How to remove a Flashback Mac virus

Mac and PC are equally affected by the virus these days. One of the most dominating Trojan virus called Flashback has hit more than thousands of users. These Trojan viruses injected into our Mac through downloads, attachment etc. This is a destructive virus which gets into the computer even without first gaining an administrative password. To get it eradicate completely, let us first see that how to diagnose a virus and then what is the best way to remove it.

How to find a virus?

To find the virus in Mac, let us first determine whether the CPU has virus or not. For this you should be aware of the 'Universally Unique Identifier' (UUID) of the Mac. To know the UUID of the Mac, first go to Finder and choose the menu item 'About this Mac', reveal the 'More Info' option and choose that. Then you will see the Hardware UUID. Just then locate and copy the Hardware UUID which is a series of 32 numerals and letters. Then you need to check that number on a particular website i.e. Flashbackcheck.com. At this point, follow the prompts and enter the UUID when prompts. At last after certain steps of this procedure, you get to know that whether your system has virus or not.

How to remove it?

To remove this Flashback virus manually, just follow the below steps to do so:

1) First open the Terminal and type the following command on Terminal:defaults read

/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

2) After typing the command successfully, note down the value of DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

3) If you get the error message The domain/default pair of the command mentioned in step 1 does not exist, then move on to step 8 i.e. run the following command:

~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES.

4) If you didnt get any error, run the command in Terminal:

grep -a -o ‘__ldpath__[ -~]*’ %path_obtained_in_step2%.

5) Now again note down the value after '_Idpath_'

6) Now, before running the next commands in terminal, make sure that there is only one step after Step 2. After checking run the below commands: sudo defaults delete

/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironmentsudo chmod 644 /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info.plist

7) Now just delete the files obtained in step 2.

8) Now run the following command in terminal: defaults read

~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES.

9) If after running this command, you get an error that the domain/default pair of (/Users/joe/.MacOSX/environment, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES) does not exist, then it means that the system is clean of this variant. If not, then run the below command on the terminal,

grep -a -o ‘__ldpath__[ -~]*’ %path_obtained_in_step9%

Again take note of the value of '_idpath_'.

10) Now after following the above command, again run the below command

~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIESlaunchctl unsetenv DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

11) At last, delete the files obtained in step 9.

Points to remember which will help you to protect Mac from these attacks:

• Use non-admin account for the daily purpose activities like surging on internet, chatting, mail check etc.
• Google chrome is considered to be secure for surfing on internet as it comes with the inbuilt feature of sanboxed flash player i.e. Its own functionality. Also, it is recommended that always use a secure browser to be on the safer side.
• Uninstalling java and flash player is considered to be the good security features to get safe from these virus attacks. And remember that Apple do not regularly update these features.
• Installing good antivirus and updating the latest program is considered the good practice.
• Try to install the good firewall software which will show you the exact network usage and will also prompt you to block or allow the application to connect to that network or not.

Thus follow these points to be on the safer side which will definitely save you from these virus attacks. If still not able to solve the problem, then use Sophos antivirus utility, a free antivirus solution for Mac.

Fix External Hard Drive Error: The Disk Structure is Corrupted or Unreadable in Windows 7

External hard drive are more popular these days because of their portability and availability in verity of sizes (still growing). It offers flexibility to carry large amount of data as well as helps you restore data if the primary location becomes inactive or seriously damaged. However, at times, external hard drive itself becomes inaccessible or prevent users to access the stored files. Be it virus infection, directory structure corruption, file system damages etc.

Once such external hard drives holding GB’s of valuable stuff, you may become panicked and frustrated as you’d have no idea about how to deal with such problems. Disk Structure corruption is yet another common error that comes whenever you tries to access your external hard drive and prevent users to access or copy the stored files.

As all of your files were stored there, formatting will permanently wipes your important files and make it permanent non recoverable even by using professional recovery tools. We’ll go through series of steps mentioned in this tutorial to fix this error easily (if you are lucky) and retrieve all of your important files as well as make the external drive usable again.

Below are the common error types you’ll see once similar situation strikes to your external hard drive:

                     

Error 0x80070571 : The disk structure is corrupted or unreadable

This disk in the drive is damaged

Please format this disk!!

The Drive isn’t accessible

The disk in drive is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?

Common reasons behind this error
External hard drive is created using moving mechanical moving parts which will may fails either sooner or later. Some unavoidable instances makes these drive inaccessible or damaged immediately and makes user data beyond the reach of known recovery software. Below are the some common reasons responsible for this situation:

• Improperly connecting or removing the drive
• The file system itself become damaged cannot be used to access the drive
• File system has become RAW which cannot be used any longer to access, manage or format the drive. In most instances, those drives becomes completely unusable.
• Large number of bad sectors and blocks has been emerged which prevents externally drive to perform normally. You’ll get freezing, hanging, corrupt files or similar issues when bad sectors took place on your drive.

Troubleshooting steps
As the drive is going through serious damages, there is no guarantee that any specific or subsequent steps could help you fixing the problem. However, let’s follow the standard procedure to deal with this error and see if we may able to resolve it:

• Right click on My Computer and choose Manage.
• Enter administrative details if asked and hit enter
• Go to Disk Management located under Storage at the left hand side menus.
• From the image below, check and make sure that any or all the volumes is listed along with the drive that’s connected externally. If you’ve recently faced the above mentioned error, you’ll see the volume status as RAW or offline
• Right click on that drive and choose to format it. As stated earlier, formatting will permanently wipes off all your important files and folders and your hope to get it back ever.
• Alternatively, you can right click on the external drive from Windows explorer interface and go to its properties.
• Choose the Tools tab and hit enter after selecting the check box stating ‘Check this disk for errors’.
• Once the operation completed successfully, try restarting your system and see if the error resolved.

Nothing helps, still can’t able to retrieve files?
Many times, the error will continue to persist even after following all the troubleshooting steps carefully. Additionally, nothing matters except your precious files that still clicking somewhere on your hard drive, right?? Don’t worry, as we are covering up some really useful utility that helps windows enthusiasts in getting back their data from various crucial situations of data loss like above.

Stellar Phoenix Partition Recovery is a life savior utility that can easily detect drives (both internal and external) going through serious damages and later, allows you to safely restore all your important files. Download the software from here and install it on your PC. Once installed, start the software from the desktop or installed software location. Make sure the drive is connected properly and shown in the software interface.

This tool offers powerful recovery options to recover data even from the severely damaged or inaccessible drives. As talked in the situation above and if the problem drive status is shown as RAW, you’ll still be able to recover data from RAW drives using this efficient partition recovery tool.

Click on the problem drive, listed under ‘Data Recovery’ > ‘Drive Recovery’ tab. The subsequent recovery methods will pop up as soon as you click on any particular drive or volume. Choose ‘Advanced Recovery’ from the available methods and let the software scans your drive completely (do not stop scanning at mid). Don’t panic if the software is taking too long to scan your problem drive. It may also possible that sometime the whole system freezes and needs you to restart the it. That’s because of the data recovery tools limitations and drive nature (RAW status) which takes really tough luck to getting detected on the system and recover data off the drive.

Once the scanning is completed, you’ll be able to see preview of any or all the recoverable files and folders using the preview pane, located at the top right corner. Chose or select desired files for recovery and click on Recovery button. Make sure that you’ve activated the software before start recovering your files as saving is disabled in demo version.

Do let us know your feedback or your particular situation if the error still persists!!

What to do when your Mac freezes and runs slow??

Does your Mac freezes? What to do? Sometimes while working on Mac, suddenly a delinquent application suck up all the resources and ultimately the Mac freezes. These applications makes the Mac slow. Also Frozen Mac can be easily recognized by the spinning ball which appears in the middle of the screen or when the cursor cannot move. This is the most dreaded condition for the Mac users which is very irritating. Let us see the short-term solutions and cases of frozen Mac:

Reasons of Mac freezes and becomes slow

• Too many applications are running at the same time
• You Mac memory is low
• Too many hidden and duplicate files
• Too many applications trying to access the hard disk at the same time
• Bad sectors on the hard drive
• Old software and cache content
• Cookies and plugins
• Corrupt files and extensions

Short term solutions of frozen Mac

Mostly, the solution of slow Mac is force quit and re-launch. We have to force quit the Mac when OS X completely becomes unresponsive and got stuck at one place. With this force shutdown, you can also may lose some unsaved data. So, this is a serious case to handle with the right remedy. Also, let us see the different categories of Mac to operate with this problem.

1) Force reboot using the power button on the keyboard

Mostly all laptops has a power button on the keyboard especially all the category of MacBooks like Macbook Air, retina Macbook pro etc. So, first hold the power button on the keyboard till the Mac shut down properly. This process may take a bit of seconds. Then after a few seconds, again hit the power button to boot the Mac.

2) Force reboot using the power button present at the back of the Mac

Usually this remedy is for iMac, Mac Mini etc. Gradually Mac desktops do not have the power button on the keyboard. Instead, their power button is the physical button located on the back of the Mac. To reboot this type of Mac categories, first press and hold the power button present at the back of the Mac. Hold that button until the Mac shut down properly. Now wait for a few seconds and press that button again for the system start initialization process.

3) Force quit the applications from Mac

Sometimes applications or programs stuck at one place and won't let us to do our task smoothly. So, If any such application stuck in the middle, force quit that particular application only which is causing a lot of problem. For this process, first from the Mac OS X dock feature, right-click on any open application. Just then holding down the option key will bring the options in Menu. Click on Force quit option.

4) Safe Booting

Safe boot will bring the Mac in its good health as it checks the bad hard drive status, loads kernel extensions etc. To run the process for safe boot, press the power button till your Mac starts. Then, press and hold the Shift key until you hear the start-up chime and release the key until the Apple logo appears. Safe boot may take the longer time to boot. After this, if your issue will get resolved, start your Mac normally.

These quick techniques will definitely bring you out of this major problem of Frozen Mac.

Tips to Speed up the slow iMac

Why my iMac is running slow? There are number of reasons of slow iMac. The reason is the asthmatic ant crawling on iMac with the loads of heavy applications. Lets see the various causes and solutions:


                                                     


1) Reset SMC and PRAM

SMC manages various functions like start-up hard drive spin down cycles, power button response, thermal monitoring etc. So if SMC will got corrupt, then definitely your iMac become slow. So fixing it is an important task. For this, first shut down your computer and unplug the power cord. Then press and hold your power iMac button for 15 seconds and release it. At last, reconnect your iMac power cord, wait for 5 seconds and turn on your iMac. Now PRAM is meant for memory module. Functions of this are volume monitoring, display solution control, speaker volume control etc. Resetting the PRAM is the way to increase the speed of the iMac. To fix it, first shut down your computer and power your iMac back on. Then press the CMD + Option + P + R keys together until you see the grey startup screen. These 2 resets SMC and PRAM can fix your slow iMac.

2) Disable antivirus or firewall programs

The programs constantly check your iMac activities, resulting in slowing down the process. So if your iMac becomes slow then just disable these programs temporarily and see the results. This can fix your issue.

3) Corrupt Preferences file

Preferences files can easily become corrupt. It totally depends on the certain applications. If due to some applications your iMac is running slow, just delete that preference file and relaunch the app.

4) Software update loading

Updating the software is the most crucial task to maintain the performance of the iMac. Keeping the software up to date is a good practise. After updating the software, reboot the iMac.

5) Caches, Log files and Temporary files

Cleaning the caches, log files and temporary files will immensely affect the performance of the system. You can clear these files from Library folder.

6) Startup items

At the time of start-up, certain applications cause to start at the time of login. These login items cause the system to take little memory and CPU usage. To optimize the start-up items you need to remove some of the start-up options which is causing the iMac slow at the time of start-up. To remove, select the Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Users and group -> Login items.

7) Permission conflict

Each and every file in iMac OS X have a set of permissions. It determines the users or applications that can access them. Sometimes permissions are incorrect and we need to repair it using Disk utility. To repair permissions select Disk utility app from the Applications -> utilities folder and then click on First Aid tab. Then at last click on Repair Disk Permission button.

8) Clean the hard drive

Always make sure that you should leave at least 10% free space on your hard drive because your iMac automatically utilizes free space on your hard drive as virtual memory. Delete all the unwanted files, apps, downloaded items and finally remove it from the Trash folder also. This will optimize the space and performance of the hard drive. If you are unable to delete all the junk files from your iMac and they are causing your iMac extremely slow, then use SpeedUp iMac software which will automatically cleans all the junk from your iMac.

9) Upgrade your hardware

Old hardware causes the speed of the iMac drastically to a low level. Actually this task is quite costly but you will surely notice an improvement in speed.

Therefore, these are some of the useful steps which can pull you out from the slow iMac problem.

What Erase free spaces on Mac HD indicates?

The Macintosh hard drive incorporates huge amount of spaces for the files or folders to be stored on. The entire hard drive space is commonly segregated into Used and Free spaces. The OS X assigns data in the form of files and folders to spaces, which becomes occupied or used. The unoccupied spaces on the OS X hard drive is now to be know as free spaces. But, this is not the terminology always. When an application is uninstalled or a file is removed from it’s location then that location becomes a free space. This free space will be free till OS X writes another set of data onto it. And when it does, new files overwrite the free space.

What overwriting does to free spaces?

Whenever, a file is deleted from the hard drive, it remains on its location, though invisible to the user. The user believes the file is gone since OS X has removed it but it remains in dormant form on its drive location. Such deleted files can be restored later with the help of powerful Mac deleted files recovery software. But if the OS X manages to overwrite deleted file information with the help of overwriting new files, then chances of file recovery are null.

Since hard drive has millions of sectors, user on its own term cannot ask OS X to overwrite a specific location that is holding deleted file information. On the other hand OS X too randomly assigns drive location to a new file. So, it may or may not overwrite a file which user doesn’t want to be recovered.

How to erase free spaces on OS X Mac?

Finder << Application << Utilities << Disk Utility

Follow the above path to launch Disk Utility. When windows show up, switch to ‘ERASE’ tab.


Select Macintosh HD. You may also select a partition if the hard drive is segregated. In below case, I selected one of my partitions to erase all free spaces from it.

• Once Macintosh HD or a partition is chosen, the buttons in the tab will activate. Among them, can be seen ‘ERASE FREE SPACE…’. This is the one button to do today’s job of erasing free spaces.

• Do carefully read the text, which is displayed on the minor window that pops-up. It says, OS X will erase all unused spaces on the selected disk to halt recovery of deleted files.  Once sure, click the button to start the process.

Disk utility will take some time to complete the task of erasing free spaces. In between you can terminate the process abruptly by clicking on ‘SKIP’ button.

Android Lollipop 5.0 and its features

The latest version of Android mobile operating system is Android 5.0 Lollipop developed by Google. Android L is the biggest update to mobile OS which consist of 5000 new API's. The superb features of the Android Lollipop are:

Material design

The design structure is completely new and flat which is based on making every animation, shadow looks real, which most of the brands are not supporting. Google told us that there will be shadow gradients, 3D tiles that slide over one another and most crucial thing is that there is an access for the developers so that they can use this for themselves for their apps. The logic behind this idea is to remove the fragmented way Android looks and bring consistency to the app world. Moreover the inbuilt function also includes multitasking window buttons, the cleaner etc.

Android L battery

The battery life will be more efficient with the project Volta which is set out by Google to boost the battery life. Usually battery saver mode in integrated in the devices which help to increase the battery life by 90 minutes but this Android L could do wonders without the Battery saver mode also. When this Arts Technica test the OS, they saw a drastic change of 36% more battery than the users running android 4.4.

ART, new runtime for smoother experience

Google uses a new runtime called ART on Android. This helps to improve the performance of the apps, battery life etc. This new OS has extremely improves the performance by 4 times and support for 64-bit chip.

Camera

Android L consist of advanced APIs. It support the features like burst mode, fine setting tuning, capture full resolution frames around 30 fps, can shoot in raw formats, support for UHD 4K video playback, tunneled video for high quality video and many more features are there. It also support for professional features which are essential to handle the settings for the sensor, lens and flash.

Notification and lock screen

Here in this feature the notification panel is combined with the lock screen so you can notify the tasks easily when you pick your phone. Also you can easily read the messages directly from your lock screen or hide the notification as per need for the sensitive content. Another thing is priority mode which you can set through device volume button to allow the notifications to get through and you can also choose to avoid calls when you play game or doing some important activity according to your convenience.

Tap and Go

Tap and Go for NFC devices use to set up the new Android phone or tablet immediately by simply tapping it to your old one. So for this action, simply place your old and new phone one on another and let NFC pairing and bluetooth data transfer do all the work for you.

Faster and efficient

Google has made lot of efforts to ensure the fastest and efficient Android L. The apps are so useful and faster than the apps available on other Android phones.

Personal Unlocking

Now Google has added more ways, from where the users can login into their devices. First is face unlock which uses the front face camera of the phone to unlock the device. If the device can't recognizes the face then it will prompt for a password. Also the bluetooth devices such as headphones, speakers, smart watches and NFC tags can be surely used to unlock the device automatically. These login methods makes the device secure.

Therefore, above are the extraordinary features of the Android L which makes it completely different from other Android phones or tablet.

Some OS X Yosemite problems and solutions

Since OS X Yosemite has been released, Mac users are rapidly excited to install the new OS X. But after installing they are noticing various issues with this new version. So let us see the common problems and solution of Yosemite. Also, please start the Time Machine back up before trying the solutions.

Wi-Fi issues

After switching to Yosemite, there might be some problem in reconnecting to Wi-Fi after sleep. It is hard to find a single solution to the problem. Lets try the below solution to rectify this issue:

• First Remove bluetooth

1.Select File menu from Finder and choose new Finder window. Then click on new Mac'c icon.

2.Now open Mac HD -> Library -> Preferences and find this file “com.apple.Bluetooth.plist” and put it on the desktop.

3.Then drag that file into the trash and remove it from the preferences. Type your password to allow the changes to Finder.

• Remove network configuration files

1.From Finder option, press command+Shift+G and type llin:/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

2.Find these files in a folder:

com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
com.apple.network.identification.plist
com.apple.wifi.message-tracer.plist
networkinterfaces.plist
preferences.plist

3.Backup the folder “SystemConfiguration” by copying it to your desktop.

4.Delete the folder from /Library/Preferences.

• Reset router settings

1.Try factory resetting or turn your router on and off.

2.Access your router administration panel and try these things.

3.Change the Wi-Fi frequency to one another.

4.Changing Wi-Fi name, key, security and Wi-Fi mode.

Buetooth issue

Bluetooth issue is very common among Yosemite users. Try the below solution:

1.Disconnect all USB preferences -> shut the computer off for several minutes -> try restart the Mac and bluetooth.

2.Reset PRAM and SMC.

a) How to reset SMC with a user removable battery?

First shut down the Mac, disconnect Mac portable from the Magsafe connector and remove the battery. Then press and hold the power button for at least 10 seconds. Just release the power button, reconnect battery and MagSafe connector and turn your Mac on.

b) How to reset SMC on portables with a non user removable battery?

In this case first shut down the computer and connect the Magsafe adapter to your Mac and power outlet. Now press and hold Shift+control option keys and the power button at the same time and then release all the keys. At last press the power button to turn on the computer.

c) How to reset the SMC for Mac pro, Intel based iMac, Intel based Mac mini?

Here shut down the computer first and disconnect the power cord. Then wait for fifteen seconds and again attach the power cords. At last wait five seconds and press the power button to turn off the computer.

VPN doesn't work

This problem is very common among those users who are using Yosemite Beta. Just the below method to fix this issue:

1.First launch Systems preferences app from the Launchpad option and choose network on system preferences window.

2.Then click on “+” button to add VPN interface. Do select its type, name and click on create option.

3.Now fill all the required information in it. First keep the configuration stay at Default state and input the correct address of VPN server. Then write the account number, set the Encryption to automatic and click on authentication settings. You could see the User authentication page where you have to input your VPN password and click on ok button to confirm it.

4.At last click on Apply button and there it connects.

How to repair corrupt videos?

Video file such as MP4, MOV, 3GP etc. is a highly digital multimedia format to store video and audio data. While storing, uploading or downloading,  we usually experience lot of problems during this phase. But the major issue, the user has been noticing is video corruption. Let us see the various causes of corruption.

The major causes of the video corruption are:

1) Corrupt header file

Header files are like road map, which are helpful in giving instruction to the computer. They are the files, which carry full specifications of the particular file. And if any specification is missing, then the media player cannot recognize that file. This corruption is caused by either power failure, mishandling of the file etc.

2) Virus infection or bad sectors

Videos are adversely affected by the bad sector, as it won't let the file to open. Ultimately the file becomes corrupt. And virus infected multimedia files gets easily corrupt and can only be repaired with the help of the utility.

3) Changing file formats frequently

Sometimes, changing the file format to another format may affect the file badly. Either the file will overwrite on one another or it will get severely affected.


4) Camcorder or device error

Videos may become inaccessible due to any type of error related to camcorder. Also mishandling of camcorder or accidentally pressing any button while uploading video may affect certain bad effects to videos.

5) Record videos when memory card is full

Recording videos at the time when memory card is full may cause the adverse effect on the video. Also the video gets corrupt or becomes inaccessible.

6) CRC errors or interruption during video file

Now CRC errors takes place when there are bad sectors in the storage media and also if you hear any kind of noise get prompt in the video during transmission of the file. These errors won't make the user to access the file. So in this kind of situations, the user has to use the utility to repair the damaged video.

Solution of corrupt videos

If your any video files such as MP4, MOV etc. are corrupt, then surely you should use the tool to eradicate all the errors. The effective tool will definitely repair the damaged, corrupt or broken videos efficiently. Also some of the common errors such as stated above can be easily resolved by the utility. So the steps to repair the video using the utility are:

1) Download Stellar Phoenix Video Repair application on your Mac

2) Next step is to unpack the file and double click on .dmg file. This step will mount the software on the screen.

3) Now double click on that file and drag the folder to the Applications folder.

4) Then launch the application and accept the license agreement. After that, select the corrupt video that you want to repair and click on “Repair” button.

5) After processing the above step, this will show you the description of the particular video.

6) Finally the software will automatically scan the repaired video at the desired location.

Important precautions should be taken while repairing

Never save the recovered files to the same hard drive to which you are scanning. This may cause the deleted files overwritten before they can be recovered. So always save your data to different drive. Also make sure that the drive you are using to recover the data should not be corrupt or failing drive.

Bad hard drive causes and its solution

Hard drive is the storage house of the computer. It forms the basis of computing. A bad hard drive can cause different variety of issues on your computer. Let us sum up the notorious and most common causes of the bad hard drive.

1) Abnormal or strange noises

These strange noises from the drive are a sign of a failing hard drive. If the sound is thrashing or you had experience a head crash then that hard drive is beyond repair. This type of failure of the hard drive is called catastrophic failure. This condition indicates that the drive heads are slamming against the extremes of the hard drive.

2) Fail to read or write to the drive

This problem exists with respect to the entire hard drive. The common possibilities of this type of the problem are Index corruption of the file system or there is no space on the hard drive or by a faulty cable or connection in the system or sudden power outage etc. All these issues constitute a problem of the read/write failure.

3) Drive is not recognized by the system

If the computer does not recognize the drive, then that drive may suffer from the controller card failure, which ultimately makes the drive invisible to the system. And if the drive is mounted, the information in the drive is not interpreted by the system. This indicates that either the index files are corrupt or the drive has been damaged completely.

4) Boot drive will no longer boot

If the visibility of the drive is there but it wont boot then this is a problem of file system corruption of the drive. Also it can be caused by the bad sectors in the hard drive. Improper shutdown may be the vital cause of this serious problem.

5) Computer crashes

If your computer is causing blue screen problems or it suddenly reboot, then definitely the drive is troublesome and about to fail. If your computer is crashing while accessing some file, then surely your drive is corrupt and need to be sorted out.

6) Slow access time

Suppose your system is taking too long to open a file or folder. And you are analyzing this problem for so long, then your hard drive will surely fail in a month or two.

7) Hard drive shuts itself off with no reason

Now this issue is caused because of the operating system. Actually no operating system is perfect. All operating system have bugs. If the drive shuts for no apparent reason then either the problem is controller card or the board supply.

Solution to the problem

All these problems carry a serious threat to the hard drive. Now due to these issues, either the hard drive will fail or become corrupt. So lets see the solution of the above problems:

1) First of all always have the backup of your drive. You can use good drive clone software for back up which will also provide you the bootable clone copy. Also one can image the hard drive that you suspect is having bad sectors.

2) Regularly check the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. This will help you to keep the drive healthy. Make us of disk management tools that are bundled with operating system.

3) Try safe boot. Also, you need to boot from the recovery HD partition. If you can't be able to boot, then your drive is too damaged to allow booting from the partition itself.

4) And at last if you can't get out of this miserable condition of the bad hard drive, then use some good disk repair software that will definitely keep your hard drive in a healthy condition and will repair all kind of issues.

Can my Mac get virus from Internet or FAT USB?

Big question remains unanswered to this date, ‘Whether a virus can really become serious threat for Mac’? Just to give you an idea, I have been running my Mac from 2011 and to this date I haven’t installed any Antivirus program for Mac. So, doesn’t it makes me compromise with the situation in rapidly changing IT environment?

Being in the data recovery industry I have realized the true meaning of the phrase ‘Prevention is better than Cure’. Data gone forever from a Mac may lead to endless regret of not backing the drive timely.  Similarly, ignoring any potential virus threat for OS X Mac would be an absolute carelessness. If a virus really paralyses a Mac then you may remind this term forever, ‘Look, you were warned’.

How Viruses are always around Mac OS X?

Its good that most of the viruses may not be able to penetrate OS X but the truth is they are always around the OS X. Who knows, may be a much better written malware/virus for Mac can cause calculated damaged. Internet is the biggest source of Trojans, malware for any computer systems and OS X is no exception. Many malware had been jotted down for the OS X in the past. These malware were easily able to penetrate the OS X defence. Most of them came via malicious websites or applications.

A Website runs on a browser and browsers are one of the most potential source to viral any malicious programs. Many a times, stupid pop-up ads & adware are installed through our browsers, which begin to create havoc on Apple file system. Some of these adware are too notorious and forces user to consider reinstalling the OS X again. An unplanned re-installation of OS X can be serious too since chances of loosing recent data is higher. Taking backup of such infected file systems also becomes a cause of worry since restoring them back to the system may create the infected loops again. If you have involved in such situation then consider scanning the formatted drive for recovery of files through formatted Mac file recovery software.

                             Recent threats to Apple Mac & iOS devices – Wirelurker

USB devices too pose enough threats to OS X. Since OS X can read FAT, EXFAT file system, a PC virus can easily corrupt it. Not only Mac file system but also viruses on USBs can damage the device file structure itself. Biggest threat lies in syncing of Apple devices, where other devices such as iPhones, iPad may intake the infection from OS X.

Possible solutions to eliminate a threat from Mac OS X:

Thankfully some geniuses have brought good antivirus software to this world and that too for Mac OS X. There is more than couple of them to download on Mac.

1. Sophos for Mac (Free)
2. AVG for Mac (Free)
3. Antivirus by Max Secure ($15)
4. Virus Scanner Plus ($30)

Working of Sophos of Mac OS X

• Download Sophos for free and install
• Run Sophos and select Apple HDD for scan. Connect any USB device if you want to scan it for threats.
• You can scan more than one drive simultaneously. Check below image:

•  Sophos will finish the scan and present you its report. In my case, it detected a threat. See below:

The above virus or spyware appears to be a minor threat or may be it is not a threat at all. Sometimes, even corrupt preference files may appear as malicious to anti-virus software. Best would be to quarantine such files with quarantine manager.

How to partition and resize the stubborn partition

Make Partition in Mac

Partitioning a Mac hard drive is no longer a difficult task. It needs some steps to go through the process. Well before partitioning a Mac hard drive, back up of the data should be taken to avoid the data loss. You can take the backup of the data either by Time Machine back up or by using clone software. The steps to partition a Mac hard drive are as follows:

1) Remove all external drives

Just remove all the external drives and flash sticks while doing this activity.

2) Insert the Mac installation disk

First restart your computer. Then while you hear welcome music, click and hold C key to make sure that the Mac start from DVD drive. After that, wait until the installation loads. Then choose the language according to you and click on next button. Just accept the license.

3) Go to utilities and choose Disk Utility

The disk utility will start. Then just recognize your Mac disk. There on the right, you could see the five options like Erase, Partition & Restore etc.

4) Select the partition tab

Now click on the partition tab and then you could see the Volume scheme option there. This option shows us that how many volumes does our Mac have. Usually all Mac have generally one volume. It is recommended that two partitions are needed on Mac, both of equal size. One partition should be used for OS X and other for personal data.

5) Click on upper volume

On volume information name your system disk like Mac or any other name. Select from Format drop down Mac OS Journaled and name your volume by clicking the lower volume on the Volume scheme. Now after clicking on Format option, the Disk Utility will raise the pop up message asking to do the process. You should click on yes then only, when you have already back up your important data, otherwise you will lose all your data.

6) Wait until formatting is done

After that you would see two options one for system and the other for data. And then click on Quit Disk Utility option.

This is how you should partition and format the disk.

Resize the partition

You can easily resize the partition or mounted volume in Mac using Disk Utility. Now again it is highly recommended you take the back up the data before carrying this process further.  Steps to resize the partition are:

1) Open Disk Utility

Select the disk utility found in  /Application/Utilities/folder and select the hard drive with the partitions that you want to resize.

2) Select Partition tab

Click on partition tab and choose the partition that you want to resize it. Just then click and hold the button on the little dragging widget in the corner and resize the partition. Click on Apply button after resizing successfully the partition,

What to do when Disk Utility won't resize the partition??

There are certain times when Disk Utility fails to resize the stubborn partition or unable to mount the partition. At this time, using partition manager software is only the solution. This software creates the bootable DVD to deal effectively with the corrupt partition, which the Disk utility fails to do so. Also this great utility helps to optimize the free space and avail it for the partition itself.

Therefore, this is the only way to handle the corrupted partition or the partition that may contain the bad sectors.

Listing some common problems of Mac

A serious variety of problems can be seen with the Mac computers, which are quite universal to almost all OS X. Most of the problems can be easily trouble shoot by us. Instead of going every time to the Apple store, we can rectify the problem ourselves. Let us see the common problems and their solutions with them:

Blue or Grey screen on startup

Sometimes after turning on the system, we get a blue or grey screen, which gets stuck at the Apple logo. This error is very frustrating when we have to do our important work. And this error is caused by the number of reasons. Lets try to troubleshoot this error:

1) Disconnect all the peripherals

Major reason of this error is incompatible hardware connected to the machine. Just disconnect everything and start your computer again. If your Mac starts, then, there must be a problem with the peripherals. You have to do the trial and error method to find the problematic peripheral. If you found that problem, then you can try to fix that problem with the software or the firmware update to the device. And if no device is causing any problem, then try doing the next step.

2) Perform Safe boot

Safe boot will check the hard disk in the process and boot up with the least amount of drivers needed to make it work. Just hold the shift key to start your computer till the Apple logo passes. If this solves your problem, then restart your computer again and see if it boot normally. If not, then the next option is Disk Utility.

3) Run Disk Utility

Now run Disk Utility and check the hard drive status. First, boot your computer while holding down Command + R. Then, select Disk Utility option. Now choose your hard drive and click "Verify". If the problems arises then click on Repair disk. And if everything thing is right, then click on "Repair permissions" and reboot the system.

If still the problem doesn't solve, then go for the good software which will optimize your hard drive as this problem is caused by bad hard drive.

Persistent Beach Ball

Beach Ball is the most specific problem that halts the task in the middle of it. Actually this problem is caused when any app takes the biggest CPU load. If this problem is caused in application, then it is easier to solve it but if this spinning ball consistently attacking your system, then it is really important to figure out the task. Lets figure out the cause:

1) Check activity Monitor

At first launch Activity Monitor by clicking on Applications and then on Utilities. Now check for daily usage activities. If the beach ball comes up then look for the applications which takes up the biggest CPU load. Now, solution is to add more RAM, which will help you to resolve multiple issues and update your software. Also, this problem arises when your hard disk is full, so ensure some free space in it.

2) Reclaim hard drive space

Full hard drive can also be the reason of the spinning ball problems. For this action, you need to clean up the two folders trash and downloads folder. Well, this can make sure enough space to at least save the file. If still you can’t be able to free some space in the hard drive, then go for some software for this as there may be some hidden files which certainly cause a lot of issues.

Therefore, the above article will troubleshoot most of your problems related to Mac.

Should I defrag my Mac HDD?

First thing first

You may not need to defrag a Mac OS X if you use your computer for normal day-to-day usage. Normal usage includes web surfing, working on documents, watching audio-video files, working on minor software etc. To be precise, Macs can handle file fragmentation of files whose sizes vary up to 20MB. For a file size of that, fragmentation is an automated process, thanks to HFS file unique structure.

Then Why to defrag Mac?

Apart from your normal usage of OS X, if you run heavy applications or play HD games on OS X and do lots of professional video editing, then need of defragmenting a Mac disk may arise. Other than this user may consider defragging a drive if it’s an old drive that had went under millions of read/write operations.

Many re-purchased Macs whose hard drives have been formatted also undergo defragging to optimize free & used spaces. Doing this gives significant boost to the overage drive in terms of speed and performances.

Users to install Windows OS through Boot Camp also choose to optimize hard drive spaces through defragging the Mac disk. Also, to re-brush slow start ups, a Mac user chooses to create a bootable DVD and defrag the boot drive.

Defrag Mac HDD or other drive which is HFS formatted

Since Disk Utility doesn’t encompasses a defrag drive utility, user had few options left to go for defragging Mac disks. However, you may try below tips:

• Get a blank external hard drive of equal or more size of your Mac HDD. Clone it using software to make the external hard drive an exact replica of the OS X drive.

• Once clone is secured, erase the original HDD.  Erasing the drive will recreate fresh sectors on the drive thus removing fragmented blocks on the device.

• Once OS X HDD is erased restore entire content from the cloned hard drive. Copying back all data to this newly formatted drives will reallocate contiguous memory locations thus killing fragments.

Third party defrag Mac tool

Software such as Stellar Drive Defrag and iPartition facilitates defragging Mac disk drives as well as any external drive formatted with HFS partition. User can also remove slack spaces with the help of a Mac defrag tool. To defrag a Mac disk follow below mentioned instructions.

1. Download & Install defrag Mac app
2. Select disk to be defragmented
3. Choose software built-in algorithms to defrag selected Mac drive or volume.
4. Let the app take its time to eliminate file fragments from the drive
5. Quit the app once process is finished.

Once the application ends up defragging, give your Mac a restart and start your work as usual. Keep note of speed & performances. User having iMacs & MBP can run test disk to check performance after optimization.

6 Mac startup options a user should know

There are a number of Mac startup options that are available for the troubleshooting and system management.  These days lot of startup issues are originating in Mac, so users should be aware of these options to handle most of the problems themselves. Let us have a look at these options:

Recovery Mode

The Mac users can easily diagnose the problems in Mac such as hardware issues, restore Time Machine backups, manage hard drives and even reinstall OS X with the help of Recovery mode option. To use this option, one has to reboot or start the Mac and hold down the Command +R keys simultaneously till then you hear the startup chime. And then you could see the options on the screen there to use the recovery mode successfully.

Startup Manager

Mac built-in startup manager is for those people who use multiple internal drives or partitions. Just reboot your Mac and hold the Option key till then you hear the startup chime.  Then, you could see all the bootable devices appear on the screen. Now, the Mac startup Manager will update the bootable devices that you add or drop and you could see automatically in the options.

Safe boot

Now, this OS X facility is called Safe Boot. This facility is use to troubleshoot those issues which are caused by using incompatible software. To use this facility, keep holding the Shift key on your keyboard till then you hear the startup chime and see the grey progress bar under the Apple Logo.  When triggered, this safe boot option will check the integrity of the startup volume, loads the required kernel extensions, disable all user fonts, clear fonts cache and disable all the login items. This safe boot option may take longer time to boot as compared to the normal boot process. Also it is very essential to troubleshoot the Mac.

Reset PRAM

PRAM stated as Parameter Random Access Memory stores the crucial information such as the presence of any internal drives, type and number of connected drives, speaker volume, screen resolution etc. If something goes wrong with the Mac and it is not performing well, then PRAM is the foremost step for troubleshooting. To reset PRAM you need to shut down the Mac. After that hold down the four keys i.e. Command button, option key, P and R keys simultaneously till then you hear the startup chime and wait until your Mac reboots. Then after hearing the second startup chime, you can release the keys.

Verbose mode

Using the Verbose mode will hamper the troubleshooting efforts by showing the messy details of Mac during boot. The user can see the rows of text instead of the gray boot screen. So enabling it will simplify the task to solve most of the problems.

Single User Mode

This mode will also do the same activity but instead of finishing the process and return it to OS X login GUI, it will give you with the terminal where you can do the advanced troubleshooting or hard drive repair as well. To boot into Single User Mode, just hold down the Command and S keys simultaneously until the white text appears.

Therefore, the above options will definitely help you to troubleshoot and solve most of the problems of Mac.

Best free utilities for OS X Yosemite

I am 200% sure you must have upgraded to the latest and free OS X upgrade which is 10.10 Yosemite. To be honest, I love this OS X upgrade and much more than OS X mavericks. Mavericks never ran up to expectations on my Mac for unknown reasons. But forget 10.9 today, since 10.10 is the hottest debate of the week. Since we have upgraded to 10.10 I am sharing list of trusted, useful and free apps without which Mac computing is incomplete. 

Those lists of free & prolific software follow below. You can also visit to the software page for free download & installation.

Chrome or FireFox (or both): For many reasons I prefer to have another browser for web surfing. Keeping Mac’s own Safari aside I prefer to have either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox for Mac OS X. The reason is simple, both of them runs fast and can be customized as per need. Undoubtedly, Safari has undergone tremendous changes in recent years but I prefer to work mostly on Chrome. That is a personal choice though, but I recommend having Chrome or FF on OS X.

Onyx: Whosoever has ever run a Mac, no matter a PowerPC Mac or an Intel Mac, he/she must have heard of this amazing OS X utility. Downloaded & installed free of cost, Onyx is an OS X maintenance kit that can optimize Mac. Among the list of activities performed by ONYX are:

• Cleans Mac drive for free spaces
• Verify SMART status of Mac hard drives.

ClamXAV: Yes a free Mac virus scanner that will ensure your OS X remains safer around. Though there aren’t many Mac viruses around but some Trojans or malware can cause a real headache. If you are transferring files using a FAT formatted USB between a Mac and a PC then you can’t just sit around without worrying about malware. Out of hundreds of PC based malware some may get transmitted to secure Mac file system. So, be prepared for such situation with a free virus cleaner for OS X Mac.

Speedup Mac software: You might want to speed up slow Yosemite with one of the fine available speed up Mac software. This kind of software can look deep into OS X hard drive and bring out junk files from the places where user can’t afford to go. Duplicate files can also be removed with the help of a speed up Mac software. Stellar Speedup Mac software can remove

• System junk files, 
• log files, 
• trashes, leftovers &
• manage extensions from startup drive.

Dropbox: I admit, I love Dropbox a lot. In my opinion it is the best available online backup services. Dropbox has always helped me saving my small files in limited edition (upto 2GB) package. The sync of files between Mac & Dropbox is genius. Don’t let this 2GB of free backup service go waste. 

Skype: Skype for Mac will help you connect globally and that too for free.

VLC: You will 100% require VLC for Mac since Quick Time player will not run all kinds of audio-video files. So go grab it.

Visit Apple.com to free upgrade to OS X Yosemite, if still running a previous OS X.

Easily Recover Data without using Undelete Software

Data Recovery is a process to recover accidentally deleted or formatted files from your computer including common storage devices such as external or internal hard drive, USB, CD/DVD, memory card etc. Such files can be restored if proper actions are taken immediately or as soon as possible.

Data recovery software is indeed a great way to have your deleted files back, though it may require you to invest money and time. Recovery software can make use of sophisticated algorithm to deeply scan files that is mark as deleted or lost in MBR and treat them carefully to recover exactly as they were deleted.

However, we’ll discuss about some manual ways to recover your lost or deleted files without using such recovery software. It’s strongly advised to not to save or overwrite any more data on the problem storage device as it’ll make your attempts failed of recovering lost or deleted data.

Restore deleted files (Manual method)
Accidental deletion of files and folders- Perhaps, you’re cleaning your system by deleted unnecessary and junk files to free up some hard disk space. However, accidentally you may have deleted an important files or folders that you badly needed.  Unluckily, you can’t file those files in the recycle bin as you’ve chosen to delete it permanently by pressing ‘shift + delete’.

Resolution:  In some cases, you should see your computer recycle bin folder to see if the deleted files are there. You can right click on it and choose ‘Restore’ to save them back to their original destination. However, if you can’t found files what you’re looking for, try following the steps mentioned below:

a.    Right click on folder containing your files deleted previously.
b.    Choose ‘Properties’ and go to ‘Previous versions tab’.
c.    This will list all the previous version of files existed previously (Before deletion). Select file which you want to restore and click on ‘Restore’ button to restore those files back to your system.

What if the files were deleted from the Desktop folder?   

For example, if you have deleted files from the desktop folder named ‘XYZ’. Try creating a new folder with exactly the same name i.e. ‘XYZ’. Moving further, right click on the same and go to its ‘Properties’. Under ‘previous version’ tab, you should see all the deleted files located under the folder. Simply, choose any or all the files you want and hit on restore button.

However, make the system protection is set to turned on. Follow the steps below to check and make sure the system protection is ON:

• Right click on ‘My Computer’ and select ‘Manage’.
• Navigate to ‘System Protection’ tab and see if the protection is set to ‘On’ or ‘Off’. To turn the protection ‘On’ for drive ‘D’ (See the image below), click on the drive and select ‘Configure’.
  
  
• Under ‘Restore Settings’ section, select the radio button stating ‘Turn on System Protection’ and set the ‘Disk Space Usage’ as per your convenient.
  
  
• Click on ‘Apply’ to make changes take effect.

Other type of deletion that can’t be addressed manually
Partition Format- If you’ve accidentally formatted or deleted an entire partition, you might be in trouble as you can’t be able to restore them manually. Instead, you should seek for professional and efficient partition undelete software that can scans and recover data from formatted or deleted partition.

Below are some common type of partition problem occurs in Windows OS:

2)    File system damages - This kind of failure occurs due to hardware failure or registry corruption. Sometime logical damage is also caused by software failure. However, most modern file system has a high level of protection against file system.

3)    Partition Corruption due to virus attack- This kind of corruption arises due to unknown malware or other type of threats that may leave partition inaccessible and all the data stored.

Conclusion
Data deleted from computer will keep residing on the memory till it’s not overwritten by some other data. In most cases, we simply delete any files that were no longer needed and can be restored from the recycle bin folder. If you can make use of manual tricks of restoring deleted files, you might not need to invest money on purchasing data recovery software.

However, if situations isn’t in your favor, choose efficient data recovery software might be your last resort. It’ll help you in recovering data from severely damaged or corrupt partitions as well as ensures you that it’ll be completely accessible and 100% working as before.

How to uninstall applications on Mac computer?

Uninstalling software and updating its new version is the most important task to upgrade the Mac with the new features and security purpose. Removing the old software is a necessary action required for the smooth functioning of the Mac. Installed software is always stored in Application folder with the hidden and other files. Uninstalling the software will provide the free space on the hard disk. But before uninstalling the software, it is recommended to keep the backup for the safer side to avoid any discrepancies. Now, to completely uninstall the program, you need to delete it manually by following the simple steps.

1) First delete the software using Trash

Now by default Mac OS X software is stored in the Application folder present on the hard drive. At first, login in to your administrator account. Then open the Application folder and browse for the programs that you need to uninstall.  There you will see some programs are represented by a single icon while other are in folder form having multiple icons into it. And icons can be seen there with the .app extension to identify it.  Also you may find some programs on desktop as well. Just select the program that you want to delete and drag it to the trash folder. Then empty the trash also to completely remove the program.

2) Removing preference files

Now after you empty the trash, still there are some files lingering on the hard drive and have to be deleted. These are called preference files, which are very small and need to be removed to ensure free space on the hard disk. If you don’t want to use the uninstall program in the future, then you need to remove these preference files permanently.

Now to delete it: Hold down the Option key and click on the Go menu. There you could see the Library option available. Choose the files that you want to remove. Also search the files in the  ~/Library/,  ~/Library/Preferences/ and  ~/Library/Application Support/ folders. Now simply drag that files to the Trash folder.

Also you need to check for the similarly named items in the below list and remove it from there as well.

~/Library/LaunchAgents
~/Library/PreferencePanes
~/Library/StartupItems

Sometimes while deleting the files from trash, the error occurs that  "an item in use and can't be deleted". In this case, just reboot the Mac and try again.

After rebooting also, if still the programs are not deleted, then the third party uninstaller will surely uninstall the programs and will definitely make sure that all the traces are deleted completely.

3) Deleting Hidden files and kernel extensions

Everything has been deleted so far to a great extent, but some instance of the software still need to be deleted. These instances include hidden files and kernel extension, which is hard to find. These items need to be specifically searched on the Google. Software that involves some background processing activities such as anti-virus and security programs. Now, kernel extensions are located in /System/Library/Extensions and end with the .kext. After moving that file to the Trash, reboot the system and see the changes. And hidden files are those files that start with a period (.). As the name concerned, these files don’t get displayed in the Finder. Mostly these files are used by the programs for the authentication purposes and located in the home folder. You can use terminal so that the contents are listed in the directory and delete the annoyed item.

But mostly in this case, user is unable to find the above files as they are hidden from the user. For this specific case, he has to go for the third party software to get rid of it completely.

Third Party software

And if somebody does not want to do the above task manually, he can surely use the third party software for this. The third party software do all the above task automatically in few minutes and remove all the junk from the system such as: Cache and leftovers, log files, language files, hidden files, extensions, large files, duplicate files, universal binaries etc. Also, provide you with the "Uninstaller" to uninstall the applications completely.

Why Your Computer Won't Detect Your USB or Flash Drive – Fix it now

This looks quite obvious and can be easily addressed by removing and reinserting the portable or removable storage media devices from the computer system. However, if it keeps happening by performing above steps multiple times as well as the same thing happens whenever you tried to connect the device on different computer, the solution might be tricky and needs you to follow some handful steps. 

USB or flash drives are still a popular way to safely carry documents and other useful information. These devices generally have higher chances of becoming damaged, inaccessible or even unreadable by the computer system due to of lacking any inbuilt security mechanism. Therefore, you are strongly advised to carefully scan the targeted computer first before plugging your USB/ Flash chips based storage devices.

Once the device becomes inaccessible, you might lose your data permanently and use of best data recovery software can help you recover data from USB or Flash Drives. Recovery software are specially created to deal with various crucial data loss circumstances by providing relevant recovery methods to recover data from verity of storage media devices.

‘USB isn’t showing up on the computer’ is one of the most common problems that user may face anytime. The problem device may also not showed up under ‘Disk Management’, which usually contains all the crucial information about all the connected internal or external storage media devices such as file system type, used or total drive capacity, drive label etc. In some case, disk management may list the drive with such problems but show 0 Bytes as total drive capacity as well as consumed or free space.

Don’t get confused with various other forms of similar problems, such as:

Please insert a disk into drive X:

Whenever, you’ve decided to format drive with similar issues, you may have received the following error message on the screen:

There is no disk in drive X.
Insert a disk, and then try again.

For example, in the image below, you can see a drive with such problems that is showing 0 Bytes as drive capacity as well as unallocated or reserved space.

                             

How to fix problem USB or Flash drive that didn’t showed up – Windows 7

Steps mentioned in this tutorial are simple, however it is advised you to be a computer proficient to carefully follow all the steps. Also, the risks are involved of losing data as some steps require you to completely format the problem storage devices (USB or Flash Drive).

Once you are done and ensured that all the stored data were accessible from somewhere else, you can proceed with troubleshooting steps below:

1. Open the elevated command prompt by typing cmd in the search text bar, opened after clicking on start button in Windows 7. Right click on the Command Prompt from the search text bar and choose to run it as an administrator.
   
   Please enter the admin credentials if it was previously set and hit enter.
   
2. Alternatively, you can also type diskpart.exe directly into the search text bar, opened after clicking on the start button in Windows 7. Again, you’ll need to select it to ‘Run as an administrator’ and provide required admin credentials.
   
3. Once the black screen window opens, type ‘list disk’ and hit enter. This command will list all the internal or external storage media devices currently connected to your computer.
   
4. You’ll need to locate the problem storage devices that stop showing in the computer previously. You can easily identify it by seeing the size of the problem drive. Note down the number of your problem storage device, located just below the Disk ### column.
   
5. Type Select Disk X (Where X is the number of problem removable device) and hit enter. A confirmation message will appear that now the same numbered disk has been selected and any or all the actions you perform, will be applied to that particular disk.
   
6. Perform clean command by typing Clean and hitting enter. This will erase all the stored data into the problem drive and make it very fresh exactly as you had used it for the first time. However, it’ll lose the defined file system type and needs to be assigned any one, either NTFS or FAT (Whichever you want)
   
7. Type Create Partition Primary to assign a new file system/partition to that problem drive and hit enter. By default, Partition 1 will be assigned to that problem device.
   
8. Type Select Partition 1 and hit enter to select the partition.
   
9. Type format fs=ntfs label=USB quick in the command prompt and hit enter to format it once again and make it pretty fresh for new uses.
   
10. Close the Diskpart or exit the black screen window by simply clicking on close button, located at the top right corner.
    
11. Most probably, the drive will now be listed under ‘My Computer’ labeled with NTFS file format. From now on, you can use or access this drive without any problem. Moreover, follow the same procedure if the problem resurfaces in future.

Alternate options
If following the above tutorials didn’t help you, consider using the third party USB/Flash Drive formatting tool which will format the drive by using their own mechanism and repair the corrupt or damaged file system.

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool is a great tool to format USB or flash media of almost any size and make it bootable if required. It’ll also lets you able to assign or give new file system type to your problem removable storage media.

Windows USB DVD creator is also a similar tool and can also be used to format or make bootable USB. In both ways, we’ll try to format and assign a new file system to the problem storage media as formatting any non-working or corrupt USB can do the trick and make it usable as before.

Last resort for making corrupt/damaged USB usable again
At last, if nothing works, consider following the link here and initiate the Launchpad. Follow on screen steps and U3 installer will restore the problem USB drive to its default/factory settings. Remember, this option will work only on SanDisk USB or Flash drive as the utility was specifically created for Manufacturer own modeled USB or flash drives.