How to repair Mac

Hi all, based on my recent experience, i will share steps involved in case you want to explore how to repair your Mac machine (iMac / Macbook). Although it is a huge difference between Windows, the concept is almost similar but using different methods.

Mac doesn't boot to login screen / corrupted/ etc or similar issues:

To repair HDD in case disk corrupted, etc:
1. Reboot your Mac and press and hold Command + R key in your keyboard until the Apple logo appears and loads into a repair option window.
2. Once you see the repair selection window, select disk utility and continue.
3. On the next window, select the disk you wish to repair and click "first aid" button on top the window.
4. The selected disk will be checked for errors and repaired if possible.
5. You may exit the window and reboot your Mac once done.

Note: you may also select Reinstall Mac OS incase you suspect the OS is corrupted and it will reinstall your OS.

To repair HDD using CLI (command line interface):
1. Reboot your Mac and press and hold Command + S key in your keyboard until the Apple logo appears and loads into a command line interface. This will be considered single user mode in Mac.
2. Key in /sbin/fsck -fy and press enter. This will repair your disk and show the progress until complete.
3. Once it is complete, you may type the command reboot and press enter to reboot your Mac.

Robocopy for copying files and folders in Windows

Hi all, I would like to share alternative step to copy files / folders in Windows apart from the conventional Windows Explorer copy method.

This Robocopy method will show the progress of your copy, files / folders being copied, size, number of files copied, skipped and etc.

To use this method, you may follow the below steps:

1. Open command prompt by typing "cmd" without quotes or Windows Powershell by typing "powershell" once clicking Start icon in Windows.
   
   Note: Make sure you right click and click "run as administrator" for the application shortcut, regardless of command prompt or windows powershell - this is to avoid permission issues when running commands.
   
2. Once opened, in order to run robocopy to copy files, you may type the below command to run:
   robocopy /E
   
   /E - copies all folders and folders including subdirectories which is empty
   
   Note: you may explore more additional command/ syntax for robocopy by typing "robocopy /?" without quotes.

Example:

How to reset administrator password in Windows based machine

Hi everyone, it has been long since I last wrote or published a post, this time I will share some tips on how to reset administrator account password in windows machine / PC due to my recent encounter with Windows Server 2012 based VM which I lost track of the password I set. Below are the steps:

Instructions

1. Boot from the Microsoft Windows Server 2012 / related Windows DVD.
2. From the Windows Setup menu, click “Next”.
3. Select “Repair your computer”
4. Under Choose and option, click on “Troubleshoot”.
5. Under Advanced options, click “Command Prompt”.
6. At the command prompt, run the following commands (note: D is the drive where your actual system files located, you need to navigate to the correct drive):
   d:cd windows\system32ren Utilman.exe Utilman.exe.oldcopy cmd.exe Utilman.exe
   
7. Close the command prompt and then click “Continue”.
8. The server / PC should now boot and present the logon screen. Here click Windows Key + U.
9. At the prompt you can now change the password, by typing the following command:
   net user administrator Password123
   This will set the password for the Administrator user to be Password123 (case sensitive). You may set the password of your choice.
10. Close the command prompt by typing exit.
11. Login the administrator account using the password you set earlier (in step 9).

Cleanup Steps

1. Restart your server / PC and once again, boot from the Micrsoft Windows Server 2012 DVD.
2. From the Windows Setup menu, click “Next”.
3. Select “Repair your computer”
4. Under Choose and option, click on “Troubleshoot”.
5. Under Advanced options, click “Command Prompt”.
6. At the command prompt, run the following commands: (note: D is the drive where your actual system files located, you need to navigate to the correct drive):
   d:cd windows\system32ren utilman.exe utilman.exe.newcopy utilman.exe.old utilman.exe
7. Close the command prompt and then click “Continue”.

Hope this helps for those who unfortunately lost their administrator account password that they set and unable to login to windows. This step helps to quick rectify the issue without having to reformat or wipe the disk and install the OS again.