For those Who Care to Play: Acros SOOC + RAF

In article , David B.
wrote:

Do you know what processes occur if/when one uses 'First Aid' (Disk
Utility)?

Can it REALLY fix things which are wrong?

Of course but then again it does depend what is wrong.

I was thinking about being attacked by malware.

think about other things, namely not opening links or attachments in
emails or running software from unknown sources. if you do that, then
you don't need to worry about malware.

FYI

http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac...ware-free-viru
ses-attack-3594625/

First things first, it is incredibly unlikely that you have a virus
or any form of malware on your Mac - or at least not anything that
can infect your Mac

In article , David B.
wrote:


One of the last things I said to them was, " I guess this is why
people move to Apple". It might be a couple of years, but next time I
think I need something new, I will be looking at them for the first
time.

macs don't care if they're booted from internal or external drive,
whether it's usb, firewire, thunderbolt or sata. as long as the system
on the drive is compatible with the mac, it will boot, without any
changes necessary. they can even boot and install macos over the
internet to a blank hard drive.

there is also a recovery partition, which is automatically installed
(and is used for more than just recovery), so you don't actually need a
separate emergency boot disk.


Same with windows.
[....]

I don't think you are right about that, Peter, but I'm no computer expert.

Perhaps someone else reading here will make further comment.

he isn't.

On Fri, 12 May 2017 03:58:23 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , David B.
wrote:


One of the last things I said to them was, " I guess this is why
people move to Apple". It might be a couple of years, but next time I
think I need something new, I will be looking at them for the first
time.

macs don't care if they're booted from internal or external drive,
whether it's usb, firewire, thunderbolt or sata. as long as the system
on the drive is compatible with the mac, it will boot, without any
changes necessary. they can even boot and install macos over the
internet to a blank hard drive.

there is also a recovery partition, which is automatically installed
(and is used for more than just recovery), so you don't actually need a
separate emergency boot disk.


Same with windows.
[....]

I don't think you are right about that, Peter, but I'm no computer expert.

Perhaps someone else reading here will make further comment.

he isn't.

There is a system partition used for recovery, but I don't know how
it's used. You sure can't boot from it.

On 12/05/2017 08:58, nospam wrote:
In article , David B.
wrote:


One of the last things I said to them was, " I guess this is why
people move to Apple". It might be a couple of years, but next time I
think I need something new, I will be looking at them for the first
time.

macs don't care if they're booted from internal or external drive,
whether it's usb, firewire, thunderbolt or sata. as long as the system
on the drive is compatible with the mac, it will boot, without any
changes necessary. they can even boot and install macos over the
internet to a blank hard drive.

there is also a recovery partition, which is automatically installed
(and is used for more than just recovery), so you don't actually need a
separate emergency boot disk.


Same with windows.
[....]

I don't think you are right about that, Peter, but I'm no computer expert.

Perhaps someone else reading here will make further comment.

he isn't.

Perhaps not, but he seems like a nice guy to me. :-)

Are *YOU* a computer whiz-kid, 'nospam'?

Perhaps even IT 'qualified' in some way?

--
"Do something wonderful, people may imitate it." (Albert Schweitzer)

On 12/05/2017 08:58, nospam wrote:
In article , David B.
wrote:

Do you know what processes occur if/when one uses 'First Aid' (Disk
Utility)?

it's a wrapper on fsck.

I had no clue what you meant ...... but I then looked he-

http://www.bing.com/search?q=fsck&form=MOZESB&pc=MOZT

you asked what processes occur. that's what processes occur. just one.

Can it REALLY fix things which are wrong?

depends what's wrong.

I was wondering if it could cure OS X if one is attacked by malware.

nothing can 'cure malware'. if you've been pwned, the solution is wipe
and reinstall from a backup prior to the malware.

I agree with that - even on a Windows machine.

malware won't be an issue if you don't do anything stupid. the weakness
is not macos (or windows for that matter), but the rather person using
it.

I have done MANY stupid things - mostly deliberately!

if someone is tricked into opening an attachment or clicking a link or
running an app from an unknown source, game over, no matter what system
they're using.

Agreed.

if someone gives out their credit card number to some random caller who
is pretending to offer some service, game over.

people are stupid and fall for scams all the time. even people who
should know better fall for them. scams are nothing new.

Agreed.

although apple improved fsck a *lot* over what existed before (it had
to, because fsck was mostly crap), fsck is nowhere near as good as
diskwarrior, which is amazing in how well it can fix file system
corruption.

I bought a copy of Diskwarrior from Ebay some years ago. Sadly, it
doesn't work on my iMac/version of OS X.

that must have been a really, really long time ago.

5 years ago max I should think. I'll have a play later and let you know
what the disk tells me when I load it.

--
David B.

In article , David B.
wrote:

although apple improved fsck a *lot* over what existed before (it had
to, because fsck was mostly crap), fsck is nowhere near as good as
diskwarrior, which is amazing in how well it can fix file system
corruption.

I bought a copy of Diskwarrior from Ebay some years ago. Sadly, it
doesn't work on my iMac/version of OS X.

that must have been a really, really long time ago.

5 years ago max I should think. I'll have a play later and let you know
what the disk tells me when I load it.

if it's 5 years old, it will still work, although it's not ideal.

what version number is it?

In article , Bill W
wrote:


One of the last things I said to them was, " I guess this is why
people move to Apple". It might be a couple of years, but next time I
think I need something new, I will be looking at them for the first
time.

macs don't care if they're booted from internal or external drive,
whether it's usb, firewire, thunderbolt or sata. as long as the system
on the drive is compatible with the mac, it will boot, without any
changes necessary. they can even boot and install macos over the
internet to a blank hard drive.

there is also a recovery partition, which is automatically installed
(and is used for more than just recovery), so you don't actually need a
separate emergency boot disk.


Same with windows.
[....]

I don't think you are right about that, Peter, but I'm no computer expert.

Perhaps someone else reading here will make further comment.

he isn't.

There is a system partition used for recovery, but I don't know how
it's used. You sure can't boot from it.

windows recovery is somewhat similar but not as straightforward (no
surprise there), however, the point was that you can't easily clone a
windows drive and then from that clone or move it from machine to
machine, at least not without a *lot* of mucking around (although less
now than it used to be). windows *really* wants to be c:

on a mac, a bootable system works on any compatible mac, regardless of
internal/external/etc.

not only that, but a mac with a completely blank hd/ssd can boot and
install macos over the internet, no iso/usb stick/etc. required. try
that on a windows box.

On Fri, 12 May 2017 03:58:22 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , David B.
wrote:

Do you know what processes occur if/when one uses 'First Aid' (Disk
Utility)?

Can it REALLY fix things which are wrong?

Of course but then again it does depend what is wrong.

I was thinking about being attacked by malware.

think about other things, namely not opening links or attachments in
emails or running software from unknown sources. if you do that, then
you don't need to worry about malware.

For some reason I have been bombarded with this kind of stuff over the
last three months. I am aware that despite my care there is always the
risk that I will inadvertantly open something nasty. So far I seem to
have avoided it.

FYI

http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac...ware-free-viru
ses-attack-3594625/

First things first, it is incredibly unlikely that you have a virus
or any form of malware on your Mac - or at least not anything that
can infect your Mac

But they do exist and it is always possible that he is one of the rare
unfotunate ones.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

Do you know what processes occur if/when one uses 'First Aid' (Disk
Utility)?

Can it REALLY fix things which are wrong?

Of course but then again it does depend what is wrong.

I was thinking about being attacked by malware.

think about other things, namely not opening links or attachments in
emails or running software from unknown sources. if you do that, then
you don't need to worry about malware.

For some reason I have been bombarded with this kind of stuff over the
last three months. I am aware that despite my care there is always the
risk that I will inadvertantly open something nasty. So far I seem to
have avoided it.

keep up the good work.



http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac...malware-free-v
iru
ses-attack-3594625/

First things first, it is incredibly unlikely that you have a virus
or any form of malware on your Mac - or at least not anything that
can infect your Mac

But they do exist and it is always possible that he is one of the rare
unfotunate ones.

it's always possible he might get hit by lightning.

in any event, it doesn't matter if someone gets malware or not. just
restore from a backup. couple hours lost, no big deal.

other problems are far more likely, such as hard drive failure,
corrupted files or mistakenly deleting something, etc.

On 5/12/2017 3:54 AM, David B. wrote:
On 11/05/2017 13:37, PeterN wrote:
On 5/11/2017 1:24 AM, nospam wrote:
In article , Bill W
wrote:

Well, I finally got my photo computer working again a little
after I
hung up on MS customer support, and a little before I reached
the bomb
threat level of frustration with them.

what does it take to move beyond threat level and actually carry it
out?

After they told me I had to pay them to tell me how to fix the
problem
that *their* update caused, I was at the tipping point... And this
was
after I told them exactly what was wrong - a munged boot sector. "Oh,
well at this level 1 customer support, no one knows anything about
MBR's and those things. You have to get that info at level 2, our
paid
service".

customer support is mostly useless, and at the larger companies, they
just want to get you off the phone because they're rated on number of
calls.

It's almost exactly like ransomware, except that a lot of Googling
came up with a fix. About 10 commands (bootrec & diskpart commands)
typed into the command line - really about 60 seconds if you type
fast, and it's fixed. The ridiculous part is that the Windows
install/recovery files (Media creation files) come out differently
depending on whether you choose to write them to a USB drive, or to a
DVD. Some tools are missing in the USB version, and a couple of the
commands fail, the critical one being bcdboot.

welcome to windows.

One of the last things I said to them was, " I guess this is why
people move to Apple". It might be a couple of years, but next time I
think I need something new, I will be looking at them for the first
time.

macs don't care if they're booted from internal or external drive,
whether it's usb, firewire, thunderbolt or sata. as long as the system
on the drive is compatible with the mac, it will boot, without any
changes necessary. they can even boot and install macos over the
internet to a blank hard drive.

there is also a recovery partition, which is automatically installed
(and is used for more than just recovery), so you don't actually need a
separate emergency boot disk.


Same with windows.
[....]

I don't think you are right about that, Peter, but I'm no computer expert.

Perhaps someone else reading here will make further comment.


All I can say, is that I have those features on the last three Windows
machines I bought. The latest was in February of this year.


--
PeterN