, 03:43 PM

Try a disk repair and if no better a format of the drive and a clean install. Assuming the machine was used/refurbished it is always wise to do a clean install as who knows what applications had been installed, and only partially removed. Also if you do a fresh install update to X.6.2 using the combo updater from Apple rather than Software Update in the menu bar/System Preferences. Here is the link:-

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL959

12-03-2009, 03:45 PM

Well the computer is new, sorry i didn't clarify that, it's a new computer.

12-03-2009, 04:15 PM

Originally Posted by sonnyf

I bought a MBP 13 (first Mac the specs - 2.26 GHz 4GB RAM 500GB HDD SL 10.6.2) a few weeks ago and for the most part it's been great but there are a couple niggling issues that I'd like help with.

1- I have an admin account and a standard account, the standard account I use for everyday stuff, occasionally when trying to login even though I enter the correct password, it takes a few seconds before telling me to enter it again.

Now i've noticed that if I enter a wrong password it will shake and immediately tell me wrong password but it's a little frustrating knowing that I have entered the correct password and I still can't login. Usually I just delete the user name and password and type them again and I can login in just fine.

So is that normal?

Why keep two separate accounts? An administrator account on a UNIX-based OS doesn't really exist. Any changes you make to something outside of the scope of your home folder require privilege escalation before you can do so. Although this might be a good approach to use with Windows where the UAC feature is weak at best, it's not necessary on OS X.

As far as entering the password goes - do you happen to use the Caps Lock key when you're typing capital letters, or do you use shift?

2 - Every few days (3-5) in folders where I have several other folders and it requires scrolling, the actual action of scrolling in that folder is laggy and jumps rather than scrolling smoothly.

Where is the folder stored? On the internal HDD?

My solution has been to run Onyx once a week and restart Finder.

That's doing you more harm than good. Onyx shouldn't need to be used more than once a quarter on a very heavily used machine.

3 - When installing an app from my standard account, in the application switcher on the dock the icon looks like white block with the A on it, not at like how i should be. Restarting the dock doesn't help and my only solution has been to drag the app onto the desktop then into the Applications folder. This doesn't happen in the Admin account.

Is this normal for a standard account?

It depends on how the application was installed. It sounds like these particular applications needed to make modifications to folders they didn't have access to.

4 - If I try to copy a large folder from the laptop to an external drive 75% into the process it tell me "they is a copy of "x" folder on the drive already". This isn't possible since it's usually a folder within that large folder so how can it exist already if I am now copying it to an external?

Sorry for the very long first post but as much as I really like the computer these problems really bother me, any help I can get with any or all of them would really be appreciated.

How do you copy the files? Copy/Paste, or do you drag and drop? What filesystem does the external drive use?

12-03-2009, 04:30 PM

1 - OK when I first got I the computer my friends made the recommendation that I keep two separate accounts and I checked around on some other forums and that seemed to be the consensus for a new user so I went with that.

If that isn't necessary then can i merge the files from the standard account to the admin account?

I don't use the caps lock, I use shift.

2 - Yes the folder is on the internal hard drive. It's mainly books so there are a lot of folders within folders but I don't think that should be much of an issue...

3 - Usually when installing an app I would drag it to the Apps folder, that requires the admin password from the standard account.

4 - The external is FAT32 and just drag and drop, then copy and paste the remaining items that didn't copy over initially.

12-03-2009, 04:39 PM

Originally Posted by sonnyf

1 - OK when I first got I the computer my friends made the recommendation that I keep two separate accounts and I checked around on some other forums and that seemed to be the consensus for a new user so I went with that.

If that isn't necessary then can i merge the files from the standard account to the admin account?

Yes. Log into the admin account and then open the standard account from the users folder. Drag and drop everything from that account over to the admin account and then delete it from System Preferences => Accounts.

I don't use the caps lock, I use shift.

OK. The reason I ask is because OS X has a delay to prevent unintended caps lock key presses. I've seen a lot of users use the caps lock when entering passwords intentionally to avoid using shift and this could potentially lead to mistakes. With that said, I'm not sure what's causing this problem.

2 - Yes the folder is on the internal hard drive. It's mainly books so there are a lot of folders within folders but I don't think that should be much of an issue...

This might be a side-effect of using Onyx too frequently. Onyx kills caches and deletes files that track the placement of folder icons and other directory information. I would stop using Onyx so often and see if the problem subsides.

3 - Usually when installing an app I would drag it to the Apps folder, that requires the admin password from the standard account.

This may be made moot when you start using your admin account, but even still, I'm going to guess that it has to do with the limited rights of the standard account as it relates to the global Applications folder.

4 - The external is FAT32 and just drag and drop, then copy and paste the remaining items that didn't copy over initially.

I've seen some flakey behavior transferring files that FAT32 can't handle (for example files that are greater than or equal to 4GB in size). I've also seen this happen on partitions greater than 32GB in size, which is Microsoft's quasi-limit for FAT32. Although FAT32 can support much larger partitions, Microsoft won't allow you to format a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB, I have to believe some of this flakiness is the reason they push NTFS so hard.

If you need Windows compatibility, I would look into Paragon's NTFS for Mac and format the drive as NTFS. Then you can non-destructively convert it to NTFS by opening a command prompt on the Windows machine and typing:

convert <driveletter> /FS:NTFS

12-03-2009, 05:05 PM

Ok tonight i'll move the files to the admin account which will solve the weird icon problem and possibly the login problem because I never had problems logging into that account - in fact all of these problems I experienced while using the standard account - onyx is out hopefully the scrolling lag will be solved by that.

As far as the external is concerned I will try it from the admin account and let you know but it was just meant to be a stop gap until I can buy another external just to backup the MBP.

harryb2448 I did try the disk repair as you said everything was fine and the combo update didn't help with the app icon issue but the login worked fine.

Thanks guys for you help!! Will let you know how it goes in a couple days.

12-05-2009, 08:17 PM

Short report, instead of moving the files to the admin account I just promoted the standard account to an administrator in system preferences and deleted the unused admin account. It's been a couple days and everything is working better except for the copying to the external issue.

I got a new error message when trying to copy "The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in "X" can't be read or written. (Error code -36)"

I ran a search and came across this thread at the Apple Discussion forum:
Apple - Support - Discussions - Finder Error code -36 ...

As was mentioned I have a FAT formatted drive and did notice that the only folders having problems were those that I had created on a PC. As an experiment I put individual files that would not copy into a folder I created on the Mac and it copied just fine. So I don't think that this problem can't be helped right now.

Thanks to everybody again for the help and suggestions!