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Apple Windows Bootcamp Won’t Bless

Apple Windows Bootcamp Won’t Bless

If you’ve run into the issue of imaging a BootCamp partition and it won’t boot into Windows or you see the message that the Windows Bootcamp partition cannot be blessed then you may get the run around trying to find a quick simple solution as I had. 

Luckily WinClone has a quick built in option/utility that will make your Windows BootCamp partition properly boot. 

If you are running on a new model Mac you could have an issue where the Mac does not allow you to boot into the newly created Bootcamp image. To get around this we need to make the Bootcamp partition EFI bootable by using Winclone. You should see your Bootcamp partition on the left side of the program and you will need to right click on the Windows BootCamp partition and select “Make EFI Bootable”. You do not need to do this for older hardware which should be 2014 and older Macs.

Right now there maybe scripts or other work arounds to do this but since we already own a copy of WinClone this makes quick work of this issue.

Have a look at my related article “Create a Bootcamp Image From a Pre Built Windows Image“.

 

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Create a Bootcamp Image From a Pre Built Windows Image

Create a Bootcamp Image From a Pre Built Windows Image


What you need

  • Winclone

  • Hard drive with a Windows Image that has been Sysprepped and pulled from a computer

  • External Hard Drive reader

  • Mac with OS X Installed

  • DeployStudio

 

How to clone

STEP 1.
If you are running OS X 10.10 or lower skip to Step 2. If you are running the latest version of OS X 10.11 or higher you need to disable OS X’s “System Integrity Protection” which will allow us to image a BootCamp Partition. To do this you need to restart the computer into “Restore Mode” or boot from a DeployStudio server. You then need to open “Terminal” and type

csrutil disable

then press enter. With this complete restart your computer.

STEP 2.
The next step is to create a BootCamp partition by opening up “Disk Utility” then add/create a new partition. Here you need to enter in the size you want your partition to be and then change the format to FAT. Now go ahead and partition your drive.

STEP 3.
From here go ahead and plug in your external hard drive reader with the hard drive you pull from your computer. We should now see the BootCamp partition you created and the external hard drive that has your windows image installed on.

STEP 4.
Now install WinClone onto your mac and launch the program. Here we should see your windows hard drive and your Bootcamp partition.

STEP 5.
If your source windows hard drive is smaller than your Bootcamp partition you can skip to STEP 6. If your Bootcamp partition is smaller than the hard drive but still bigger than the image itself then you need to shrink the image. To do so right click on the windows hard drive and chose “Shrink Windows (NTFS) Filesystem”. This will resize the image on the hard drive to the size of the actual fully used space of the image.

STEP 6.
Now we can go ahead and copy your windows image to your Bootcamp partition. Select the Windows drive on the left side of the window and then select the Bootcamp partition to the right and select “Restore”.  This process will take a while depending how on big your Windows image is.

STEP 7.
Now that the restore has completed you have now successfully created a Windows Bootcamp image/partition. Now simply reboot your Mac and select the Windows BootCamp Partition from the Boot Manager (Hold down the “Option” key on startup). Once Bootcamp has booted you can now go ahead and install the Apple BootCamp drivers. (Use the BootCamp Assistant in OS X to create the driver install).

** If you are running on a new model Mac you could have an issue where the Mac does not allow you to boot into the newly created Bootcamp image. To get around this we need to make the Bootcamp partition EFI bootable by using Winclone. You should see your Bootcamp partition now on the left side of the program and you will need to right click and select “Make EFI Bootable”. You do not need to do this for older hardware which should be 2014 and older Macs.

 

Happy Imaging!

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How To: Take Apart an iMac – Front Panel & LCD

If you are in need to take you iMac apart to replace the Hard Drive, Dvd-Rom, etc. then check out the following videos showing what tools you need as well as the proper steps to get the job done.

The reason for doing these video is because when I was asked to find a good online “How-To” for taking apart an iMac I came across a number of videos where users just showed that you simply take the four scews out of the bottom of the panel and pull the panel off…. they failed to show you that you need to also disconnect the panel from the top as well.

In these videos I will show you how to properly remove the front panel as well as LCD so you can gain access to the inside for repairs.

With this I have also done up a video showing you how to make a Free Apple Access Card Tool which is needed to remove the front panel from your iMac.

 

********

I would like to point out that if your computer is still under warranty or you have very little or no computer hardware knowledge at all then it’s highly recommended to take your Mac to an Authorized Apple Repair Shop. 

iMac Take Apart – Part 1 (Remove Front Panel)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN3N_qxLlWk

 
 

iMac Take Apart – Part 2 (Remove LCD Panel)

 

 

 

Make your own “Apple Access Card Tool” for Free

 

 

 

If you have any questions please feel free to post below, YouTube or Contact Me

 

 

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Adobe CS6 Enterprise Deployment with Mac OS X

Adobe CS6 Enterprise Deployment with Mac OS X
 
Comments below are certainly welcome but if you have questions concerning this article please see my Topic/Post over at EduGeek.net http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mac/98536-adobe-cs6-enterprise-deployment-mac-os-x.html
 
Keep in mind that this article is more for those that want a bit more of an understanding on how to push & deploy the serialization file with mass deployment. The Deployment Guides found at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/creativesuite/enterprisedeployment.html are very handy to get a better idea of what the Adobe Creative Suite Enterprise Deployment Utility is for and what it does.
 
 

Adobe CS6 for Mac has done away with the ability to license an install of Adobe CS and then image the computer and use that very image for mass deployment to labs. Now if you enter the SN# into the image it’s bound to the computer it’s installed on and will prompt to run in trial mode if imaged to another computer.

To deploy Adobe CS6 you will need to use a few things. You will need to download the Creative Suite Enterprise Deployment Utility found here http://www.adobe.com/devnet/creativesuite/enterprisedeployment.html 

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How to Backup & Restore an Apple Profile Manager Server/Database

 

 

UPDATED!!

After OS X Server App 2 & 3 the below method was broken. Please see this updated article for the new method:

How To Backup Profile Manager Database (Working Solution for OS X 10.10)

 

 

 

 

The below method only worked for Server App 2.

Today I needed to look at rebuilding or at least testing out a new Profile Manager Server setup but wanted to move all the clients and groups from the old PM server to the new test server but Apple has nothing in place to just export and import this. I found a topic on the Apple Discussions that has quick terminal commands to backup and restore PM Server. As a quick test I did this with our MacMini PM Server and moved restored it on a MacBook Pro running the latest version of PM Server. (OS X Server 1.5.0 –> OS X Server 2.1.1)

To backup the DB in Terminal :

sudo pg_dump -U _postgres -c device_management > $HOME/device_management.sql

To restore the DB in Terminal :

sudo serveradmin stop devicemgr
sudo serveradmin start postgres
sudo psql -U _postgres -d device_management -f $HOME/device_management.sql
sudo serveradmin start devicemgr

Found the article here https://discussions.apple.com/message/17804347#17804347 with the credit going to “Christoph Murauer” ​for the info!

Cool