Some Sage Advice

After installation of Adobe Professional 7, 8 or 9, you may get the following error when you start Excel 2003 or Excel 2007:
“Compile Error in Hidden Module: Distmon”

The cause of this error is PDFMaker.xla, which loads at startup. Since Adobe Professional 8 uses DLL-addins to add the toolbar in Excel, you can safely delete the PDFMaker.xla file on your computer.
Sometimes PDFMaker.xla is located in your profile directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART\PDFMaker.xla
Other times, PDFMaker.xla can be located in your Program Files directory.

After you deleted the file PDFMaker.xla, the error “Compile Error in Hidden Module: Distmon” at startup of Excel shouldn’t appear.

The error described above has been seen in combination with the following applications:

• Adobe Acrobat Professional 7
• Adobe Acrobat Professional 8
• Adobe Acrobat Professional 9
• Microsoft Office Excel 2003
• Microsoft Office Excel 2007

An outline font editor that lets you create your own postscript, truetype, opentype, cid-keyed, multi-master, cff, svg and bitmap (bdf, FON, NFNT) fonts, or edit existing ones. Also lets you convert one format to another. FontForge has support for many macintosh font formats. This requires the X11 environment which is on the Tiger or Leopard Install DVD (in the optional installs folder).

• License: Freeware
• Author/Publisher: George Williams
• Modification Date: August 28, 2008
• Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or higher and X11

Download File Size: 5.1 MB – Intel version for Leopard 
Download File Size: 5.1 MB – PPC version for Leopard 
Download File Size: 8.9 MB – Intel version for Tiger 
Download File Size: 8.9 MB – PPC version for Tiger

Spotlight is probably the greatest feature to hit the Mac OS in years, once you get used to using it, going to a PC without it feels hopelessly inadequate. I use Spotlight for everything from launching applications, retrieving pictures, searching for old emails, literally just about everything. If you aren’t using Spotlight, you’re missing out. If you are using Spotlight, every now and again, the Spotlight menu mysteriously stops working (apparently this is more common since the 10.4.8 update), and we’re going to give you a few methods to troubleshoot Spotlight and get it back in full working order.

The Problems: Spotlight won’t work

There are several incarnations of Spotlight problems that I have personally run into, they are:

• Problem #1) Spotlight menu icon highlights, but no search form appears
• Problem #2) Spotlight search form appears, but no results are shown
• Problem #3) Spotlight search works, but results are poor and incomplete

While not entirely sure what causes any of these problems, try these troubleshooting methods that frequently work to repair Spotlight:

The Solutions: Troubleshooting Spotlight

Solution #1: Kill SystemUIServer

• Launch ‘Activity Monitor’ (located in /Applications/Utilities/)
• Locate the process ‘SystemUIServer’, highlight it, and click the red button “Quit Process”
• Within a few seconds the menubar will rebuild itself and often Spotlight will magically work

Solution #2: Rebuild the Spotlight Index manually

• Launch ‘Terminal’ (located in /Applications/Utilities/)
• At the command prompt, type this exactly: sudo mdutil -E /
• You will be asked for your password, provide it, as this command requires administrator privelages to run
• You will receive a confirmation message saying that index will be rebuilt
• Wait until index is finished rebuilding, this can take a while depending on the size of your hard drive, amount of files, etc.
• Note: You can also rebuild the Spotlight index with MainMenu, mentioned in Solution #4

Solution #3: Change Desktop Resolution

• This is a strange fix but it works everytime for me when my Spotlight menu icon highlights but the search form doesn’t appear
• Open “System Preferences” via the Apple Menu
• Click ‘Displays’ and select a resolution smaller than what you are currently using, 640×480 seems to always work
• Select your native resolution again, changing your screen resolution back to normal
• The Spotlight search tray will magically become available again

Solution #4: Clear caches and preferences

• Clear caches and preferences relating to Spotlight, this is best done through either the free tool OnyX, or the free tool MainMenu, we recommend MainMenu because it’s easier for novices
  • Download MainMenu here
  • Download OnyX here
• Install MainMenu
  • a little Hammer and Wrench icon will appear in your menubar
  • navigate down to ‘Cleaning’ and clean out User Cache, System Cache, and Font Caches
• Note: Some users discover that just cleaning the Font caches is adequate to repair a screwy Spotlight, but it won’t hurt to clear them all

Solution #5: Reboot your Mac

• This should almost be listed as #1 just because sometimes a simple reboot will fix Spotlight, but if I can avoid a reboot I will, and often, a reboot isn’t good enough

Many times a corrupted registry entry (usually caused by a virus, spyware, or malware) can cause TCP related errors. For example, your network connections are suddenly and mysteriously gone or you get various TCP Transport errors. To fix this problem, try the following:

1. Uninstall all Network Connections in the Network Control Panel and reboot.
2. From another machine download WinSock Fix XP
3. Run winsockfix.exe which fixes your registry entries and clears any errors.
4. Restart the system and install the network connections.
5. Run every anti-virus and anti-spyware program you can find.

This happened to my PC several months ago. I had visited a website and all of a sudden my AVG Anti-Virus warned me of an infected webpage. My computer froze and when I rebooted I had no network or internet connectivity. It took me several hours to fix it! Had I known about this tip beforehand I would have saved myself hours of work.

On Monday, Apple quietly announced that there will be no more new Apple hardware changes for the remainder of 2008. This means that the holiday hardware is set and you can buy all your holiday gifts now and avoid the crowds!