Safari Plug-In Consumed 395% of CPU

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mac, os x, plug-in using all cpu, safari plug-in

I was browsing the internet this afternoon, when my cpu menu meters all maxed out, turning red. WTF?, I’m not doing much, only the Safari browser, apple mail, and calendar applications are running. No Photoshop, no Lightroom.

Here’s how to hunt down the cpu hog:

Run activity monitor, sort by % cpu.  This showed that a Safari plug-in was consuming 395% of the system’s cpu. How can this be more than 100%? My iMac has 4 cores, each of which is 100%.  Activity monitor showed the runaway plug-in is npgtpo3dautoplugin.plugin.

I killed this process. CPU use dropped to a few percent.

Now to prevent it from happening again, I looked in /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/  I found the offender and moved it to the trash. Since this is a system folder, I had to provide an admin password to do this.

To see the plug-ins in your Safari, on the Safari menu click Help and then Installed Plug-ins.

Now you know how to trouble shoot and fix this problem!

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Using OS X’s Migration Assistant

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apple, Macintosh, migration assistant, os x

I recently got a new iMac and used OS X’s migration assistant to move all of the applications, files, user accounts, settings, etc from my MacBook Pro to the new iMac. Getting a new computer is fun, but it can be a nightmare to get it set up the way you want. This was my first mac to mac migration, and I’m happy to say that it went really well. There was 1 rough spot, but it was my error.

I used Apple’s Time Machine continuous backup program on my laptop, backing up to an external hard disk.  When I ran the migration assistant, an option was to use a Time Machine disk from the old computer as the source. You can select what you want migrated, I picked all the options since the new computer had only OS X on it. It was the kind of job one starts up and walks away from, checking back later as it is a lengthy process.

It moved all my email, applications, accounts, key chain items, encrypted disk image (an OS X way to keep a set of files, as a disk image, private), iTunes music, my calendars, all the files in all the user accounts (3 on that laptop). I did not have to install a single application on the iMac, they all came over. With each apps settings and configuration data. I expected the Apple apps like iTunes, Safari, etc to migrate but so did iBank, Firefox, Opera, Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. Photoshop complained that it was not licensed, I have yet to unlicense it on the old machine and move the license to the new one.

The only problem I ran into was I created an account on the new iMac with the same name as an account on the MacBook when I initially set up the iMac. Since I was logged onto that account when I ran migration assistant, it was not able to replace this account with the one by the same name from Time Machine. OK. So I told it to skip this account. When it finished I renamed the account and ran migration assistant again, this time selecting only that account to move. Worked fine.

Both machines were running the same version of OS X, 10.8.4, I don’t know how well it works if the OS versions are different.

Updated my Mac to Snow Leopard

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apple, mac, os x

I just updated the my MacBook Pro to OS X 10.6.2

The only problem I had was with the menu meters I added to my menu that show cpu, memory, and network usage. I downloaded a new version and this was resolved.

New Printer: Samsung ML-2851

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mac, os x, samsung ML-2851

We bought a laser printer, a Samsung ML-2851. It connects to our LAN via an ethernet cable, so it’s available to all our computers. Well, after a major hassle that is. You see, the printer did not ship with the OS X software needed to configure it. I knew I wanted it to have a fixed IP address, I knew what that was by the port on my router. It did ship with a Mac friendly postscript print driver. It has a nice web based set up utility – but we could not get to that until we were able to configure its tcp/ip settings. After quite a bit of frustration it occurred to me to check out the windows programs on the printer CD. We have a windows based netbook, and we found an IP configuration program on it. WHY IS THERE NO OS X IP CONFIGURATION PROGRAM WITH A DEVICE THAT CLAIMS OS X COMPATIBILITY?? The printer test page, generated by holding down the power button for a few seconds, contained the mac address. Once we found this program, the rest was not too bad. Beware that configuring the tcp/ip parameters is not a trivial task, and it required a corresponding change to my router configuration. Not plug and play.

Initial opinion: We like the printer. Print quality is good, it prints duplex (both sides of paper), it’s quiet after an initial warm up. Mac support is seriously deficient.

Resize Multiple Images in OS X Preview

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image resize, os x, resize multiple images

Usingmac.com had a useful tip: How to resize multiple images using Preview. I tried it, it does work on Leopard. This seems like a great way to create a bunch of thumbnails. Be careful, though, when you save the resized images. It overwrites them. I copied the images I wanted to resize to a new folder, then resized them. Keeps my original images as is.

1. Open images to be resized in Preview
2. Select images you want to resize.
3. On the Preview menu Tools -> Adjust size.
4. File -> Save All  The images are overwritten.