iMac - In-Place Leopard to Snow Leopard Post Upgrade Printer Choke

We received a call from one of our clients that runs 100% Mac systems on their network.

Apparently, they could not connect to the Internet, send e-mail, or print. Thinking that perhaps there was a problem within the Leopard OS X itself, they did an in-place upgrade to Snow Leopard.

Well, that did not fix the problem. So we received a call.

When we got there, there was no DNS resolution, no ability for the iMac to get anywhere even on the internal peer-to-peer network.

After poking around in the Network Settings, the network adapter was set to pull the iMac's IP address via DHCP and seemed to release and renew without a problem.

At first glance, the DNS field was not empty and the IP address that was in there did not register. It took a minute for the realization to hit: They had the IP address of their own iMac set as the DNS server!

No wonder there was nothing coming in. As soon as we deleted the iMac's IP address and released and renewed the IP the network's own DNS servers showed up and we had connectivity.

The e-mail issue turned out to be some in correct settings in their Mac Mail program while the Ricoh Aficio MP C2050 was another problem altogether.

Out of all of the troubleshooting time spent there, most of it was spent on getting the iMac to reconnect to the copier.

Knowing how an in-place upgrade can kill any already existing drivers we downloaded the newest printer driver set from Ricoh's Web site and installed it. We deleted the two Ricoh printers in the iMac's Printers and reinstalled using the copier's IP address and the correct LPR queues.

Still no joy though.

In the end, we needed to perform essentially what is a ground level reset of the entire printing subsystem in OS X.

This is the Apple KB article that we needed in order to fix the problem:

• Apple Knowledgebase HT1341: Mac OS X: About the Reset Printing System feature.

It is important to note that we were unable to fix the problem by clicking on the "-" sign to remove the printers. We needed to perform the drastic measure in the KB:

Resetting the printing system in Mac OS X 10.5.x

To use the Reset Printing System feature in Mac OS X 10.5.x, follow these steps:

1. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
2. Choose Print & Fax from the View menu.
3. Control-click on list of printers on the left side of the window, then choose "Reset printing system" from the contextual menu.
• If you don't see a list of printers, Control-click on the text "Click + to add a printer or fax" and select "Reset printing system..."

Once we reset the printing system we were able to install the copier via LPR using its two queues, one for black and white and the other for colour printing.

Written using MarsEdit on the MacBook Pro. This blog post editor looks promising as I know enough HTML to be dangerous. We shall see if it can upload images to Blogger's Picasa Web Albums to clinch the deal.

Philip Elder

MPECS Inc.

Microsoft Small Business Specialists

Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

OS X: Mac Mail POP Stops Working

We had a call to look into why the built-in OS X mail client was no longer pulling e-mail into the inbox.

The 24” iMac was running OS X 10.5 (Leopard) with most of the recent updates.

The e-mail stopped flowing on July 9 at 16:45hrs (4:45PM).

Click on the gear near the bottom left corner of Mac Mail and then click on Get Account Info and the window that came up would connect to the POP3 server and list all e-mail on the server including any new e-mail not being retrieved.

Because the Account Info dialogue allowed us to connect and view content on the POP3 server, we knew that we were not dealing with an authentication or improper credentials problem.

A search for a solution to the problem took a few different keyword iterations before anything reasonably close came up:

• Tech-Recipes: OS X Mail: POP Suddenly Quits Working

Now, the above link deals with an e-mail that is malformed with a 0KB size that causes the stall.

In our case, the e-mail that was next in line, when sorted by date, had a 35KB size and was a broadcast self-addressed e-mail with a number of BCC addresses in it.

Somehow, that e-mail was causing the hang-up because as soon as it was deleted using the Remove From Server button in the Account Info window the user’s e-mail started to flow.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

Mac on SBS - OS X Leopard ... Soon

We haven't had time to work on getting the iMac back online with the SBS network lately so this post comes via one of our PCs.

However, there are only a few more days to OS X Leopard according to Apple's OS X Leopard site.

Our Canadian suppliers have Leopard SKUd up and show stock coming in with no ETA.

• OS X 10.5 Leopard Retail: MB021Z/A
• OS X 10.5 Leopard Retail - French: MB021F/A
• OS X 10.5 Leopard Retail Family Pack: MB022Z/A
• OS X 10.5 Leopard Retail Family Pack - French: MB022F/A

One of our Canadian suppliers shows over four thousand Leopard Retail packs on the way. So, we think they are expecting it to be quite popular! ;)

We just put an order in so we can upgrade our iMac when the time comes. So, we might as well wait before adding it to the SBS network to see if there are any significant Windows Networking differences between Tiger and Leopard. Time will tell...

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.