Mac 911 - April 2007 Page 2 of 2

Solutions to your most vexing Mac problems

by Christopher Breen, Ted Landau, Macworld.com

Bug: Firefox security breach

Like most Web browsers, Mozilla’s free Firefox ( ) lets you save passwords for sites that require you to log in. (Go to Firefox: Preferences, click on Security, and select the Remember Passwords For Sites option.) Firefox should enter your name and password only when you’re at the appropriate login page. However, a security weakness allows a phony login page, located on the same server as the legitimate one (possible on sites such as MySpace.com), to obtain and send your password information to another site without your knowledge. It’s a low-risk threat, but for now the only way to make sure no one can steal your passwords is to deselect the password option. To get rid of passwords you’ve already saved, click on the Show Passwords button and then click on Remove All.

Some users (including myself) have found that Safari reveals the same weakness. Use this test page to assess your browser’s vulnerability.

Fix: QX-Tools Pro and Quark conflict

If you’re using onOne Software’s $100 QX-Tools Pro 7.0, QuarkXPress 7 may crash when you save certain—primarily older—files. Fix this minor bug by updating to QX-Tools Pro 7.0.1 or later.

Bug: iPhoto import problem

Apple’s iPhoto may quit unexpectedly when importing movie files from a still camera. The likely cause is a problematic third-party QuickTime plug-in. Check the your user folder /Library/QuickTime/ and /Library/ QuickTime/ folders for plug-ins not installed by Mac OS X. Remove any that you find. Log out and log back in. If the problem disappears, a plug-in was the culprit. If not, use another program, such as Image Capture (/Applications), to import the movie instead.

Bug: Adobe’s Vietnam danger

Do you use the $599 Adobe Photoshop CS2 ( ) or $499 Adobe Illustrator CS2 ( )? Check the /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS2/Legal.localized/ and /Applications/Adobe Illustrator CS2/ Legal.localized/ folders for a file called

Tiêng Viêt.html

. If you find this file, delete it immediately. OS X can inter-pret the special characters as illegal file names, resulting in damage to your drive’s directory that even Disk Utility’s First Aid feature (/Applications/Utilities) can’t fix. If you already have this damage, you’ll probably get an error message that says “The underlying task reported failure” with a -9972 error code)” when you run First Aid. If so, try another repair utility, such as Alsoft’s $100 DiskWarrior, or completely erase your drive and start over.

When you try to delete the

Tiêng Viêt.html

file, you may get the following odd message: “The operation cannot be completed because one or more items cannot be found. (Error code -43).” If so, the solution is to restart your Mac in Safe Mode, by holding down the Shift key from immediately after you hear the startup tone until the gray Apple logo appears. You should now be able to delete the file. After doing so, restart again normally.

Bug: Sync problems

If you use the Sync pane in .Mac’s preferences pane, you may get a message that says: “There was a problem with the sync operation. .Mac legacy client exited abnormally.” There may be an easy fix—open Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities) and click on Repair Disk Permissions. If that doesn’t work, you can try reinstalling Mac OS X completely, using the Archive And Install option.

[ Senior Contributor Ted Landau is the founder of MacFixIt, a Web site devoted to reporting Mac problems and solutions. Got a problem to report? E-mail bugs@macworld.com or post it in our Mac 911 forum. ]