MacIssues Answers is a periodic column where I respond to questions asked by MacIssues readers. In this session, readers asked about youtube videos not loading in Safari, USB errors showing in Single-User mode, and Outlook constantly asking for account passwords.

MacIssues is intended to be a community effort and I welcome contributions from readers, so if you have any suggestions, corrections, or alternative approaches to these problems, then please post them in the comments below, in the MacIssues discussion forum, or use the contact form to the right of each page.

Question: YouTube videos not loading in Safari

MacIssues reader Roger asks:

Hi Topher, Recently, YouTube is not loading any comments in Safari. I just see a circle spinning around. FireFox has no problem with this, only Safari. I’m using Snow Leopard.

Answer:
Do you have any extensions enabled, or third-party plug-ins installed? Try going to Safari’s preferences and then turn off extensions in the Extensions category, and then go to the Security category and uncheck the option to enable plug-ins. If this does not show any difference when you re-load the YouTube page, then re-enable these features and delete cookies for YouTube by doing the following:

1. Go to the Privacy section of Safari’s preferences
2. Click the small “Details…” button
3. Search for “YouTube” in the list that shows up
4. Click the “Remove All” button to clear the entries that show up

When this is done, again re-load YouTube and try loading the comments again.

Question: USB errors showing when booting in Single User mode

MacIssues reader Bill asks:

When I try to start up in single user mode, I get line after line of “USFB” error messages similar to the following: USFB (a number) AppleUSBEHC I al locateTDs returned error e00002e2 This error keeps repeating, except for (a number) which changes on each line. Do you who what is wrong? This never happened before.

Answer:
This error suggests the system cannot properly enumerate an attached USB device. Do you have any peripherals besides your keyboard and mouse attached? If so, then unplug them and try launching into Single User mode again. You can also try rearranging what ports your devices are connected to. If only your keyboard and mouse are attached, then try again changing the port they are attached to, or try a different keyboard and mouse (any USB keyboard/mouse will work, even a Windows one—the Windows key maps to the Command key in OS X).

You can also try unplugging all devices, including your keyboard and mouse, once you trigger Single User mode and see it begin loading this mode. If this stops the error from showing up, then it indicates the problem is with a specific device. You can then troubleshoot by trying with different combinations of devices attached, to hopefully identify the faulty one. Unfortunately sometimes these problems can occur from specific port connection setups more than with the devices themselves, so troubleshooting like this by rearranging which ports are used, will sometimes inherently overcome the problem and not show a specific device causing the problem.

Question: Outlook constantly asking for account passwords

MacIssues reader Tom asks:

I have several email names or identities in Outlook 2011. Since the upgrade to 10.9, when I go to check mail, I am now promoted to enter a password. Sometimes several times a day. Sometimes for receiving mail, and sometimes for sending mail. What is going on? Outllook for Mac 14.4.1

Answer:
Try going to the Outlook program in your Applications folder (it might be in a sub-directory called “Microsoft Office 2011”) and then select Outlook and press Command-i to get information on the program. In here, check the box that says “Prevent App Nap” to keep this program from going into built-in standby modes supported in OS X Mavericks.

This should hopefully clear the problem, and hopefully an update to Outlook will properly implement it with Apple’s “App Nap” features.