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BREAKING THE CHAIN

Fixing Keychain issues
What is Keychain & how it works?
The Keychain consolidates various passwords and passphrases in one place and makes them accessible through a master password or passphrase. When an application (including the Finder) needs to access a password stored in the Keychain, the application asks you to unlock the Keychain if it is not already open. However there are certain settings in Keychain application which, when done, system will not prompt you for password & log you in straight away.

Keychain Access & Keychain Minder
These are two contributors to Keychain, of which Keychain Access being the main controlling system and Keychain Minder is used just to change the Keychain master password, specially in the case when you don't remember the old one.

Changing the password with Keychain Access

• Go to Applications (Command+Shift+A) and Open Utilities.
• Locate Keychain Access & open it.
• Click on Edit and select Change Password for Keychain.

• This will open a new window, prompting you to enter the old password & new one following its confirmation.

Once you key-in the correct details, you are all set to go with your new password.

Changing the password with Keychain Minder:

• Go to Applications (Command+Shift+A) and Open Utilities.
• Locate Keychain Minder & open it, once done, you will get a window like this:

Now key-in the old password followed by the new one then click on change, and that's done.

PLAYING WITH KEYCHAIN:
Well, the article above might be quite good for you, but it won't help the users who have lost their old passwords. If you are a corporate user, then you might be entering the password only in a couple of months and there is more tendency to forget your old password.

IN CASE YOU DON'T REMEMBER THE PASSWORD: There are few tweaks that you can use to unlock keychain even when you don't remember your passwords.

1. Go to Keychain minder and just enter you new password & click on "New Keychain" this will create a new keychain and old ones will be inactive from here onwards.

Unable to open Keychain Minder: Sometimes it might happen that you won't be able to open Keychain Minder, it will flash once & disappear. In such instance, open Keychain Access, go to File and select "Lock Keychain Login". Once done then try to open Keychain Minder & it will open up. Now you can enter your new password & your Mac is ready to take off.

Steps to follow when Keychain Minder is not coming up.

STAYING AWAY FROM WEB OF KEYCHAIN: Being a simple user if you want to stay away from the complexities of keychain, you could do by following the below mentioned step. Its just a matter of two clicks:

• Go to Keychain Access.
• Under preferences select First Aid.
• Now select Synchonize login keychain password with account & Keep login keychain unlocked.

Recommended by www.Apple.com

This is the screen where you will get those two options that you need to check on.

LOST ALL THE KEYS IN KEYCHAIN: If your time is bad, the keychain in your Mac machine may forget all the keys store in the keychain and if this is the case, we can solve it easily, here is the sequence that you need to follow:

• Go to your home folder & find the Library folder.
• Now drag the Keychains folder to the trash.
• Restart the computer and a new keychain will be created using your current system password.

These steps will positively fix this issue.

IS THERE STILL SOMETHING LEFT UNRESOLVED? Ok, click on this link, and let apple website do the job. This will help you to download a new keychain & get your keychain fresh and active.

HOW TO LOGIN AS SINGLE USER OR VERBOSE MODE?

For all OSX & OSX Servers

Starting a Mac machine in Verbose or Single user mode is generally user for troubleshooting and Software Development. I am publishing a seperate article on this because in many of the troubeshooting steps that I have asked you to start your Mac in Verbose mode or single user mode in my last articles.

Process to start in these modes:

1. You need to shut down the machine, for new users I would like to add that you if in case you need to do a hard reboot of your machine, please keep the power button pressed for more that six seconds, reason being Mac goes in sleep mode if you press the power button for 3 seconds and you will never know if your Mac is completely turned off is just sleeping.
2. After starting the machine, press Apple key and one of the v/s keys in combination. Here 'v' will take you to Verbose mode and 's' will take you to Single user mode.

To Exit from Verbose and Single user mode: You need to type reboot while exiting from Single user mode but if you are in verbose mode all you need is to reboot the machine & it will exit and restart in normal mode.

When you login to Single user mode, the layout of your keyboard will be American English.

If Firmware Password Protection is enable by administrator or owner of the computer, you won't be able to login to Verbose mode.

WHEN YOUR MAC IS NOT TURNING UP

PROBLEM IN TURNING THE MACHINE UP (for 10.3 and older only)
The worst thing you could ever experience in a computer is not turning up. No matter how many times you do a hard boot but the result is same. If the machine is Mac, there could be variations in error notification. Most of the time it is a simple issue that you could fix after going through this article.

IDENTIFYING THE SYMPTOMS

• There can be empty blue screen with a spinning wheel (the progress indicator in Mac).
• A "Prohibitory sign" appears or "Kernel panic error" is mentioned on the screen.
• Blank gray screen without any text could appear.
• No notification, but machine doesn't turns up.

There can be empty blue screen with a spinning wheel (the progress indicator in Mac).

I am mentioning 5 simple steps that you can try and hope it will work for you, but if in any case it doesn't works then try the last few steps that are slightly critical but I know you will easily do it because you can't sit back and wait with a quite expensive Mac machine.

Solution One: This could happen when you have upgraded form OS 9 to OS X as the later reviews the font in the former system. Damage in OS 9 font system might cause this to happen. So to fix this, put the OS 9 CD in the machine, drag the font folder to the desktop & restart the machine. This should fix this issue if it is caused by font disorder, but make sure you drag the folder from OS 9 otherwise the condition will still remain same.

Solution Two: This could be due to third party items lined up in your start up. To fix this, start your Mac in safe mode and then follow these steps:
a. Go to the hard drive.
b. Find there two folders /Library/StartupItems and /System/Library/StartupItems and drag the third party application out of it. If they are important, then save them in Users folder. Make sure that you don’t touch any item if you have even a little doubt that the application is pre-installed by Mac or is a third party.
c. Now lets restart with the hope that the issue will be fixed.

Solution Three: If the Login item is incompatible, then it could create this issue. Follow those five simple steps to resolve this:
a. Start in Safe mode.
b. Go to system preferences.
c. Use View menu to choose account and then select Startup items. If you have OS 10.2 select Login Items from the View menu.
d. You have to remove all the Login items.
e. Now restart the machine from Apple icon.
f. The issue will be fixed, now add the Login items one by one till you face this issue again, once you come to know which item is creating issue, you can delete it from the list.

Solution Four: A small setting in Network preferences might also cause this, it happens when you select "Connect automatically when starting TCP/IP applications". In this case, preferences file that has this setting should be deleted, if you follow this, all the settings will be reset and later on you need to configure them in order to get connect to internet or your office or home network.
Start computer in single user mode (if you want to learn about single user or verbose mode, please find in blog posted on 08.02.2009)
a. Type mount -uw /
b. Hit Return/Enter.
c. Type the following command as per your OS. For OS 10.2 type mv /var/db/SystemConfiguration/preferences.xml preferences.old For OS 10.3 to 10.3.9 type mv/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist preferences.old
d. Hit Return/Enter.
e. Type reboot
f. Hit Return/Enter.
If it still continues, follow next solution.

Solution Five: Start computer in single user OR Verbose mode (if you want to learn about single user or verbose mode, please find in blog posted on 08.02.2009)
a. Type mount -uw /
b. Hit Return/Enter
c. Now type mv /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist preferences2.old
d. Hit Return/Enter
e. Again type mv /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist preferences3.old
f. Hit Return/Enter
g. Type reboot
h. Hit Return/Enter
Remember: You have to put a space between ".plist" and "preferences".

When a "Prohibition sign" appears or "Kernel panic error" is mentioned on the screen.

Before we start, let me show you how Kernel panic error screen looks like. Phrase ofthe message could be somewhat like "Unresolved kernel trap"

Prohibitory icon looks like the picture on the right.
Prohibitory sign generally comes when a file is moved, replace, deleted or damaged. There are a small list of hardwares and softwares which, if used, can cause this to happen. The easiest solution is reinstallation of OS, but it usually is not preferable. So try these advance steps:

1. If you have moved, deleted or even renamed apple installed folder, bring them back to their orignal state with due honour. If you want, I can name some of them for you, like Applications, System or Library.
2. Even if you try to edit of modify previledges of OS X System files, it may lead to Kernel Panics.
3. As I mentioned, some of hardwares & softwares might cause this, they are (not limited to) listed here: Airport Extreme Card, PC card Modem, Matrox RTMac Card, 2D/3D Professional graphics card(128 bit), the installing driver of an application may also cause this to happen.

Blank grey screen without any text could appear.

• Go to Apple Downloads and check that you have installed the latest version of firmwares.
• Devices like ADB, serial, USB, FireWire, SCSI, and PCMCIA can create this issue, so the steps you need to follow is that disconnect al the devices once the issue gets resolved, then connect all the devices one after the other each restarting to find out which one is creating this problem.
• Sometimes third party hardware upgrades can also play with your system including, but not limited to RAM, microprocessor upgrade cards, PCI cards etc. Follow the previous steps to fix this.
• If you can, then reset your computer's Power management unit. This should fix the issue.
  

No notification, but machine doesn't turns up.

In order to fix this, try the steps we followed for "Grey screen error".

Mac OS X Version 10.5.6 Leopard

STARTING MAC IN SAFE-MODE

For MAC OSX (Only OSX will be supported in this post)

If you need to start your Mac machine in Safe Mode (Safe Boot), please follow these steps:
1. Make sure you machine is turned off/shut down.
2. Now press the power button.
3. As soon as you hear the startup tone, press the Shift key. The Shift key should be held in a fraction of seconds, but make sure, you don't do it before the tone.
4. Leave the Shift key when you see the start up screen (gray Apple icon) and the progress indicator (in Mac it is a colored spinning wheel).

While startup in Mac OS X 10.4 or newer version, you will see "Safe Boot" on the first login window, (which will appear even if you do a normal login automatically.
During startup in Mac OS X 10.2 through 10.3.9, you will see "Safe Boot" on the Mac OS X startup screen.
If you don't want to start you Mac in SafeMode, just restart the machine normally, without holding any keys during startup. If you are new to Mac then please go to this guide.

Mac OS X Version 10.5.6 Leopard