Newbie

[movermike]

just switched over from 25yrs of PC to an iMac a few months ago. nice op system. my first post probably does not mean i have a problem, but i am curious. when i 1st hooked up the iMac, i took my old Maxtor one touch III 300gb backup drive, and hooked it up via 800mh Firewire ( or is it 400?) to Time Machine. works great. but, in Finder, under devices, i used to see my Mac HD & the Maxtor. not anymore. nowhere in finder are any hardware devices listed anymore, and not even on my De4sktop, as they used to be. they work, and disk utility finds them. anyone know why?is this a problem? Thankie...mike

[bobtomay]

Open a Finder window

Then in the menu go to Finder - Preferences

Make sure you have a check mark next to Hard Disks and External Disks.

You'll want to do this on both the General tab and the Sidebar tab.

[PapaNoHair]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Mac (and this forum!!)

[MaDDoG]

Welcome MoverMike. Sit down relax and stay a while.
So tell us did Bobtomay's advice work?

[MacHeadCase]

Welcome to MacApper, movermike! Hope you enjoy your stay.

And welcome to the Mac! :coolthumbup:

[movermike]

all the boxes mentioned were checked, still "devices" stays empty-although i checked "computer" and it lists my "IMac". thanks for the welcomes...

[MacHeadCase]

Just to give us a better idea, you run which exact OS X version? 10.4.11 for example? 10.5.2?

[movermike]

10.5.3 Leopard.not the newest iMac, the 6 months old 2ghz 20".

[MacHeadCase]

Do you see the devices on the desktop? none at all?

[MacHeadCase]

Try what is suggested in this Apple Discussions thread, Time Capsule not Reliable--Drive won't mount (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1571285&tstart=15).

Or re-apply the 10.5.3 update combo by doing this: unplug all unnecessary peripherals and restart by holding down the Shift key to boot into Safe Boot mode.

Log into your user account.

Launch Apple's Disk Utility and repair disk permissions.

Go to Apple's website -> support -> downloads.

Spot the 10.5.3 Combo update for your Mac model and download it to your desktop. Quit all applications and then install: during install don't use the Mac, don't launch any apps, just let the install run its course.

After install, restart normally.

Report back to let us know how it goes.

[movermike]

on the desktop, except the "DMG" icons, i believe they are called, of files i've downloaded, such as "Transmission", which won't work,(seems like a pattern,eh?) and "Weatherdock" which does work. all things being equal, if i see no performance issues, can i not forgo the changes and let sleeping dogs lie? (which should not sit well with me, 'cause i've always been the kind of pseudo-nerd that wanted to know why things happen.) goodnight...

[MaDDoG]

the dmg files are just for download and install. Right click them and delete them when you have installed them. Go into finder and applications to fin the instaled program and open it. When its open you can right click the icon on the dock and have keep it on the dock for future use if you like.

If you go into finder are the drive listed? Or when you open system preferences and click on startup disk? I am assuming that the drive was formatted as fat32 or mac and not NTFS.

[bobtomay]

Only have had a Time Machine for a week and not done anything with it myself yet, haven't even backed up to it yet.

But, just realized it is not show on my desktop either.

A liitle digging (not much really, followed MHC's link), found that:

For it to be shown on the desktop, in Finder - Preferences, you need a check next to Connected Servers - both of the same 2 tabs - see if you have that checked and what happens.

And if it is checked, try the old Windows trick we use to use, have seen it work even in OS X. Uncheck it, re-boot, re-check it.

And, possibly rename your TC if you have any special characters or spaces in the name.

FYI: The time machine did resolve all the airport issues I was having on the MBP with connecting to my DIR-655.

[Kilted]

Are we talking Time Machine or Time capsule here ?
My Time machine icon sometimes vanishes I just plug it in and out again .
Movermike if you have done some updates and installs you should maybe do a Verify permissions via the Disk utility in Utilities folder (Applications) Just select your drive in the left hand panal and click on the verify permissions button (The process takes and 6 mins with my 500Gig drive)
Sometimes a Re-boot or logging out and in again works wonders too

[movermike]

nothing on desktop; now, this is my mac hd & my time machine aftermarket maxtor drive not showing...not in finder either-did the verify permissions and repair(even though no major errors-some things didn't match, mostly a few java apps-nothing that in my limited mac use would hide my hd's...rebooted-nada.(many years ago i was an IBM & HP operating system analyst-the original DOS & HP 3000 systems, so i can stumble through a bit!)- ..
by the by, did i mention that theyused to show everywhere...that stopped about 1 month after system installed-5 months ago...mike

[MacHeadCase]

Well it might be worth it to re-apply the 10.5.3 combo update, in this case.

For the install, follow all the directions I give in this post (http://macapper.com/forums/showthread.php?p=11269#post11269) in the correct order.

Good luck! :)

And report back to let us know how this goes.

[movermike]

from your post,re-installed 10.5.3 update,no change-no hd,internal or ex, on desktop or finder-its not hurting anything, but annoying. they were there for about 4 weeks, then gone and i didn't notice at the time...ah well, nothing ventured,etc...thanks.mike...

[movermike]

after i have decided to live with the no disks item, i saw that software uptate wants me to move up to 10.5.4.ok,no prob, done...except now my system is acting like my old Dell;slow,buggy,web pages take longer to load, and something like:
{Fatal error: out of dynamic memory in yy_create_buffer() in Unknown on line 0} from firefox many times. safari giving me trouble also.i tried to do a rollback to 10.5.3 but the installer said my hd's were not acceptable, so apple wont allow it. always something,eh? is this the wrong board for op sys,i just thought...

[MacHeadCase]

OK time for you to create a new user on your Mac. Log in the new account and see how it goes. If it is the same in there as in your regular account, the problem is system-wide.

If the weirdness is only present in your usual user account and the new account goes well, there is some type of corruption or incompatibility in your older account.

[movermike]

went to new account, systems seems to run better, but its in the accessing of my bookedmark sites that the problem lies. (in my orig acct) the pre loaded sites under new acct work ok. also, (again, should i be on software board) upgraded firefox, as have done b4, but this time,all my login cookies are gone. this never happenned b4. went to FF V 3. when i tried to use FF ver 2.0.0.15, cookies were still not there. could this be from max X upgrade? went to FF board, and no mention of this happening to anyone else.