Got prohibition sign trying to boot Mac OS X from USB drive

My first laptop is Macbook Pro 13'' late 2016 running OSX Lion v10.7. Today, I've just bought another Macbook Air 11'' June 2013 and it has MacOS Sierra installed. My problem is my eyes hurt after staring at the screen for about half an hour but it happens only for Mac OSX v10.8 and later. I can stare at screen for a whole day without any problem if the machine runs OSX Lion v10.7. i'm not sure about the cause of the problem but perhaps it's because OSX v10.8 and later were made for Retina display screen and my both macbooks are non-retina display.

Then, i tried to install OSX Lion on my new Macbook Air using bootable USB. I used Cabon Copy Cloner to clone the OSX Lion drive from my Macbook Pro to the USB drive. I tried to boot my Macbook Air from that bootable USB but i got the prohibition sign and nothing happened. I could boot successfully from that USB with my Macbook Pro.

After that, i thought it might be because the OSX version is too old for my Macbook Air so i used my Macbook Pro to create Mavericks bootable USB and then tried to boot my Macbook Air again from that USB but no luck.

Moreover, I even used CloneZilla to backup the OSX hard drive on the Macbook Pro and then restored it to the OSX hard drive on the Macbook Air, and I still got the prohibition sign booting from the hard drive of the Macbook Air.

Therefore, I assumed that the root cause is not the problem with the version of OSX. As the bootable USB made on my Macbook Pro worked only with that machine, I thought it might be the version of the OS or/and the machine that we used to create the bootable USB is the problem. Hence, I used my Macbook Air running MacOS Sierra to create the bootable USB from the Mavericks installation file (DMG) instead (using Disk Utilities application). Bingo! it worked.

Post-installation configuration (also reduce heat) for Windows 7/8 on Macbook Pro

After installing Windows 7 on Macbook Pro 13 inch late 2011, most of the things work out of the box using Boot Camp drivers. However, there are still things you need to manually configure to make them work well such as:

HOT TEMPERATURE NOTE

I'm not sure if they are the cause of the problem, but I made the change and my machine cooled down a lot. Seems like Windows has many more services that do disk activities even when the machine is idle such as indexing, defrag scheduler, and Windows Defender. This cause the disk much hotter than on Mac OS then the rest palm area is very warm all the time.

- Don't use third-party anti-virus program. Use Windows Defender, but turn off Real Time Protection or completely disable this program.
- Go to Control Panel, Power Options, and click on Change Plan Settings. Then, click on "Change advance power settings" and select "Process power management" item from the listbox. Set "Maximum processor state to 97%" and "System cooling polcy" to "Passive" for both "Plugged in" and "On battery".

- Disable Adobe Flash Player in all browsers
- Install Power Plan Assistance (i installed it to turn off backlid keyboard automatically when login but the temperature seemed to reduce too)
- Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Task Scheduler > Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows > Defrag > then disable the "ScheduledDefrag"
- Disable PreFetch and SuperFetch
- Go to Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings > Advance > Settings > Custom and check only: "Animate controls and elements inside windows", "Fade out menu items after clicking", "Show shadows under windows", "Show thumbnails instead of icons", "Slide open combo boxes", "Smooth edges of screen fonts", "Smooth-scroll list boxes"
- Reduce CPU usage and Disk Activity in Chrome by disable "Enable phising and maleware protection"
- Turn off "Auto-play video" feature on Facebook
- Perform the step in Disable Unnecessary Services section below

Increase SSD's lifespan

Reducing read/write operations does increase the lifespan of SSD. Turning off some services such as indexing, hibernation, and automatic defragmentation not only reduce the heat but also increase the SSD's lifespan.

SMC Fan

What i hate about Lubbo's Fan Control is you have to put it in Startup menu yourself to make start automatically when login and its GUI will open too. It does not minimize in system tray automatically. MacFan Control beat it to this. Then, I configure the fan speed based sensor CPU Core 1. Min value is 35 degree celsius and max value is 83 celsius so that the fan speed is never below 4200 even if the machine is idle.

Power Saver

I enable Power Saver mode in Control Panel. Then, I click on Change plan setting and Change advance power settings. Then, under Processor Power Management, I set Maximum Processor State to 90% when On Battery and Minimum Processor State to 5% for both On battery and Plugged in.

Reduce Animations

Open Control Panel, then Ease of Access and Ease of Access Center. Then check the option "Turn off all unnecessary animations (when possible)"

Disable Indexing Search (to improve performance or might reduce heat)
1. Open Windows Explorer and right click on the drive you want to stop indexing then select Properties. After than, uncheck "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties" and click OK.
2. Disable Windows Indexing service in services.msc.

Disable Unnecessary Services

Start "services.msc" program and stop and disable the following services (reference):
- Windows Update
- Google Update Service
- Server
- Computer Browser
- TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
- Windows Error Reporting Service
- Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) (If you don't have a scanner)
- Windows Search (If you don't use Windows built-in Search feature frequently)
- Print Spooler (If you don't have a printer)
- IP Helper (If you don't use IPv6 connection)
- Diagnostic Policy Service
- Superfetch
** You might also try registry tweak here to make it faster and so not hotter.

Remap Keys

- To remap the right Command key to Control key, you can use sharpkeys.codeplex.com

Configuring Ubuntu 15.04 on Macbook Pro 13 Inch Late 2011

Most of things work out of the box for Ubuntu 15 on Macbook Pro but there are still something you have to fix.

Keyboard backlight is reset to maximum every time I reboot

Put the following command in /etc/rc.local file just before 'exit 0':

chmod 777 /sys/class/leds/smc::kbd_backlight/brightness

Then add the following command in /etc/profile file:

echo 0 | tee /sys/class/leds/smc::kbd_backlight/brightness

Note that we can just put the second command in /etc/rc.local and it should work but I don't know why the content of the file is reset back when I enter the login screen every reboot.

Reverse function keys

To use 'fn' key in combination with function keys to turn on or off volume for example, you must put the following command in /etc/rc.local just before 'exit 0':

chmod 777 /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/fnmode

Then, add the following command in /etc/profile file:

echo 2 | tee /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/fnmode

Trackpad

For drag and drop, just use your index finger to click and hold the trackpad and move your middle finger for dragging.

In my case, 3-finger tap for making middle click does not work so I have to configure it in the default synaptics driver settings. You can use synclient program to make the real-time change to the settings but just temporarily.

synclient TapButton1=1
synclient TapButton2=3
synclient TapButton3=2

synclient ClickFinger3=2

1, 2, and 3 mean left, middle, and right buttons respectively. To make permanent change, you can put those commands in a script file, /usr/share/mysynclients.sh for example and then add it to Startup Application. Or you can try to modify xorg.conf file but it made palm detection not work well. However, if you want to do it, you can put the following codes in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf file as following:

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "Default clickpad buttons"
        MatchDriver "synaptics"
        Option "SoftButtonAreas" "50% 0 82% 0 0 0 0 0"
        Option "SecondarySoftButtonAreas" "58% 0 0 15% 42% 58% 0 15%"
        Option "TapButton1" "1"
        Option "TapButton2" "3"
        Option "TapButton3" "2"
EndSection

But, it might not work as the Gnome setting daemon in /etc/X11/xorg.conf file will override existing settings in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf. You can fix it by:

> sudo apt-get install dconf-editor
> dconf-editor

And then, browse to /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/mouse/ (or /org/cinnamon/settings-daemon/plugins/mouse/ for cinnamon) in the editor and uncheck Active checkbox. Then, reboot.

Disable locked drags

synclient TapAndDragGesture=OFF

Reference:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/290009/how-do-i-make-my-synclient-settings-stick-ubuntu-13-04
http://uselessuseofcat.com/?p=74

Sensors (Fan)

coretemp allows lm-sensor detect the other sensors such as the rotation speed of the fan and the GPU temperature. Typing the following command will activate the coretemp in next reboot:

sudo modprobe coretemp

You should use fan controller daemon included in the mactel-support ppa called macfanctl.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mactel-support/ppa 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install macfanctld

You can change the minimum fan speed in this file /etc/macfanctl.conf.

Others

For more configurations for such as battery saving (or you can install indicator-cpufreq), go read this.



Related Articles:
http://myt8chnote.blogspot.com/2016/04/installing-ubuntu-on-macbook-pro-using.html

How I backup/clone all drives of my Macbook Pro

I'm running OS X Lion v10.7 on Macbook Pro 13 inch late 2011. I have installed 3 operating systems on it such as Mac OS X Lion, Windows 7, and Ubuntu 15.04. To avoid problems in the future such as disk failure, I have backup my drive as following:

1. Mac OS X Lion is my primary OS and I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the partition to external hard disk drive so I can boot OS X from the external HDD any time to restore the partition.

2. To backup and restore Windows 7, I must do it from within OS X using Winclone app version 4.x.

3. For Ubuntu, I used Clonezilla to backup/restore the partition it was installed on to/from image files. I installed Clonezilla Live on a USB drive so that I can boot into Clonezilla from that USB by not depending on any operating systems. According to Clonezilla's official website, I made the bootable USB on Ubuntu using Tuxboot program. There are 2 methods to make a Clonezilla live USB by Tuxboot, online (downloading) and offline (ISO file). I used the online method in which Tuxboot downloaded the latest Clonezilla live for me and wrote it to my USB drive.

I think I should use only Clonezilla to backup/restore all partitions of my Macbook Pro.

Installing Ubuntu on Macbook Pro using bootable USB stick

I'm using Macbook Pro 13 inch late 2011 and I have just installed Ubuntu 15.04 on it successfully using a bootable USB stick. I followed this post http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-mac-osx to make a bootable USB stick. When restarting machine, I hold option key until I see an option to boot from the USB drive. Surprisingly, it worked only for Ubuntu 15.04 ISO file I downloaded from Ubuntu's web site. For other previous versions such as 10.04 and 11.10, the USB drive is not bootable at all (it didn't show up boot menu).

Note that if you have an external hard drive and want to put Ubuntu Live on that partition to make it bootable, it wouldn't work. You can only do it with the entire USB drive.


Related Articles:
http://myt8chnote.blogspot.com/2016/04/problems-with-ubuntu-1504-on-macbook.html

A workaround for setting up Windows 7 on Macbook Pro without optical drive

I want to make an update on the post i wrote here http://myt8chnote.blogspot.com/2016/04/installing-windows-7-on-macbook-pro.html After rebooting several time, the Windows partition was corrupted and then i also tried to do it the same way again many times but it no longer worked. I have just found a workaround for that.

As my Macbook Pro only boot from the USB drive that has OSX on it, I used Carbon Copy Clone to clone or backup my OSX partition to the external hard drive so if anything happens, I can use it to restore the main OSX partition.

I also have Windows installed along side the OS X. I downloaded the Winclone image file of Windows 7 from thepiratebay.se web site and use Winclone app on Mac OS X to restore the image file to another partition then the partition is bootable too.

NOTE: resizing partition might corrupt your Windows 7 installed even if the partition is not the one you installed Windows on.

How did I stop my macbook pro from overheating

I'm using 13-inch Macbook Pro late 2011 so it's about 4 years old now. I noticed that my Macbook get very hot quickly after using it for about 1 or 2 hours. Note that I didn't use any strange applications. There were just a few tabs of Chrome open and I didn't even watch videos. In particularly, I checked the Activity Monitor and the CPU usage is never above 30%. But, it's very hot on the back case cover and very warm at the palm-rest area and keyboard. It doesn't burn my hands but it's not comfortable to type. I can't keep my hands on the palm-rest area for more than 10 or 15 minutes. The heat first came from the top left area of the macbook pro near the charging cord. Then, it spread to everywhere such as the bottom, the keyboard and the palm-rest area. I have tried many ways to fix it.

First, I turned off WiFi and used Ethernet instead but it didn't help. Then, I used it for hours without charging because I thought there might be the problem with the charger but it wasn't. I used keyboard cover so i thought it also contribute to the heat so i removed it and the heat just decreased a few degrees. I then downloaded smcFanControl app to make the fan run faster even when normal usage but it still didn't help. I heard that reapplying thermal paste would help cool down my macbook dramatically and then I did it but still no luck. I also run Hardware Test but they were all fine. Resetting System Management Control (SMC) didn't help either.

One day I went to a coffee shop and use my Macbook for hours without feeling hot at all. It was hot a bit at the bottom case but the keyboard and palm-rest area are ok. Whenever i use it at my house, it get hot quickly. Then, i noticed that the difference between my house and the coffee shop is temperature. I don't usually use air conditioning so temperature in my room is about 35 degree celsius and it hurt my macbook pro. Then, I turned on air conditioning in my room and used my macbook pro for hours and the keyboard and palm-rest area are cool. They're very comfortable for typing. The temperature was 25 degree celsius. Therefore, Macbook Pro should be used in cold area, i guess. But, using macbook pro with air conditioning on is very expensive and it's not a solution so i kept searching.

A few days later, I started debugging the problem again. I wanted to know if leaving the back case cover off would help so I let stand on its right (see the image below) and remove the base case off without turning off my macbook pro. I waited for about 15 minutes and it cooled down and it was very comfortable to type. This may be because there was enough air flow in to help cool down the logic board faster as the heat came from the CPU. After that i wanted to know if it still help when i let it stand like that but the back case is off and it was still cold so i assumed there was bigger gap between the logic board and the back case cover while it was standing on it's right side and allowed more air flow.



To create a gap between the logic board and the back case cover, i put pieces of paper in the case on the battery and CD ROM. See the image below. Bingo, it did the trick. I call this a workaround, not a solution. I will find anything safer than paper to put in there though paper seems fine to me.

Summary

There are three things I've done:
1. Put pieces of paper to make a gap between the back case cover and the logic board so that there is more air flow to cool down the temperature in the case faster. Or you don't need to put the papers but you can remove the optical drive instead. The later is not as very efficient as the former but the overall temperature in the case is better so it won't hurt the logic board much.
2. Use smcFanConrol app. I make the fan spin 4000 rpm. I heard that using smcFanControl will do damage to your fan but i think it's ok for me as my macbook is 4 years old now and i would rather replacing fan than logic board. However, there is no proof yet. In particularly, you can quit the app if you're in the room with air conditioning.
3. The two steps above will help reduce the heat dramatically but you still feel a little bit warm. You should also use PalmGuard to the heat almost completely.

Got error "Your bootable USB drive could not be created." while creating Windows 7 bootable USB in Boot Cam Assistant

To install Windows 7 on Macbook Pro, you need Boot Cam Assistent app. It's built in OS X. Note that I'm using Macbook Pro 13'' Late 2011 and Max OS X Mountain Lion 10.8. I'm using Boot Cam Assistant to create a bootable Windows installation USB so I don't need Windows Installation DVD.

Note that before starting Boot Cam Assistant, I enabled the option to create install USB in Boot Cam Assistant (BCA) as following:
- Go to Finder -> Applications -> Utilities
- Right click on Boot Cam Assistant.app and select Show Package Contents
- Make a backup copy of Info.plist file then open it and change the key PreUSBBootSupportedModels to USBBootSupportedModels and save

However, when I clicked on the Create button in the last step, it said "Your bootable USB drive could not be created. An error occurred while copying the Windows installation files.".  Here are what I tried to fix the issue:

1. Unmount the Windows installation ISO file. I might clicked on it once and It was mounted. I tried to unmount it from both Finder and Disk Utility and the use Boot Cam Assistant to create it again but no luck. I've noted that the people on the net who got their problems solved using this way got the error message immediately after they click on the Create button. For me, the message showed up about 10 minutes after clicking on the Create button.

2. Someone said it might be the problem with the ISO file. They solved it by using Disk Utility to generate a new one from the current ISO file. They run the command:

hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o new_win7.iso /Volumes/DATA/Softwares/OS/Windows/Windows_7_Sp1_Ultimate_x64.iso

Unfortunately, it still didn't help.

3. I tried to use Windows USB/DVD Download Tool (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-usb-dvd-download-tool#installation) to create a bootable USB instead. It's Windows program so I run Windows 8 as guest OS in VirtualBox and then used the tool to create a bootable USB. But, the tool couldn't create it successfully. It had another error. It told me to check my USB drive and the Windows installation ISO file. Damn!

4. And then I tried to install Windows using the ISO file in VirtualBox, it failed while it was trying to copy the installation files. It said some files were corrupted. Hence, I thought it might be the problem with that file so I downloaded two other different ISO files (from piratebay website) and used them with Boot Cam Assistant. I got the same error for the second ISO file but I successfully created the bootable USB using the third ISO file. I don't know why and I don't care.

Useful Applications I'm Using on My MacBook Pro

I'm using Macbook Pro 13'' late 2011 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8. Below are the required applications I used for my daily work.

Boom
My Macbook Pro's sound has become very low. I don't know why. Perhaps, there is a problem with the speaker. I use Boom as a workaround. It boost the speaker's volume above the allowed maximum.

PleaseSleep
When one of these applications: Chrome, Firefox, and Safari is running, your computer won't automatically sleep, only the display that will sleep even if you already configure it in Energy Saver. But, if you manually put it to sleep for example by pressing keys command + option + eject, it will. Note that in my case, the command "pmset -g assertions" does not say those programs are preventing my computer from sleeping at all but I figured it out myself. PleaseSleep will force your computer to sleep after it's been idled for a period of time as configured in Energy Saver even though those programs are running. IT STILL CAN'T HELP, IF BOOM IS RUNNING.

Sleepwatcher 
It's a freeware and can be downloaded from http://www.bernhard-baehr.de/. I let me run command an event is triggered. In my case, Boom prevents my computer from sleeping after defined idle time. It's Boom's bug. I configured my machine to sleep 10 minutes after the display has slept so I use Sleepwatcher to exit Boom when the display has slept and start Boom when the display has woken up. I created 4 script files and put them in /Applications/MyApps as followings:

> sudo nano /Applications/MyApps/boom-sleepwatcher.command
#!/bin/bash

# check if sleepwatcher is running; it might have been running from previous login session
# cause it's not killed even if you log out
RUNNING=""
RUNNING=$(ps axu | grep -v grep | grep sleepwatcher)
echo $RUNNING

SCRIPTNAME="startboom.sh"
# if the content of RUNNING variable contains 'startboom.sh', the process is already running
if [ "$RUNNING" != "${RUNNING%$SCRIPTNAME*}" ];
  then
     echo "sleepwatcher is already running..."
     exit
  else
     echo "Starting sleepwatcher for Boom app..."
fi

/Applications/sleepwatcher/sleepwatcher --daemon --displaysleep /Applications/MyApps/exitboom.sh
/Applications/sleepwatcher/sleepwatcher --daemon --displaywakeup /Applications/MyApps/startboom.sh

> sudo nano /Applications/MyApps/exitboom.sh
osascript -e 'quit app "Boom"'

> sudo nano /Applications/MyApps/startboom.sh
open /Applications/Boom.app

> sudo chmod -R 777 /Applications/MyApps/

Note that if the terminal window is not closed after the command has run, there might be the problem with Terminal's shell settings. Open Terminal, go to Preferences..., select Settings then Shell and choose "Close the window" item in "When the shell exits" combo box.

Then, I put boom-sleepwatcher.command  in login items.

Related article: http://myt8chnote.blogspot.com/2015/09/display-sleep-but-computer-does-not.html

XtraFinder
It's free. It provides multiple tabs in a single window of Finder application.

Carbon Copy Cloner
It's commercial. I use it clone the OS drive to the external hard drive. It works the same way as Norton Ghost (for Windows) does. Hence, my OS disk fail, I don't have to reinstall the OS and applications. I can just restore the OS clone.

Perian
It allows me to play a lot of media file formats on QuickTime Player such as MP4, MP3, FLV, etc.

TextWrangler
It's a good text editor. It allows me to open multiple files at the same time.

Paint 2
Microsoft Paint alternative for Mac