[Lord Xeb]

Hey guys, this is going to be my on going thread to help out the community and to explain my....annoyance of my every day job as a mac tech. This thread will be periodically updated with stories, situations, and what I had to do to solve them. Some may be the same, others may be different, but bare in mind on one thing: This is to help you guys... and to vent my rage before I pop a vain.

People who I will refer to (Not real names):

Lee - Service Supervisor - Chill dude
Jim - GM - <3 this guy. BEST MANAGER EVER!
Francis - New guy and fresh meat.
Pete - PC tech
Serg - Another PC Tech
Ali - My fellow mac tech.
Larry - God among gods. Old service manager and he knows something about something about something. Guy is a problem fixer and a damn good one at that. Works upstairs as well.
James - The owner, boss.
Gilbert - Another sales guy

SC - Sister Company - Upstairs and where men are men.
TL - Tech Land. Where I work and the otherside of the business.

Betsy - The ever so loving trash can.

Spoiler: Table of Contents

Adventures with a wonderful machine.... and file vault...

Double trouble?

SHE RETURNS!

OH DEAR GOD! MAIL! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Broken LCD...

The Fans...THEY HUNGER! FOR MORE!

WOAH! WOAH! WOAH! Hold on a second! You did what?!

So... Why is your machine shipped wtih a single tissue in the box and no packing?

So... Why won't you install?

IPHOTO!!!! DAMN YOU!!! AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHY IN THE HELL CAN'T THINGS JUST GO AS PLANNED?

Herka Derk, mah be no boot

Xeb is working on a PC job? wut?

ITS GONE! ITS FINALLY GONE! OMG I AM GOING TO CRY, BUT IT IS FINALLY GONE!

I thought this upgrade was suppose to be easy...

Dust? Wait what? Dust? WHY THE HELL WON'T IT GO AWAY?! FAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Another monstrous iPhoto Libra- Wait, what the hell is this?

So... What kind of mess is this crap? And why the hell am I always getting mixed up in this?

An ANNOYING continuation to somethingPrevious...
Ah poop...

Someone... Please, for the love of god, kill this lady!!!! I think she broken....

WHHHHHHYYYYY????!!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Who the... what? WHY! JUST FREAKING WORK GOD DAMMIT!! mad.gif

Hold on... wait.. what the hell? THERE IS SOMETHING GROWING INSIDE THIS THING!

So you cannot delete these files, huh?

Wait, whao. Um... can I say it? Holy-! THIS THING IS FAST BRAH! Wait... hold on... what? WHY IS IT DOING THAT?

Wait... Um... is that 2.. What? These are new? WHY!??!?

A Month... of Hell

LET THE TANKING COMMENCE!!!!!

What in sam's hell is this mess?

FUUUUUU MOUNTAIN LION!!!! GAHAHAuhasdiufhasiudnhfuiabewghnSFRiuyaWSE$FRYIUbgnhazsweÏ˝ˇ¨ˆnhbaejswuiFgr

O-o Uh...gaiz, we gotz a problemz!

And the importance of Permissions IIISSS!!!!

Oh the doom! THE DOOM! THE DOOOOOOOMMMM!!!! AHHHH SPOTLIGHT Y U NO SHINE?

FUUUUUUUUUUUU Y U NO RUN FAST?

Oh boy... Mac Pro with now power, a time limit, and.... a Challenge?

Oh, why hello thar. I see wha- OH FOR THE LOVE GOD AND MOTHER OF ALL THAT IS HOLY!

Well... herb-derb Apple does it again.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it sure in the hell seems to be something it is not.

OUTLOOK!!!!!!!!!

OH HAI GAIZ! I HAZ UPDATE!

Oh Outlook. How I hate you so. Please, take this bottle of cyanide and DISAPPEAR!

Keychains and Mail. Oh boy!

An Act of Vengeance...

Oh the joys of Entourage. Oh such crappy software, why do you make me want to dangle from a tree?

^^^^ I did all that without messing up once.

 

[Lord Xeb]

Adventures with a wonderful machine.... and file vault...

Friday, a customer brought in her machine to upgrade the RAM. Usually these are quick things that I knock out in about 5 minutes... but things went south fast.

After installing the RAM, I give the machine back to the customer (who shouldn't even be allowed to use a computer to begin with... this thing was gross and dirty. Desktop was full of clutter). As soon as I give it back, she checks the machine to see how it is running. Well, to no surprise (as I knew there was further work that needed to be done) the machine still ran like crap. She begins to test various apps, of which Word is crashing on start. She starts to freak out (because she had a paper that was due in 2 weeks). It took me, the Supervisor (I will just call him Bob), and the GM (Lets call him Jim) to get this lady to check her machine it so I can fix it. This is where the fun begins.

When a machine gets checked in, they all go through diagnostics (full ASD (Apple Service Diagnostics), hard drive scans, and general functionality testing) before reaching a tech. Well... the diag guy found that this wonderful lady had FileVault enabled (on 10.5 and 10.6, it encrypts the user folder). This just made my job a lot harder. Luckily the drive was sound.

The machine took about 5 minutes to boot and almost another 2 minutes to load the profile (FileVault encrypts and decrypts as you go). Once I was in, I had to turn off FileVault so I can work on the machine properly. This is a simple act (as long as you know the user password).

System Preferences > Security > FileVault tab. Click "Turn off FileVault"

Now here is what sucks. I could have had this machine fixed in about an hour, but I had to have FileVault decrypt everything which takes a while. Well... the sparse bundle didn't have enough room to decrypt, so I had to move data from her home folder (at least 17GB) and then delete it. Afterward, I was able to turn off FileVault... which took 30 hours.

The weekend passes

I come in today, and the machine had finished its task. Now I can FINALLY fix this lady's machine.

After doing some browsing through her machine (which it is MUCH faster now), I found out why Word is crashing. It is on the root of the drive. YOU NEVER PUT APPS ON THE ROOT OF THE DRIVE, ESPECIALLY OFFICE! So I move it back to the Applications folder, under Office 2011 folder. No joy. Word is crashing and now PowerPoint is too... The only way to resolve this is completely removing Office 2011. For this process, you don't have to get rid of anything under Application Support under Library and the User Library. This process takes about 30 minutes, but for me it was done in less than 10.

Afterward, I reinstalled Office, and everything was working.

Onto the next issue - Safari.

When Safari is running like crap, I do 3 things: Reset safari, rip out its plist from ~/Library/Preferences and remove all plug-ins in /Library/Internet Plug-Ins.
To reset Safari, you got to Safari, at the time, click Safari, and click "Reset Safari". Select everything and click Reset.

For the plist, got ~/Library/Preferences (press CMD + Shift + G and type in the path). Find the item that says "com.apple.Safari.plist" and delete it.

Then go to ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins and check for anything plug-ins in there. If there is anything.
Next go to /Library/Internet Plug-Ins. Create a folder called Disabled Plugins and move everything BUT the following:

• JavaAppletPlugin.plugin
• nslQTScriptablePlugin.txt
• Quartz Composer.webplugin
• QuickTime Plugin.plugin

You remove any of the above and you break Safari.

BOOM, Safari should work like a charm.

She also had some keychain issues, so this one is simple. Since she was running Snow Leopard, I fired up a 10.6 install disk and went to the Utilities tab. Select "Reset Password".
Select your drive and select your user name. Click reset password. I don't put anything for a password. Click save.

While I am here, I also go to the bottom where it says "Repair ACL (Access Control Lists) and Home Folder permissions". Click Reset. This will fix any kind of funky permission issues that may be in a home folder and access issues.

Also, go to Disk Utility and run permission repair. This will fix permission issues in the system.

After all this, I booted from my trust super stick (OSX on a stick) and ran disk warrior to repair the volume and fix other issues.

When I logged back in, I was prompted with something about a keychain. Here, always select "Create New Login Keychain". This will fix all keychain issues, but you will have to reenter all your passwords for mail and stuff.

After all of this, her machine was FINALLY fixed. I am tired... Anyone got a beer?

 

[Lord Xeb]

Double trouble?
Today was another day with another adventure, but with 2 machines.

I am going to go by Joe and Larry when I refer to these machines.

Larry's iMac was brought in because it wouldn't boot. The Apple store took a look at it and said failing hard drive. GENERALLY when Apple says it is a failed, usually the drive has failed, but not in this case.
I boot up the machine using my trusty Super Stick (I love this thing) to take a look at the drive. After reading the diagnostic notes on the drive, it turns out that there are no bad sectors and the machine passed diag with flying colors, though the volume structures failed. What this means is that there is volume damage and it needs to be repaired. In some cases I can get the drive to mount and proceed to pull the data off. In this case I was successful in mounting the volume (somewho...).

After copying the Larry's User fold over to an external drive, I attempted to repair the volume. Well... this didn't go so well. I rebooted the machine and dropped down into single user mode (As soon as you hear the chime, hold CMD + S). From there I ran an fsck -fy. Fsck couldn't repair the disk. So i booted back into my super stick and tried to repair with Disk Warrior. That didn't work either. The drive after mounting refused to unmount. So I put the machine into our NCA pile (Needs Client Approval) to have the Supervisor call the customer and get permission to save data restore (back off user folder, wipe out machine, reinstall OS and applications, updates. Move user folder back and rebuild user profile). I will come back to this.

Joe's machine was a Macbook that was running slow... This thing was painful. Surface scan passed, checked SMART and it was fine. So the drive was in good health. I put in a test hard drive (with OSX installed on it) to see if that also ran slow. It did not. So back to the original drive.

First I repaired the iPhoto library (which customer said it was taking a LONG time to load which it did). To do this, hold Option + CMD while you click on the iPhoto application until a menu pops up. Select everything and let it repair. This took a while. After it was done, iPhoto worked like a dream. The system was still running slow... So I start looking around and I spot something horrid:
McAfee and MacKeeper.

"Oh dear god," I thought to myself. Any time you have McAfee installed on a mac, it ALWAYS runs like crap. So I uninstalled it. Instant improvement. To do this, you have to go to /usr/var/McAfee and run the uninstaller. Afterward it will be removed.

Next was MacKeeper.
For all of its "praise" around the web, it is actually all crap. MacKeeper, when it repairs the disk and permissions sometimes deletes, breaks, or even destroys the machine (not kidding). Other times it does good. Sadly, it does more harm to good. GONE!

Machine now runs great, so i rebuilt directories and permissions with disk warrior, installed updates. The backed everything up onto the customer's time capsule. All done. Sent the bad boy on its way.

Back to Larry
I thought on this guy for a while and finally I had an revelation. FORCE UNMOUNT! I snatched the paperwork for the NCA pile and went to work.
Fired up my Super Stick, got the drive to mount, then dropped down into terminal. From here I ran the command:
sudo diskutil unmountDisk force /Volume/Volume_Name

This forcefully unmounted the volumes but didn't eject this disk. Now everything was greyed out in Disk Utility. Good.
Fired up Disk Warrior and it ran. After letting it do its thing, it found a BUNCH of critical volume information that was damaged. Let it repair the drive and BOOM! Drive was repaired and machine booted normally without issues. <3

 

[Lord Xeb]

I don't work at Apple.

 

[Lord Xeb]

SHE RETURNS!

Remember that lady from the first post? Well... is having issues. Apparently she wasn't able to log into her machine using her old password or the new one I made (blank) after resetting here keychain... *long sigh*

I told her to come back in.

2 hours later she arrives and is upset that last time no one let her check the machine before she left. This is something we usually do but it was probably because we were busy, but she could have still checked the machine at our other counter. ANYWAYS, back to business.

I take the mac back to my work bench and imediately see the problem. Corrupted keychain. When this happens, it is almost like the system decides on a password even though you changed the password so you become locked out of your account. I got to work.

First thing I did was drop down into single user mode (see my previous post) and ran this:

mount -uw /

What this does is mount root (in UNIX it is / ) with read/write permissions. From there I changed directory (cd) to the Users's Library

cd /Users/ThisGodAwefulLadyKillMeNow/Library/Keychains

Then did a quick ls. What this does is listeverything in that directory.
I think proceeded to delete everything inside the directory that ended with .keychain. To do this, you do the command
rm -rf (nameoffile/folder)

BE CAREFUL WITH THIS! YOU CANNOT RECOVER WHAT YOU DELETE!

After deleting everything from keychains, I booted to a snow leopard install disk, selected reset password and reset the account password and rebooted.

Working fine.

NOW LADY, PLEASE LEAVE (inside my head)!

 

[Lord Xeb]

2TB drive cloning to 3TB...

OMG THIS IS TAKING FOREVER! *needs a gun*

 

[Lord Xeb]

Not at all. I love my job.

 

[Lord Xeb]

OH DEAR GOD! MAIL! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Have I told any of you how much I hate mail issues? Well, I HATE mail issues. Generally the issues I deal with are stupid stuff caused by mail breaking and being stupid. One prime example of this is when a malformed message get stuck inside of mail and gets recovered over and over again till your hard drive fills up or mail breaks down and cries, "Mommy!".

Well this lady has some rather stupid mail. It is not like yahoo, gmail or... should I say it? *squeaks out a word* AOL. No, this lady has a publishing site with some weird email setup that has to be custom entered both incoming and outgoing mail servers which BTW had DIFFERENT PASSWORDS FOR EACH! There were 7 of these. This crap all broke and tumbled... dear god.

Half the stuff was sending, some was receiving. Gmail and icloud were broken. Only 2 of the 9 accounts there were actually WORKING. I ended up calling down a one of the senior techs to help out.

Anyways, long story short. The emails this lady setup for her website had to all be custom done. Then from there figure out what was the proper passwords for the incoming and outgoing parts. After this everything worked fine... After I got to a week later

 

[Lord Xeb]

Broken LCD...

A good customer of the store came in with a new Macbook Pro 13" with a broken screen. Guy is pretty nice, but then I look at the damage. LCD is broken, glass is not.... First thing that went through my head was



Unlike the Apple store where they will simply replace the clam shell (the part that the LCD resides in), we will open the clam shell up and replace the LCD and put it back together. Well, me being the only mac tech for a majority of the day makes that job mine... And these jobs suck.

To get an idea what is involved, the process is similar to opening an ipad 2... but harder. And getting the glass off without breaking it is even harder... Because the glass always breaks.

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+iPad+2+Wi-Fi+LCD/5375/1

Except I use a heat gun.

After taking the clamshell off the machine and having room to work on the clamshell itself. Then getting the glass off and replacing the glass, nearly an hour has passed.. I REALLY hate replacing these things. Did I say I REALLY hate these things? After you get the LCD back in and get the machine back together, you have to put new double-sided tape around the bezel. then go to town cleaning it so no dust is behind the glass when yous tick it back on.

I REALLY REALLY hate these things.

Then once you think the glass and LCD is clean, you clean it more, peel the cover off the tape and stick it, but not pressing. Clean the glass and look for dust and dirt. Well... I have some dust behind it...



Well I am done. Good day. *puts gun into mouth*

 

[Lord Xeb]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nvidiaftw12

Quote:

I love my job.

Quote:

Well I am done. Good day. *puts gun into mouth*

Yeah. Make up your mind Xeb.

An hour of work down the drain and now I gotta take the glass off AGAIN to get it right.

 

[Lord Xeb]

The Fans...THEY HUNGER! FOR MORE!

If this one isn't annoying I don't know what is... To start things off, the customer who brought this mac into service (its a Late 2008 24") had already had the data transfered to a new machine. This machine however is having some strange...issues. Oh IDK, fans spinning to 100% all the time with no reason. How is that a bad thing? ANNNNYYYYWAYS, I first start suspecting the SMC.

On Intel Macs you have the SMC (System Management Controller) that controls power and cooling. Sometimes when the SMC gets corrupted (it has some basic memory) you can usually reset it and fix a majority of issues.

For the iMacs, and SMC reset requires you turn off the machine, unplug the power cord and hold the power button in for 30 seconds. Then wait 30 seconds. Plug the power back in. Wait 30 seconds. I did this. No cigar (and damn, I want one too!

).

Next, lets try a PRAM reset. As soon as you hear the Chime, press and hold CMD + Opt + P + R until the machine chimes again. This will reset the PRAM. I do this about 5 times in a row (Just keep holding it till it chimes 5 times and release). NOPE.avi

Well crap. This is starting to not look good. So I start the machine and look for Fan Control or smcControl on the machine. Nothing. No software.

Now this is what I hate.... Time to open the bugger (look on iFix it. These things are a pain in my... well... tush? Butt? Can I say ass? IDK whatever).

I look around, check all the cables. Check the sensors. Everything is fine. Run ASD on the machine, no sensor failure, but fans won't spin down either during testing.

OKAY I GIVE UP! Logic board. 549 + labor (you bet there is labor). I am done. See ya.

 

[Lord Xeb]

Macs do get hot, but they run just fine there bud.

 

[Lord Xeb]

WOAH! WOAH! WOAH! Hold on a second! You did what?!

Um.. How do I even begin this...

Person comes in with an iPhoto issue where they dragged a bunch of photos into iPhoto trash and now there are a bunch of broken links (around 1000) in iPhoto. Oh get this, THEY HAVE ALL BE DELETED FROM IPHOTO TRASH! Smart...

Well... it doesn't end there. The person also managed to put a TON of crap into system Trash and not just user information. There were system pieces, Utilities folder, and I think I saw my cat... Well, guess what? "Oh I cannot get my items from the trash!" "Oh my iPhoto has broken links" "stuff is broken!!!" Sigh.... Why do these people even own a computer?

I start digging through this person's iPhoto and the amount of damage done is... amazing. It was way more than 1000 things broken and it was like the person opened the iPhoto library and started deleting stuff from it. I tried rebuild iPhoto to no avail. I am going to leave this alone for now.

I took all the items and moved them from trash into a folder onto the desktop. All good here. Left this person sift through their own filth.

I talk to my service manager about this (he is an ex-Apple Genius and one of the best). He tells me this person barely knows how to even work a computer and that I should just restore with the Time Machine and not to even bother with fixing any of the crap... Wait. What? Why the hell did I just spend an hour of my time doing this crap??? Where the hell is the shovel. I am going to hit somebody with it!


Okay coo. Good bye 5 days of data and hello to your new computer... and lets not be stupid again okay? Oh, BTW you owe me money.

 

[Lord Xeb]

So... Why is your machine shipped wtih a single tissue in the box and no packing?


Oh man, this one is fun stuff. This guy calls into the store (lets call him Pedro) and he had previous had his machine serviced by us (replaced a hard drive). Apparently he is having issues again. Last time he mailed his machine to us with no issues, so I told him to send his machine back (BTW this is 3 months later).

About a week goes by and we get a random package from USPS. No surprise there, we are always getting stuff in the mail. My boss comes up (lets call him Jeff) with this random box (it is one of those large flat-rate shipping boxes from USPS) and starts to shack it. "What do you guys think is in the box?", he asks. I knew what it was by the weight. It was a Late 2006 Macbook Pro). So, he opens the box and immediately something is wrong.

1. The box is too small for the machine
2. There is very little packaging.
3. This guy is an idiot

This machine was stuffed inside of 2 flat rate evelopes, then had 2 small air bags on either end.. What no bubble wrap? First thing we do is take pics (to cover our asses). This machine was trashed...

Corner bent in, Clamshell was misaligned. Dents and dings. Machine would turn on. Sigh...

We give this guy a call and this is where the fun starts.

"Whatcha mean it wasn't packed right. I packed that maself and it was packed right!" This guy keeps saying on the phone as my service manager gives him a call. He keeps going on about how he had the machine insured and kept asking if we can fix it. We told him we will let him... Well you know the obvious answer is right? NO WAY IN HELL!

1. We will be involved in a dispute between the post office and this moron.
2. Parts for this machine are nearly impossible to find.
3. Physical damage to the machine will make repair difficult.

2 days later

Bob gives him a call and explains the situation. Now this guy is being stupid. He wants us to repair a 6 year old machine that is going to cost nearly 1000 dollars in parts (tard tax applied.. well because your an idiot for sending a machine in with almost nothing to be called packaging) alone to fix (if we can find them) and help him file a claim. Well we sure in the hell are not helping file a claim with the post office.
Bob continues to explain the machine is not worth the repair and that he can get a NEW Mid 2012 Macbook Air for 1000 bucks. This guy doesn't want to hear it, saying something about the machine meaning a lot to him, then hangs up. I don't know how long Bob was gone after that, but I think he sucked down an entire pack of cigs.... a case of beer and stole some little kid's candy AND kicked over a sand castle... Pics of the damage were also sent.

3 Days later....
Pedro calls in saying he has found some parts on ebay (lol and this guy has no idea what he is even looking for). Bob explains to him again that is not worth repairing and that ebay is not a very good place to get computer parts from. Pedro then tries to get us to help him with a claim. Also asking about pictures again (which were sent). Bob tells him we cannot and proceeds to argue with Bob for the next 20 minutes then just hangs up... I think Bob is going to kill someone. This is getting out of hand.

A week passes

Pedro calls back and keeps asking about having us file a claim and to see the pictures were sent (um... dude, do you check your mail?). Bob explains to him again the we cannot help him with the claim but things quickly get out of hand. Bob cuts Pedro off on his rant (you can hear him screaming on the end of the phone) and gets the GM involved. Jim repeats the same thing and that we are sending the machine back to him. There will be no repair done. The machine will be returned as is and he is responsible for all damage on the machine, thus he is the one that has to file a claim with USPS (good luck).

The saga ends.

Can I shoot this guy? All all Mac owners this...stupid?

 

[Lord Xeb]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nitrogannex

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Xeb

Why do these people even own a computer?

they don't own Computers

They Own Macs

I think that's pretty self explanitory

Mac is a computer.

 

[Lord Xeb]

I am a mac user. My stepdad is an old unix guy and is a mac user. We aren't like this...

 

[Lord Xeb]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamdox

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Xeb

I am a mac user. My stepdad is an old unix guy and is a mac user. We aren't like this...

More to the point, are Windows users any smarter? Well, at least it's Linux users talking trash... and it's true. Having an operating system that's only good for software development will weed out peasants

Linux is used more than software dev bud. *cough* super computers *cough*

Okay, back on topic!

 

[Lord Xeb]

So... Why won't you install?
One of the most annoying issues I deal with on a daily basis is when I go to install OSX and it encounters some kind of dumb error. Today was no exception.

I went to reinstall Mountain Lion onto a customer's new machine (Mid 2012 Macbook Pro 13) after a hard drive replacement (wut?) and I kept getting this error:

"Cannot install OSX. Unable to download additional software."

O-o Okay Apple, that is REALLY descriptive (almost as descriptive as seeing in Console "XXXXXX exit with weird error 2"). So I plug the ethernet cable into a different port on the wall. Same issue. Switched to wireless, Same issue. Changed install disks (I have 4 flash drives with all kinds of goodies, love, and destruction). SAME DAMN ISSUE! Wiped out drive and attempted again. Hey guys, can you guess what XXXX was brought to you by today? SAME DAMN ISSUE!!!!



Well, I leave it alone and come back to it an hour later. Tried again...



Now I am starting to get rather hot under the collar. This stupid thing doesn't want to install when it struck me. On the Early and Mid 2011 machines that came with Snow Leopard, you couldn't just install from a 10.6.3 install disk right onto the machine. It just wouldn't do it. So, what you do is take an older machine (like a MacBook Pro Early 2008) and put the machine you want to install the OS on into Target Disk mode. To do this, power on the machine and as soon as you hear the chime, press and hold T.

The machine is now in target disk mode. Take a firewire 800 cable and connect the older and new machines together. Plug the install media into the older machine and boot from it. When you install, you select the external drive that is now visible in the install (the other mac) and proceed as normal. Once the install is done, you let the old machine reboot (it is booting from the drive in the other machine

) and run all the updates.

 

[Lord Xeb]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agoriaz

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Xeb

So... Why won't you install?
When it struck me. On the Early and Mid 2011 machines that came with Snow Leopard, you couldn't just install from a 10.6.3 install disk right onto the machine. It just wouldn't do it. So, what you do is take an older machine (like a MacBook Pro Early 2008) and put the machine you want to install the OS on into Target Disk mode.

Lolwut? How would an even mediocre user have any knowledge of such a devious method of installation?

Nope

 

[Lord Xeb]

@bark I am sure there is. I there is always a way to uninstall applications in mac. If you wait till I get home I can do a bit of searching on the Web.