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Fix Connectivity Problems by Power Cycling your Home Network and Computers

May 22, 2013May 22, 2013 The Webernets0 comment

Power Cycling sounds like riding a bike really fast up a hill, but in the technology field it refers to a way to get everything back online when things aren’t working right, or you have to recover from a failure or freeze.

A Power Cycle is achieved by turning everything off safely, disconnecting the power sources, and leaving everything to sit for a in-determined amount of time (some say 30 seconds, some say 30 minutes).

I find Power Cycling makes all my devices talk to each other quicker. As I have a somewhat sophisticated home network, yanking the cord on everything from time to time allows new routing tables to be created, and old machines that are no longer connected to the network (That may have been a Master Browser (Machine that tells other machines where everything is located)) to be removed from the environment.

We’ll use my network as an example to go through the procedure, as things do need to be done in a specific order. Using a IP Scanner (There’s lots of free ones available – just Google IP Scanner) I generated this view of my home network.

To begin a Power Cycle, I turn all off the Computers and my Server off. Once they are safely and completely shut down I yank the power cords from the sockets (This is important, if it is still plugged in, there is still power going in, keeping things in memory – So YANK IT!). With my Laptops, I take the batteries out. Next, I shut down and unplug my WD TV media machines and the “Elements” hard drives attached to them. My iPhone and iPad are now shut down by Pressing and holding the Sleep/Wake button (Power Button on top right side of device) for a few seconds until the red “slide to power off” slider appears, and then slide the slider. Lastly, My Airport Extreme Router, D-Link Switch, and ADSL Modem are all disconnected from the outlets.

Now I go throw a tennis ball with my Dog Benson for about 10 minutes. This allows plenty of time for any power left in the devices to drain away, and all caches and memory to clear.

After playtime I get ready to restart everything. First, I plug the modem back in and let it initialize and connect to the internet. Then I turn on my Switch, and my Airport Extreme Router is next. When they are all operational and happy, I turn my computers on one at a time, beginning with the one I use most, first (So it can become the Master Browser). Once it is up and connected to the internet, I turn the next one in my usage order on, and let it connect, then the next, etc, etc. Then, I boot up my WD TV Live Hub and reconnect the “Elements” storage drives, and lastly, I power on my iPhone and iPad by holding down the Sleep/Wake (Power Button on top right side) for a few seconds until I see the silver Apple logo appear.

Everything should be back up, running, and happy!

Some people will tell you there is no advantage to power cycling. I personally, do believe it helps, and if you are undecided, Try it for Yourself and make up your own mind! What have you got to loose?

Keep your network drives and servers clean of DS_Store, AppleDouble, apdisk and even Thumbs.db files with BlueHarvest

May 15, 2013December 31, 2020 The Webernets0 comment

Lately, My WDTV Live Hub has been REALLY slow. In an effort to see what was going on, I mounted the drive in my FAV Linux distro PUPPY LINUX. What Puppy Linux showed me, was ALL of the thousands of files that my Windows and Mac OS X computers had been creating and hiding on my drive without my knowledge. When I have accessed my shared drive with my Mac, it had been creating DS-Store files and .AppleDouble files in each folder, and my Windows machines have been creating Thumbs.db files.

It was pretty easy to delete these files, but my question was “How can I stop this Madness from happening again?”. After a little Googling I found a program called BlueHarvest. I downloaded the trial version, and I have to say, within 15 minutes, I had paid my $15 US and had a license key that was good for 3 different Macs. If You are sharing drives or a server in a Mac/Windows/Linux environment, YOU NEED THIS PROGRAM!

After installing, you tell BlueHarvest which drives and folders you want it to monitor, and the file types you want it to clear, and it deletes them as soon as they are created.

BlueHarvest not only prevents these files, it is also the quickest and easiest way there is to clean up a drive of existing files. I have a 8TB server running FREENAS, and to clean it up, all I did was click the BlueHarvest icon in my menu bar and select “Clean Using BlueHarvest”

Then I selected my server…

And then BlueHarvest went to work – check out the result!

It cleaned out 173144 files from the drive!

And at $15, BlueHarvest is a gift! Download the 30 day trial HERE.

**UPDATE** – Ive been using this program for a few days now, and it has been really cool watching it delete these annoying files as soon as they are created. That part has been working great. However, I have been playing around with a program called Total Finder today, and it shows Hidden/Invisible files. I ran it on my Freenas server and to my surprise, it turned up nearly 45000 .AppleDouble files.

I opened up BlueHarvest and initiated another clean on the drive, and after it scanned it reported it had cleaned 4 files. I ran Total Finder again, and it still came back with almost 45000 files.

Quick and Easy way to Clean Up and Speed up your Mac with ONYX

May 3, 2013May 3, 2013 The Webernets0 comment

In my opinion, the best first step to speeding up your Mac is to repair your permissions and run disk repair as outlined in my article Speed Up Your Mac Article HERE.

The next step is to clean your caches, rebuild your indexes, and run your macs daily, weekly and monthly maintenance scripts. This can all be done easily with the FREE and very powerful ONYX.

FREE Download Onyx from Titanium’s Software.

Once you have ONYX downloaded and installed, its a good idea to make sure that you have backed up ALL of your stuff. Like using any cleaning program, things can get moved or lost, so make sure you don’t get caught!

When you are satisfied your files are safe, go ahead and open ONYX. The first thing you will see is a alert box that asks if you want ONYX to check the S.M.A.R.T status of your hard drive. S.M.A.R.T stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. Most hard drives these days monitor their own performance and try to anticipate if a failure is imminent, and if their is something wrong with your drive, you will be notified after this test. It is well worth doing.

Once this has completed, the next alert will ask if you want to verify your drive. If you have already performed this task because you are following on from my first “Speed Up Your Mac” article this is not necessary. If you haven’t already done this, it is well worth doing as it will find any drive errors. This process can take some time, and it will require all other programs to be closed, so if you decide to run it, go get yourself a coffee and some fresh air after you begin.

When Verification has finished, ONYX will ask you to type in your password to give it permission to make changes and clean thing up.

You will now see the main menu bar for ONYX.

As you can see, this program has a lot of in depth features and can do a lot of different things, but for this tutorial, we will focus on cleaning up quickly and easily. To start cleaning, press the “Automation” button. You will now see the Automation screen.

The safest way to proceed is to accept the defaults and press “Execute”. If you are following on from my first “Speed Up Your Mac” article you might want to un-check “Repair Permissions” as you will have already done this. Other wise, leave it checked. If you are like me and like living on the edge, you can go ahead and check/un-check the items you feel necessary.

*BE WARNED* – As with every clean up program, there can be unwanted side effects, so proceed with caution!

For me personally, I do change it up as I like to clean my system deeply, and I am happy to put things back how I like them after the cleaning (such as re-arranging my icons how I like them on my desk top again). I also like to execute my Macs built in daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance scripts. Below is how I use ONYX.

*NOTE* – I take no responsibility if you copy my settings and loose something.

When you are happy with your cleaning options, its time to press execute.

ONYX will tell you it is going to close any other programs that are open, so again, make sure you have saved your work.

ONYX will now start performing maintenance. In most cases this will take some time, so if you didn’t stretch your legs, get a coffee and some fresh air before, now is the time. When ONYX has finished, a dialogue box will appear. Click OK.

ONYX will now want to restart you computer.

Restart your computer and you are all done!

Clear and delete the list of recent conversations in Heytell

May 30, 2012May 30, 2012 The Webernets0 comment

Heytell is a great little app. For me, it’s like a phone call, a walkie talkie, and a answering machine all rolled into one. But if you have a few contacts, and use the app regularly, it wont be long before your conversation window is full up, and you can search the app until your blue in the face and you won’t find a “delete” or “Clear” option anywhere!

Thankfully, it is REALLY EASY to clear recent conversations!

All you gotta do is swipe your finger left to right on them! Just pick the conversation you want to clear, swipe your finger left to right on it as shown below,

And look what comes up!

A delete button!

All you gotta do now is press delete, and your window will be free and clear, and ready for your next conversation!

Easy when you know how huh! This method also works in other apps to, so don’t be afraid to drag your finger across something, you never know what will pop up!

Clear the list of Recent Email Addresses on iPhone

October 27, 2011 The Webernets8 Comments

Over time I have sent a lot of email from my iPhone, and it seems like iOS4/5 remembers every one of them fondly. As soon as I start typing an address it offers me a list of all of those email addresses that I sent one email to 3 years ago, instead of the one I want, and use regularly. In this post I am going to show you how I cleared that list on my phone.

As you would expect, you need to download a third party app and hack into the bowls of your phone to do this. And if you do decide to do this, you do so at your own risk ok!

I found a program called iBackUpBot, which lets you modify a number of aspects of your iOS4/5 device. Its not a free program, but there is enough functionality in the trial version so you can clear your recent emails list though. There is a Windows and a Mac version, so the procedure will work on both systems. Download and install.

Once you have downloaded, plug your phone in, and open iTunes. The first thing you need to do is make a back up, because its the back up files you will be working on. To force a back up, Right click on your device in the iTunes side bar and select “Back Up” from the context menu.

Once the back up is complete, you can close out of iTunes, but leave your phone connected. Now open up iBackUpBot. You will need to select the back up file you just created (by device name, date and time) and click it. It will then start analyzing your back up file. Once it has finished analyzing you will see a whole bunch of entries appear on the right. Dont worry about these, as we wont be using them for this procedure. The next step is to select “Plug In” from the menu, and then select “Recent Email Addresses”.

You will be confronted with a window that prompts you to purchase the program, you can click the cancel button to make it go away. Once it disappears, a window called “Recent Email Address Viewer” will pop up and you will see the list of recent email addresses stored in your phones memory. You can now go through the list and delete the ones you don’t want to see any more, and keep the ones you do. Just click on the offending address then hit your delete key. Once your finished, click the “Close Database” icon to save your changes and close out the window.

Now it’s time to reload your modified file back to your phone. Click the “Restore Backup To iPhone” button to begin. You will have to click OK/Accept in a dialogue box, and it will take a little while, so be patient.

Once everything is finished, you can close iBackUpBot, disconnect your phone and try it out!

Ahhhh…….No More irrelevant email addresses……….

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