Dealing with Windows Hard Disks on a Mac

Issue: You have an external USB disk that you want to use on your Mac but disk utility complains that the "Disk Erase Failed" and no matter what you do the drive won't erase.

Solution: Thanks to Rick Mead who replied to a thread on the Apple Discussion forums, you should be able to get the disk partitioned and erased properly.

• Plug the drive in
• Open Disk Utility and select the drive (not the partition)
• On the left side of the screen you will will see "First Aid, Erase, Partition, RAID & Restore"
• Click Partition
• Under Volume Scheme select the drop down box and select 1 partition (assuming you only want the computer to see the drive as one large drive).
• Click "Options..." below the white box and change the selection from "Master Boot Record" to "GUID Partition Table".
• Click Apply and you will be done.

This is the process for formatting ANY Hard Drive that comes as a windows NTFS system. The reason it would error on you is because you were trying to change the format of the partition while leaving the drive as a Windows drive.

BOOTMGR is Missing Error Starting Windows Vista / 7

Issue: Error appears on screen when booting "Bootmgr is missing"

Solution: Though this can by symptomatic of a failing hard disk or a virus infection, in my case it was simply that I had an external USB hard disk turned on when I started up the computer. I must have USB in front of HDD in the boot order. Turning the drive off fixed the problem.

Blackberry Enterprise Server Controller Service Fails to Start - Error 5003

Issue: Client reports that Blackberries are no longer syncing with the server. Notice that the "Blackberry Controller" service is stopped and when restarted fails with Error 5003.

Solution: Stop the "DNS" service and then restart the "Blackberry Controller" service. Here is a convenient script for it:

net stop "DNS Server"
net start "BlackBerry Controller"
net start "DNS Server"

There is apparently some issue with DNS conflicting with some port or ports required for BES. Some have suggested making the "DNS" service dependent on the "Blackberry Controller" service but I don't know if I would go that far. Some have also attached that script to the recovery tab of the "Blackberry Controller" services properties.

Backup Exec 12.5 on SBS 2008 Hotfix install error LU1812

Issue: Client with Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 Standard and Backup Exec 12.5 Small Business Edition unable to install hotfixes that are queued up in Liveupdate. Liveupdate reports error LU18212 and symantec troubleshooting links provided in Backup Exec mention repairing or re-installing MS XML.

Solution: When running Backup Exec with the intention of installing hotfixes, select "Run as Administrator" or disable User Account Control which for obvious reasons is not the preferred method.