HowTo: If Visual Voicemail doesn’t work out of the box

Here is a very simple solution to a problem I’ve recently had with my brand new iPhone 3G. I tried to use Visual Voicemail but nothing seemed to really work. Even important services like declining a call and sending it to Voicemail weren’t enabled. 

I began doing some research on the internet, called a service hotline but nothing helped. I reset the iPhone to exclude every trouble caused by a non-standard setting but even this didn’t solve the problem. Then I visited the carrier’s support page and was helped by a friendly forum user who said that it could be just the network settings, which might be corrupted. I would have to reset them. This I did and – surprise – it finally worked!

So before you restore your iPhone or ANYTHING, just try this solution, it worked for me:

Go to Settings (on your home screen) -> General -> Reset and push the button Reset Network Settings, then confirm. Done.

Please note: You take full responsibility for your actions on your iPhone. I can never be held responsible for any damages caused by my tutorials. Errors excepted!

HowTo: Get PowerPC apps working again (on Intel mac)

This tutorial* explains a method that helped me get my PowerPC apps running again after they have started crashing immediately at launch (I am running the latest Leopard upgrade Mac OS X 10.5.2). I thought I’d share it with you to save you from all the trouble I went through lately.

Symptom:

You are on an Intel Mac. PowerPC (that means non-native) apps are always crashing immediately when you try to open one.

Before you proceed, you might want to have a look at the log file of the specific app after the crash. In the crash dialog, click on Report… and then on Problem details above to see what was put into the file. If you see a process called translated you have good chances to get it working again with my method.

If there is nothing like “translated”, please scroll down and try a simpler method from Apple’s support website first (although that didn’t solve my problem).

Solution:

The problem lies behind the Rosetta application, more precisely, a process called translated. This process is also a file in the system responsible for PowerPC apps to run properly. Somehow, this file must have gotten corrupted. But don’t ask me how, I am not an expert. 

1st step: Look for your Leopard Installation DVD (the disc that was delivered with your Mac or the one you bought in-store for upgrade).

2nd step: First finish your work and save it. Then restart your computer. Now put the DVD into the computer.

3rd step: Now, in Finder, click on Go to… and then Go to folder… In the new window type in (case sensitive!): 

/Volumes/[OS X disk image name]/usr/libexec/oah/

where OS X disk name stands for the name of the DVD you’ve just inserted (you can see its name on the desktop). Now you should see two files. One should be a folder with the name Shims and the other one our wanted file translate. Now copy ONLY the translate file.

4th step: Open again the Go to folder… dialog. Now type in:

 /usr/libexec/oah/

Again, you should be able to see the folder and the file translate. Before you paste the copied file here and replace the other file you may want to backup the existing translate file from here. Do this first if you want to play it safe! (Maybe you have to type in your user password once; this is nothing special for important system files as these)

5th step: Now close all open windows and do not touch any files in the system anymore! Afterwards, restart your computer.

Now everything should be working again as usual. Congrats!

CRASHING OFFICE APPS (PARTIAL SOLUTION): Visit the following Apple support page to see another solution for crashing PPC apps (especially Microsoft Office) but with a different cause: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303677 

Additional advice: Please see comments below!

If everything suggested didn’t work, search Google or Apple discussions.

*Please note: You take full responsibility for your actions on your computer. I can never be held responsible for any damages caused by my tutorials. Errors excepted!

Problems in iTunes 7.6

Some weird things happened after updating to the new iTunes version, which was released at the Macworld keynote. I’ve never experienced this issue, but now when playing songs in my library over the AirPort Express station, which is connected to the Airport Extreme, iTunes suddenly interrupts and stops playing them. What is more, during that time, I cannot connect to the internet anymore, even with other computers connected to the network. The only reason for this problem I can see at the time is the new update of iTunes because with the earlier version it worked flawlessly. It’s getting really annoying…
Now I want to ask you, bloggers and visitors of my page: Do you also have the above described or similar problems? If yes, do you know something like a work-around? Any comments on the topic are highly appreciated.

UPDATE OF JANUARY 27:

Strange as it seems, after a reinstall of iTunes 7.6 (I tried to install 7.5 again with no luck) it now works without any problems (no interruptions while playing). This is the situation for the German version of iTunes running in Switzerland. I will keep you updated in case I encounter new problems.