Mac|Life - November 2011

Place the installer disc in the Mac and reboot while holding down the C key until the computer reboots into the Mac OS X installer. After selecting your language, in the menu bar click Utilities > Password Reset, or Reset Password (for earlier versions). If you’re using Mac OS X Panther, the Reset Password option is listed under the Installer menu.

In the resulting pop-up window, select the hard drive volume (usually “Macintosh HD”), and then select your user from the pop-up menu. Next, enter a new password, then type it again to confirm it. You can optionally enter a password hint for the user account. When you are done, click on the Save button.

If you are using Cheetah ( 10.0), Puma ( 10. 1), or Jaguar ( 10. 2), the steps to reset your password are different. Follow the guide on Apple’s support site to get the instructions for your particular version here: bit.ly/ml_password.—Cory Bohon

Winmail.What?

What is the deal with those winmail.dat files? I get them in my
email all the time, and nothing seems to be able to open them.

Winmail.dat is a proprietary email file format generated by Outlook or a Microsoft Exchange Server that provides rich-text formatting (like bold, italics, color, and more). The problem is that the files can only be read by certain email clients.

There are two ways to solve this problem. If you know the sender well, you can ask the sender to stop sending them. To disable this file format in Outlook on Windows, navigate to Options > Tools > Mail Format. From the Send In This Message Format list, select either Plain Text or HTML, then click OK to save the new setting.

If you can’t convince the sender to use standard email formats, you also have a few options for reading these Winmail.dat-formatted messages. On the Mac, TNEF’s Enough ( bit.ly/ml_tnef), can open winmail.dat files. If you are on an iOS device, try Winmail File Viewer ( bit.ly/ml_winmail).—Cory Bohon

With the $0.99 Winmail File Viewer app for the iPhone, you can view your Winmail.dat files while on the go.

Erasing a Mac Hard Drive Is there any way to completely erase the hard drive on the MacBook Pro? Sometimes you just need to clear the decks and start from scratch. If you’re giving away an old Mac or just want a do-over, fire up Disk Utility. Zapping an entire disk is simple to do. From Applications > Utilities, open the Disk Utility application. Click on a mounted drive in the left-hand column, and select the Erase tab. But be careful when erasing disks. It probably goes without saying, but erasing a disk will remove everything

on it. If you want to erase the disk that contains your current operating system, you’ll have to boot from another volume first, like an external drive or the Install Disc that came with your Mac.

But Disk Utility’s powers to delete go much deeper than that. If you just want to erase the free space on a disk, there’s a handy button for that. Clicking on Security Options before you erase offers several options for more secure file-deletion. You can choose to actually overwrite data, which makes it harder to bring back with file-recovery software. For most purposes, a single-pass erase will keep most people from discovering your secret cache of Jersey Shore episodes. You can opt for a thee-pass erase that will write and erase your disk three times for more security. And if you’re storing state secrets on that machine (or the top-secret recipe for Coca-Cola), Disk Utility offers a seven-pass erase that meets Department of Defense standards for obliterating your data. But that additional security takes a lot longer. If you really need to do a seven-pass erase, get comfortable because it’s going to take a while.—Ray Aguilera

When formatting a drive for use with a Mac, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

Using Time Machine
Can you please explain Time Machine in more detail? Do I need to
purchase an Airport Extreme to make it work?

Time Machine is Apple’s easy-to-use backup solution that has been included with all Macs since Leopard (OS 10. 5). Time Machine backs up to an external hard drive connected to your Mac, or over your network with an AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule backup drive. An AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule is not required—you can simply use any external drive you might have lying around. In the unfortunate event that you lose something important, you can activate Time Machine and easily go back to an earlier version of a file.

Time Machine backs up your computer hourly, keeping the hourly backups for one day, then daily backups for a month, and weekly backups until your drive is full. For the most security, your backup drive should be at least as big as the internal drive in your Mac. The larger your drive, the more discrete versions of your documents Time Machine will be able to store.