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Posts about Mac OS X written by smittytone. The Nano command line text editor has reached a new milestone: version 5.0. There are the usual array of bug fixes and tweaks, but what caught my eye among the release notes was the introduction of a scroll indicator. Search the web with voice or game controller, discover trending content and earn Rewards points with the Microsoft Bing app, optimized for Xbox.

Recently, while creating a physical back-up of my Mac, I ended up corrupting the Micro SD card I was using to perform the back-up operation. This translated into a one line cautionary alert inside the related blog post:

Turns out removing an SD card during a 100+ GB 77,000 file transfer from a Mac to an SD card isn’t the best idea – despite what a five year-old might tell you.

After several hours of toiling with Disk Utility, diskutil and dd on macOS the furthest I got was to experience the same issues as another individual who posted on Apple Exchange 3 years ago - their question unresolved, until now.

In this post I will explain how to use USB bootable media on a MacBook to dual-boot into a Linux operating system to unbrick a corrupted SD card.

In order to boot your macOS into another operating system you need to actually have another operating system to boot into. In my case I had a spare 32 GB USB stick I use for privacy online called Tails (Debian) so I used that.

There are, of course, other options for dual-booting a Mac from USB. And I don’t necessarily recommend even trying to install Tails to a USB stick without a Windows machine as installing Tails from Mac is a kludge. But if you can get your hands on a live OS like Tails it’s fairly trivial to fix an SD card even when diskutil on macOS is throwing Error: -69877: Couldn’t open device.

Regardless of which dual-boot operating system you choose consider choosing a Linux distribution such as Tails to make your secondary OS more useful than a one-time SD card unbricking operation. You’ll thank yourself for it later.

The Apple support page Mac startup key combinations covers a number of methods you may use to make your Mac do special things when it reboots. In How to Backup & Restore macOS Mojave I covered just one. In this post we’ll cover another:

If you have a USB stick with Tails or another bootable OS installed you can access the second OS from Startup Manager by holding down Option during system bootup when you restart the Mac with a USB stick containing the OS inserted:

If you’re using Tails go ahead and choose EFI Boot to bypass booting from Macintosh HD and, instead, boot directly from the live OS on the USB stick.

Micros Microsoft Excel

After selecting the EFI Boot option from Startup Manager the Tails bootloader will run, presenting you with two startup options:

Choose the first option to start Tails normally and wait a moment for it to start – which it will do directly from USB. At this point you will see a GUI with configuration options. Review the options then choose Start Tails to complete the OS start-up sequence and log-in to Tails' Debian-based GUI:

With the secondary OS now started it’s time to do something useful like using Disks to recover a seemingly bricked SD card.

But first, a word of caution:

The same caution applies to the USB stick, as removing the stick will instantly cause Tails to wipe itself from your Mac’s volatile memory should you need.

Depending on who you ask the definition of a “bricked” device may vary. For the purposes of this post a bricked device is one which no longer functions in macOS but may function in other, ahem, more capable operating systems (like Debian).

So let’s get right down to it.

Start Disks

While logged-in to the Tails-Debian GUI, press the Command key on your keyboard to open a search dialog, type the word disks then press Enter to open Disks.

With your micro SD card inserted you should see something like this:

Depending on how jacked your SD card is you may see something else. Regardless we’re here to try and fix it so click the gear icon and choose to format the SD card and ONLY the SD card. If you choose the wrong option and wipe out your Mac’s SSD there is little hope left for you.

Format SD Card

When I did this I tried a few different options not knowing what would work and what wouldn’t. What didn’t work was an NTFS volume. My Mac running macOS 10.14.3 (Mojave) had absolutely no idea what to do with it. In hindsight it seems obvious NTFS wouldn’t work. But I was getting desperate.

What did work was formatting the micro SD card using the following options:

Even on a large micro SD card quick format should take no longer than 2-3 minutes to finish. And when it’s done it’s time to boot back into macOS to complete the unbricking.

Initialize SD Card

After you’ve formatted your micro SD as described, and with the micro SD card still inserted in the card reader (the USB stick doesn’t matter), restart your Mac and let it boot into macOS as you might normally do.

Upon login macOS will scan for hardware changes and, as a result, find the unpartitioned SD card. It should then automatically let you know something’s wonky by opening a dialog with an alert message and three options:

And now the magic moment.

Select Initialize… to start Disk Utility on your Mac and use it to try to Erase the previously unusable (bricked) micro SD card one more time:

With the erasure fields filled-out choose Erase to recreate the partition table on the SD card, format and erase it:

If you see Operation Successful when the format completes you just unbricked a corrupted micro SD card. It’ll work just like new. If it didn’t work, well hey, at least you tried right? You may have lost an SD card due but you learned how to dual-boot a Linux operating system on macOS.

I’ve been using Tails on my MacBook Pro for about 3 years. The only issue I’ve ever run into is occasionally needing to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) following the steps on Apple Support. You’ll know when you need to do this because it’ll appear your Mac won’t start. Not to worry though, I’ve done this a number of times on different machines and never experienced problems.

In this post I explained how a corrupted and, for all intents and purposes, otherwise “bricked” micro SD card may be restored to working condition by dual-booting the Tails (Debian) operating system alongside macOS on a Macintosh.

So the next time you see a warning message in a tech article take heed:

This post would not have been possible without the curious fingers of a five year-old, and man’s unequivocal thirst for knowledge. Kids. Yet another good reason for backing-up your files on macOS Mojave.

Note

Office 365 ProPlus is being renamed to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. For more information about this change, read this blog post.

Symptoms

When you start Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac, or when you try to open a new presentation, you experience one of the following conditions:

• The program closes unexpectedly.

• Error message:

Resolution

To resolve this problem, follow these steps.

Microsoft PowerPoint 2008 or later

Step 1: Remove Powerpoint Preferences

1. Quit all Microsoft Office for Mac programs.

2. On the Go menu, click Home.

3. Open Library.

   Note

   The Library folder is hidden in Mac OS X Lion. To display this folder, hold down the OPTION key while you click the Go menu.

4. Open Preferences.

5. Drag com.microsoft.powerpoint.plist to the desktop.If you cannot locate the file, PowerPoint is using the default preferences. Go to step 7.

6. Open PowerPoint, and check whether the problem still occurs. If the problem still occurs, quit PowerPoint, restore the file to its original location, and go to the next step. If the problem is resolved, drag com.microsoft.powerpoint.plist to the Trash.

7. Quit all Microsoft Office for Mac programs.

8. On the Go menu, click Home.

9. Open Library.

   Note

   The Library folder is hidden in Mac OS X Lion. To display this folder, hold down the OPTION key while you click the Go menu.

10. Open Preferences.

11. Open Microsoft, and then drag com.microsoft.powerpoint.prefs.plist to the desktop.If you cannot locate the file, PowerPoint is using the default preferences. Go to step 13.

12. Open PowerPoint, and check whether the problem still occurs. If the problem still occurs, quit PowerPoint, restore the file to its original location, and go to the next step. If the problem is resolved, drag com.microsoft.powerpoint.prefs.plist to the Trash.

13. Quit all Microsoft Office for Mac programs.

14. On the Go menu, click Home.

15. Open Library.

    Note

    The Library folder is hidden in Mac OS X Lion. To display this folder, hold down the OPTION key whil you click the Go menu.

16. Open Preferences.

17. Open Microsoft, and then Office 2008 (or Office 2011).

18. Drag PowerPoint Toolbars (12) or Microsoft PowerPoint Toolbars to the desktop.

    If you cannot locate the file, PowerPoint is using the default preferences. Go to 'Step 2: Try PowerPoint in Safe Mode Boot.' https://church-download.mystrikingly.com/blog/bitcoin-bar-1-0.

19. Open PowerPoint, and check whether the problem still occurs. If the problem still occurs, quit PowerPoint, restore the file to its original location, and go to 'Step 2: Try PowerPoint in Safe Mode Boot.' If the problem is resolved, drag PowerPoint Toolbars (12) or Microsoft PowerPoint Toolbars to the Trash.

Step 2: Try Powerpoint in Safe Mode Boot

Restart your computer in the Safe Mode. For more information about how to restart your computer in the Safe Mode, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base

2398596 How to use a 'clean startup' to determine whether background programs are interfering with Office for Mac

Once in safe mode, test Powerpoint. If the issue continues to occur, proceed to next step.

Step 3: Remove and then reinstall Office

For information how to remove and then reinstall Office, see the following article:

If the issue continues to occur in Safe mode, proceed to Step 3.

Abaqus free full version. Step 4: Use the 'Repair Disk Permissions' option

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You can use the Repair Disk Permissions option to troubleshoot permissions problems in Mac OS X 10.2 or later versions. To use the Repair Disk Permissions option, follow these steps:

1. On the Go menu, click Utilities.
2. Start the Disk Utility program.
3. Click the primary hard disk drive for your computer.
4. Click the First Aid tab.
5. Click Repair Disk Permissions.

Note

Disk Utility program only repairs software that is installed by Apple. This utility also repairs folders, such as the Applications folder. However, this utility does not repair software that is in your home folder.

Reference

Microsoft PowerPoint 2004

1. Quit all Microsoft Office for Mac programs. Dragon lines slot.

2. On the Go menu, click Home.

3. Open Library, and then open Preferences.

4. Drag com.microsoft.powerpoint.plist to the desktop.

   If you cannot locate the file, PowerPoint is using the default preferences. Go to step 6.

5. Open PowerPoint, and check whether the problem still occurs. If the problem still occurs, quit PowerPoint, restore the file to its original location, and go to the next step. If the problem is resolved, drag com.microsoft.powerpoint.plist to the Trash.

6. Quit all Microsoft Office for Mac programs.

7. On the Go menu, click Home.

8. Open Library, and then open Preferences.

9. Open Microsoft, and then drag com.microsoft.powerpoint.prefs.plist to the desktop.

   If you cannot locate the file, PowerPoint is using the default preferences. Go to step 11.

10. Open PowerPoint, and check whether the problem still occurs. If the problem still occurs, quit PowerPoint, restore the file to its original location, and go to the next step. If the problem is resolved, drag com.microsoft.powerpoint.prefs.plist to the Trash.

11. Quit all Microsoft Office for Mac programs.

12. On the Go menu, click Home.

13. Open Library, and then open Preferences.

14. Open Microsoft, and then drag PowerPoint Toolbars (11) to the desktop.

    If you cannot locate the file, PowerPoint is using the default preferences. The problem is not related to the preference files.

15. Open PowerPoint, and check whether the problem still occurs. If the problem still occurs, quit PowerPoint, and then restore the file to its original location. The problem is not related to the preference files. If the problem is resolved, drag PowerPoint Toolbars (11) to the Trash.

Third-party information disclaimer

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, about the performance or reliability of these products.

Third-party contact disclaimer

Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information.