Monthly Archives: September 2011
how to uninstall MacKeeper – updated
MacKeeper – also known as 911 Bundle‘ in the App store — yes, you’ve seen the ads all over the internet, pop ups on your favourite webpages, it seems to be everywhere.
Many people that download and use MacKeeper experience severe problems as a result. If you have installed MacKeeper and wish to remove it, read on.
Uninstalling MacKeeper 2012
If you have used MacKeeper to encrypt any data, unencrypt it now. If you remove MacKeeper without unencrypting your data first, you will not be able to access it later. This only applies to data encrypted with MacKeeper, and not data encrypted using Mac OS built-in encryption services or using any other program.
Once that is done, you can follow MacKeeper’s uninstall instructions here:
http://help.mackeeper.zeobit.com/Manual/GettingStarted/UninstallingMacKeeper.html
These instructions promise that they will remove all MacKeeper’s associated files (see the note ‘Important’ at the bottom of their page). However, you may wish to do Step 4 in the procedure below for earlier versions of MacKeeper to check MacKeeper does not have access to your Keychain.
Uninstalling earlier versions of MacKeeper
If you have a version of MacKeeper earlier than MacKeeper 2012 you should follow the procedure below. You may not find ALL of the following, but any you do find should be removed.
Preparation:
i. Again, a warning: if you have used MacKeeper’s encryption feature, be sure to unencrypt before you uninstall MacKeeper.
Time Machine
ii. If you use Time Machine, leave it connected and do the Time Machine Step (TM step) where indicated. Instructions for the TM step are given in the box in step 1 below.
Clones
iii. If you use a clone without archiving, disconnect the clone and run the procedure below on your internal disk. When it is complete and you have verified everything is OK, connect your clone and wipe the partition using Disk Utility. Then make a new clone.
iv. If you use a clone with archiving, reboot into your clone now and run the procedure below on the clone first. Then shutdown your computer, disconnect the clone from the system and reboot into your internal drive. Run the entire procedure again on your internal drive.
Trash
v. If you have anything in the Trash, empty it now before you start.
The Uninstall Procedure:
Once you have prepared everything as above, you’re ready to start the uninstall procedure.
1. If MacKeeper is running, quit it. From the sidebar in any Finder window, choose your hard disk icon and go to your Library folder. Look in the Application Support folder for the folder inside it called ‘MacKeeper’:
/Library/Application Support/MacKeeper
Click on the folder once.
TM Step
If you are using Time Machine do the TM Step now.Enter Time Machine via the TM icon on your menubar at the top of your screen.
Click the little gear/cog in the Finder window and choose ‘delete all backups of xxx file’.
Enter your Admin password to confirm the delete. Exit Time Machine and then…
If you don’t use TM or after you have completed the TM step, hold down the ‘command’ key and press the ‘delete’ key once to send the file to the trash.
2. Still in Library, look for and trash any of these you find in the same way, remembering if you have Time Machine to do the TM step first in each case:
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.zeobit.MacKeeper.AntiVirus
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.zeobit.MacKeeper.plugin.AntiTheft.daemon
3. If you are using Lion, use the ‘Go’ menu in Finder’s menubar and hold down the ‘option’ key. Choose ‘Library’ from the menu (yes, this is a different Library folder from the one you were just in). If you are using Snow Leopard or Leopard, just click on the little ‘Home‘ icon in the Finder sidebar and navigate to the Library. Then trash any and all of these that you find, remembering to do the TM step (if applicable) first in each case:
Home/Library/Caches/com.zeobit.MacKeeper
Home/Library/Caches/com.zeobit.MacKeeper.Helper
Home/Library/LaunchAgents/com.zeobit.MacKeeper.Helper
Home/Library/LaunchAgents/com.zeobit.MacKeeper.plugin.Backup.agent
Home/Library/Preferences/com.zeobit.MacKeeper.plist
Home/Library/Preferences/com.zeobit.MacKeeper.Helper.plist
Be careful not to delete the wrong files: only those that have got the words ‘zeobit’, ‘MacKeeper’, ’911′ or ’911bundle’ should be trashed.
4. Go to Applications > Utilities > Keychain Access.app and double click on it. Notice the padlock in the window is up there on the left, rather than down the bottom. Click on it and enter your admin password. Now go through all the items in the ‘Keychains‘ list (such as Login, System, Root) with ‘All items’ selected in the ‘Category’ list. Anything you find related to ‘MacKeeper’ or ‘zeobit’, click on it, then choose Edit > Delete from the menu.
(Thanks to Al for also mentioning this point in the Comments below! 
).
5. Open the Activity Monitor utility (Applications>Utilities>Activity Monitor.app), make sure ‘All Processes’ is showing in the drop down menu just over on the right of the dialogue box, then scroll down the list and see if any processes called ‘MacKeeper’, ‘zeobit’ or ’911 bundle’ are still running. Older versions of MacKeeper may have a ‘WINE’ process running, so also look for ‘wine’. Anything you find, click on it and hit ‘Quit Process’ (top left).
6. Go to your Applications folder from a Finder window and select MacKeeper (if you have Time Machine, do the TM step now). Then, hold down ‘command’ and press ‘delete’ once. If you assigned MacKeeper to be pinned in the Dock, be sure to also drag the icon off the Dock and release it anywhere over the desktop. It will, satisfyingly, disappear in the ‘poof’ of a cloud. 
7. When you’re done filling up your trash can with all this junk, click on the Finder> Empty Trash.
8. Go to
> System Preferences > Users & Groups (or ‘Accounts’ for Snow L) | Login Items
If you see anything to do with MacKeeper in the list of items there, highlight it, then click the little minus ‘-’ button near the bottom of the list.
9. Restart your Mac. Everything should be back to normal, but check the Activity Monitor one last time to be sure.
10. After restart, be sure to fix your system permissions. If you encounter any problems that you did not have before, fix the ACLs too.
**If you are running a clone, remember to follow the instructions given above under “Preparation: Clones”.**
Supplementary: If you have a problem with MacKeeper pop-ups while using your browser, try clearing out the caches, like this:
In Safari menubar, choose ‘Safari > Reset Safari’. Make sure all the options are checked.
This will not only clear out your caches, but everything else stored by the browser. Don’t worry, it won’t affect your bookmarks, but it will reset your ‘top sites’ and history.
In Firefox menubar, choose ‘Tools > Clear Recent History…’ and choose ‘Everything’. Again, it’ll clear everything out but won’t delete your bookmarks.
Obviously, if you use any other browsers like Opera or something you’ll have to find the same options for those too.
Related Posts
block MacKeeper and other browser ads
protect your mac from malware viruses and other threats
NOTES
1. If you have any problems carrying out the steps, try starting your Mac up in Safe mode, and then running the procedure.
2. You can safely ignore any MacKeeper files that are in the Logs, BOM or Receipts folders.
3. If you have only downloaded the MacKeeper package but not ran the installer, you only need to send the .pkg file in your Downloads folder to the Trash. That’s it!
Acknowledgements
This post has been refined and improved over time thanks to suggestions and replies made in the Comments and on Apple Support Communities. Thanks especially to Al, Lyndon and Jack.
taming Versions…sort of
If you’re working with large files in Keynote, Pages, Numbers or other Versions-supported programs, and making multiple changes at regular intervals, Versions could just be eating up your hard disk and causing a big-slow down in your work.
If you want to reclaim all that space and speed things back up, go delete the .documentrevisions-V100 folder in the root directory of your hard disk, the place where Lion stores all your document versions. Be aware that this means you will lose ALL Version history for ALL your Version-supported applications. If you are comfortable with that, read on…
You need to do four things: enable the root user, show hidden files, change the permissions on the folder and finally check the folder’s contents and delete it. Here’s how:
1. Show hidden files
In Terminal (Applications > Utilities) type
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
Press ‘Return’, then type
killall Finder
2. Enable root user
Go to > System Preferences…Users & Groups
Click ‘Login Options’
Click ‘Network Account Server: Join’
In the resulting dialogue box, ignore the text input and click the button below, ‘Open Directory Utility’
Click the padlock at the bottom of the next box and enter your admin password.
At the top menu bar of Directory Utility, choose the ‘Edit’ menu > Enable Root User
If you are requested to set a password for it, set the same one as your Admin password (this ensures you won’t forget it).
Log out through > Log out (username), then log back in with user ‘root’ and the password you just enabled.
3. Change Permissions
Now go look in the root directory of your hard disk.
You should see a greyed out folder called ‘DocumentRevisions-V100′. If it has a ‘no entry’ icon on it, click the folder and press ‘Cmd-i’ on the keyboard (or right click the folder and choose ‘Get info’).
Scroll down to the bottom of the box, click the padlock, and enter your root password if necessary. Change all the permissions to ‘read & write’, and click on the ‘gear wheel/cog’ and choose ‘Apply to enclosed items’ if it appears.
Choose ‘OK’ in the warning dialogue box.
4. Deleting Versions history
Now you are ready to go and look inside the Versions directory. I recommend you have a nosey about and check the file sizes both of the folder itself and of the individual contents. Now, here’s a warning: you can’t just delete some of the contents in the folder. If you do, in about 24hrs Lion will see that the folder is corrupt and mark the whole thing as ‘bad’ and make a new Versions (.DocumentRevisions-V100) folder. What this means is that you will lose access to Versions in the UI, but you won’t get your disk space back as it won’t delete the ‘bad’ folder.
The only option is to either lock the thing back up and leave it alone, OR delete the entire .DocumentRevisions-V100 folder with all its contents.
Restart your computer logging in as your usual user.
Lion will make a new, empty DocumentRevisions-V100 folder to replace the one you deleted and start filling it up with versions you make from then on. You’ll have reclaimed your disk space (and removed all your previous versions), but you’ll need to keep doing the same process at regular intervals.
NOTES
a. No, this does not affect your original saves or any duplicates. Only the versions.
b. Messing about as a root user can have serious consequences if you mess with other stuff. Do as the instructions say and nothing else unless you know what you’re doing. After you’ve deleted the Versions folder and emptied the Trash, go back to Directory Utility > Edit and disable the root user.
c. To stop seeing the hidden files, type the same command as given in 1. above into Terminal, but change ‘YES’ to ‘NO’. Don’t forget to do the ‘killall’ command afterwards.
d. If you have trouble saving documents without re-booting after deleting .DocumentRevisions-V100, try this script from Apple Discussions user Yvan. This will recreate a clean (i.e., empty) Versions folder every time you reboot, saving you the hassle of regularly cleaning out the .DocumentRevision-V100 folder (as well as preventing any ‘Save’ issues.)
turn off Resume – the definitive solution!
Finally, someone’s come up with the definitive – and as far as I know only – successful solution to turning of the OS X Lion Resume feature. This little trick from poster billearl will stop your Mac opening all the apps that were still running when you shutdown/restart.
1. Close all windows and quit all apps.
2. In Finder, hold down the Option key and click ‘Go’ in the menu bar at the top.
3. Choose ‘Library’ (you have to have the Option key held down to see Library in the menu).
4. Navigate to Library > Preferences > ByHost > com.apple.loginwindow.[xxxxxxxxx].plist
The [xxxxxxxx] represent some interminable string of numbers and letters. Don’t mistake it for the similarly entitled Unix executable file. What you need to check is that its ‘loginwindow’ and ‘.plist’ at the end.
5. When you’re sure you’ve identified the right file, select it and press Cmd-i to show the ‘Get Info’ window. Click the ‘Locked’ option.
6. Now, test that it works. Close the ‘Get info’ window and the finder window. Open up Safari, Preview and a couple of windows. Do a restart and behold — if you followed the instructions correctly — a clean desktop!
Now, a small word of caution. One thing this trick won’t do is stop your apps like Safari and Preview from re-opening the last page/file when you manually fire them up after restart. In order to get them to forget your last opened page/file, you also need to do this:
7. Go to the ~/Library/ Saved Application State folder.
8. Select all the contents inside and send them to Trash.
9. Right-click on the Saved Application State folder’s icon and choose ‘Get Info’ (or press cmd-i).
10. Click the ‘Locked’ option. If it’s greyed out, go down to the padlock at the bottom, click on that and enter your password. You should now be able to check the ‘Locked’ option.
And finally, after those ten (phew…) steps…no more Resume!
running PowerPc apps on Lion
If you’ve upgraded to Lion from Snow Leopard and you can’t live without your PPC-only apps, you have a couple of choices. One answer would be to partition your disk and install Snow Leopard as well, allowing you to boot between the two operating systems by holding down the ‘option’ key when you power up. Alternatively, if you don’t want to use up your internal disk’s precious space, you could install Snow Leopard on its own dedicated external disk. Have a look here for instructions.
A different answer could be to run Snow Leopard concurrently within Lion using virtualisation software such as Parallels or VMware, though there is some question about the legality of this move (more on that below).
Note that I haven’t tried this myself, but the word around the community is that it does work. Take a look here for guidelines on how to get going, or follow this excellent guide here.. If you have Parallels and your SL install disks already, nothing to stop you from giving it a go. If you don’t have it, you can download the trial and test it out for free. If you decide to keep it, you’ll need to pay for Parallels when the trial expires.
Now, about that legality issue. In the past, the End User license agreement that Apple supplied with its OS disks prevented you from doing something like this. However, the new agreement under the App-store downloaded Lion states that you are allowed:
to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software. <— source
Now that doesn’t necessarily imply you’re allowed to run SL under a virtualisation machine. This agreement comes with Lion when its downloaded from the App Store, but its unclear whether it refers to all iterations of OS X or just the latest one. That’d be one for the lawyers I guess, but it is probably safe to say that so long as you’re using licenced Apple software and authentic Apple machines, you are unlikely to incur Apple’s ire. That said, always remember that what you do with your computer and your software, you do so at your own risk!
Related articles:
Macworld: VMware Fusion update lets users virtualize Leopard, Snow Leopard
how to turn a Lion into a (Snow) Leopard
Well, a lot of folks are so unhappy with the new Lion operating system that they’re returning to Snow Leopard. Even some people who are buying new Macs with Lion pre-installed are wishing they could get rid of the new hairy cat for the cooler and more efficient previous one.
In this post I’m going to point you to a few links that should help you do just that.
What you will need:
Snow Leopard Install disks
External Drive
Carbon Copy Cloner (free software).
Safety first, folks! Go to How to Clone your hard drive — do this before you start! It’s your insurance, and it’s far better and easier than Time Machine. Even if you use TM, make a clone too!
Take a look at How to Install Snow Leopard on an External Disk — If you’ve already got Lion on your internal, install SL on an external first. Try it out for a week or so. If you’re convinced you’re going to revert fully (rather than just run both in tandem, like I do), then clone it back to your internal HDD using carbon copy cloner, as detailed above in How to Clone your hard drive.
Finally, How to revert your Mac to Snow Leopard offers a comprehensive guide from ASC community member ds store.
Good luck!
Have you reverted to Snow Leopard? Let us know how it went, and why you decided to ditch the Lion in the comments below.
