WiFi Network Dropping Packets on a Mac

A MacBookPro running 10.9.4 was experiencing a problem where it would suffer constant connection drops on some WiFi networks with upwards of 70% packet loss.  Cable connections were fine and not all WiFi connections displayed this problem.

The WiFi router was replaced and a separate WiFi access point was tried and still the drops continued.  Other computers connected to the same WiFi network did not have this problem.

We resolved the issue by following these steps:

• Turn on WiFi on the Mac
• Open System Preferences/Network
• Highlight the WiFi connection and click on the "Advanced" tab
• Click on the "Wi-Fi" tab
• Remove the problematic network.  It might be a good idea to remove ALL the saved networks as long as the user knows the passwords for them!
• Click "OK" and then "Apply" to apply the changes
• Open Keychain Access
• Highlight the "Login" keychain
• Search for "Airport"
• Find the "AirPort network password(s)" that are associated with the problem network and delete them.  Note: there are normally two per network, "System" and "Local Items" Keychains
• Restart
• Log into the WiFi network and enter the authentication details when prompted

After removing the shared networks and deleting the items from the Keychain the packet loss stopped and normal WiFi connectivity was restored.

Outlook 2011: Junk Mail Protection Greyed Out

According to this Microsoft KB, people using Outlook 2011 and Exchange 2013 are unable to access the tool-bar item "Junk e-mail protection" because the item is greyed out.

However, one of our clever system admins in Warsaw discovered that if you first open Outlook Preferences and then go to Tools in the menu bar, Junk E-mail Protection magically comes back.

 

I haven't done thorough testing but it appears that using this work-around does enable client-side Junk mail filtering configuration.

Attempting to enter a Windows Server product key returns "Unacceptable Character"

When attempting to activate a Windows 2008 R2 server we tried to type (and cut/paste) the license key and received an error "Unacceptable Character".  The fix was to enter the activation key through the command line:

slmgr.vbs -ipk [product code]

You can then activate the server with this command:

slmgr.vbs -ato

OS 10.9 Mavericks keeps prompting to unlock "Local Items" keychain

After migrating a machine to Mavericks, or after binding a Mavericks machine to a new domain, we were getting repeated prompts to unlock the "Local Items" keychain.  No password would unlock the items.

The following steps resolve the problem:

• Go to ~/Library/Keychains (user's Keychain folder)
• Look for a folder that is a long series of numbers and letters: "ADS676BB8-CEJD-45..."
• Delete the folder and IMMEDIATELY restart the Mac

You should no longer be prompted for the Local Items keychain password.

Note: after you restart a new folder with a similar name as the old one (a long series of numbers and letters) will appear in ~/Library/Keychains.  Don't panic, this is normal behaviour.  The new folder corrects the problem.