SMARTBoard Software

[TC2COOL]

I use a SMARTBoard at school, and it's great. The kids love it, and I love it. I like to use my MacBook to run the thing, because the classroom computer is, well, a classroom computer.

Does anyone else use a SMARTBoard?

My issue is that the program automatically opens at start-up, and it is not in my start-up file, and I have tried to turn off all automatic start up settings, but it still starts up every time I boot.

Any ideas? I can't ditch the software, the school owns it, so I can't re-install, and I need it to run the board.

Thanks

TC

 

[YoshiKing]

I use a SMARTBoard at school, and it's great. The kids love it, and I love it. I like to use my MacBook to run the thing, because the classroom computer is, well, a classroom computer.

Does anyone else use a SMARTBoard?

My issue is that the program automatically opens at start-up, and it is not in my start-up file, and I have tried to turn off all automatic start up settings, but it still starts up every time I boot.

Any ideas? I can't ditch the software, the school owns it, so I can't re-install, and I need it to run the board.

Thanks

TC

You could always run it through windows? What have you tired so far in OSX?

YoshiKing

 

[Kovlor]

It hides in the loginwindow.plist

The smartboard software hides itself in /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist to start itself up as soon as someone logs in. The new installation utility has an option to disable automatic startup of the Smartboard Tools, but it doesn't do anything in my experience.

To remove the tools from startup open up a Terminal window, give yourself root privileges, convert and edit the loginwindow.plist file. It is best to be familiar with one of the command line text editor programs in OS X. I use vi in this example, as well as make a backup copy of the file, just in case.

*DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK*
If you are not familiar with editing text files on the command line, practice or as someone who is.

In Terminal type:

cd /Library/Preferences
cp loginwindow.plist loginwindow.plist.old
sudo plutil -convert xml1 loginwindow.plist
sudo vi loginwindow.plist

You will now see a bunch of lines, you want to remove the lines that relate to the TOOLS only. If you disable the service, then smartboard will not work at all.

In vi you can use the arrow keys to move the cursor to the beginning of a line, and then use the d key to delete the entire line. The lines to remove are:

<dict>
     <key>Hide</key>
     <false/>
     <key>Path</key>
     <string>/Applications/SMART Board Drivers/SMART Board Tools.app</string>
</dict>

Save the file by typing :w and hit enter. Then type :q and enter to quit vi. Now when you reboot, no more tools on startup!

 

[johnydn]

Applescript to remove smartboard startup

Using a script I found to remove items from the loginwindow.plist here:

http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=18380


I modified it to only search for Smart Board Tools.app and remove that.

(* This script has been modified so that it will only search for Smart Board Tools.app and delete that.  The rest of the comments in the script are from the original and may not apply *)

(* Original script located at http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=18380 *)

(* modified by Johny *)



(* removeGlobalLoginItem -- removes startup items located in
   /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist *)

property myPlistBuddy : "no"
property myAutoLaunched : "AutoLaunchedApplicationDictionary"
global myRm

(* This try block tests for PlistBuddy. If PlistBuddy does not exist, we do _not_
   want our program to run. Note that the 'sed' command effectively
   limits us to the _first_ instance of PlistBuddy that is found by 
   'locate'. In my experience most users have several of these on
   their machines. *)
try
	set myPlistBuddy to (do shell script "/usr/bin/locate PlistBuddy | sed 2,10000d")
end try
if myPlistBuddy is "no" then
	display dialog "Cannot find PlistBuddy on this computer."
else
	doMain()
end if

(* If our 'Try' block worked, we can get into the main subroutine. We'll let
   the user pick a category of alias to delete from the Dock, and use getArray()
   with the proper parameters. We could probably subroutine the deletion as well,
   but it's just one line, so no big savings. *)
on doMain()
	--set thePassword to text returned of (display dialog "Machine password" default answer "" with hidden answer)
	set myGlobalLoginItem to (getArray(myAutoLaunched))
	if myGlobalLoginItem ≥ 0 then
		do shell script myPlistBuddy & " -c \"delete " & myAutoLaunched & ":" & myGlobalLoginItem & " dict\" /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist" with administrator privileges
		display dialog myRm & " has been deleted from the Global Login Items list"
	else
		display dialog "Smart Board Tools.app was not found in loginwindow.plist"
	end if
end doMain

(* getArray() is where most of the work is done. Regardless of the array we are
   working with, it does the same thing. Our 'Repeat' block allows for an 'unlimited' 
   (heh!) number of Global Login items, since we know that the text, "Does Not Exist" will be
   returned for non-existant elements. *)
on getArray(a)
	set myArray to {missing value}
	set x to 0
	set loginItem to ""
	repeat while loginItem does not contain "Smart Board Tools.app" and loginItem does not contain "End of List"
		try
			set loginItem to (do shell script myPlistBuddy & " -c \"print " & a & ":" & x & "\" /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist")
		on error errorMessage number errorNumber
			set loginItem to "End of List" as text
		end try
		set x to (x + 1)
	end repeat
	set x to (x - 1)
	if loginItem contains "Smart Board Tools.app" then
		set myRm to (do shell script myPlistBuddy & " -c \"print " & a & ":" & x & ":Path" & "\" /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist") as string
		return (x)
		
	else if loginItem contains "End of List" then
		return -1
	end if
	
end getArray

 

[AndyWhite]

Comment Out the Code

I got Kovlor's suggestion to work by just commenting out the offending code. This makes it easy to have the software start upon system start again, if you every want this, and it's easy to do: just add two lines

<!-- Add this line
<dict>
     <key>Hide</key>
     <false/>
     <key>Path</key>
     <string>/Applications/SMART Board Drivers/SMART Board Tools.app</string>
</dict>
  and add this line -->

The smartboard software hides itself in /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist to start itself up as soon as someone logs in. The new installation utility has an option to disable automatic startup of the Smartboard Tools, but it doesn't do anything in my experience.

To remove the tools from startup open up a Terminal window, give yourself root privileges, convert and edit the loginwindow.plist file. It is best to be familiar with one of the command line text editor programs in OS X. I use vi in this example, as well as make a backup copy of the file, just in case.

*DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK*
If you are not familiar with editing text files on the command line, practice or as someone who is.

In Terminal type:

cd /Library/Preferences
cp loginwindow.plist loginwindow.plist.old
sudo plutil -convert xml1 loginwindow.plist
sudo vi loginwindow.plist

You will now see a bunch of lines, you want to remove the lines that relate to the TOOLS only. If you disable the service, then smartboard will not work at all.

In vi you can use the arrow keys to move the cursor to the beginning of a line, and then use the d key to delete the entire line. The lines to remove are:

<dict>
     <key>Hide</key>
     <false/>
     <key>Path</key>
     <string>/Applications/SMART Board Drivers/SMART Board Tools.app</string>
</dict>

Save the file by typing :w and hit enter. Then type :q and enter to quit vi. Now when you reboot, no more tools on startup!

 

[hotel17]

help please

I've been searching hours and hours to get rid of this extremely annoying opening at startup from Smartboard. Never had so many troubles getting rid of an app opening at startup.
Unfortunately, all the tips I've tried, including from this forum (and Smartboard support, and Apple Forum, etc., do not work.

here's the error I receive when trying out the tip from this forum:

loginwindow.plist: file does not exist or is not readable or is not a regular file (Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=260 "The file “loginwindow.plist” couldn’t be opened because there is no such file." UserInfo=0x7fede34057c0 {NSFilePath=loginwindow.plist, NSUnderlyingError=0x7fede3405530 "The operation couldn’t be completed. No such file or directory"})