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You were recommended by a couple of the guys at the Genius Bar at the Apple store as another source for any issues or problems.

I have a a couple of issues with some iMacs that are in a doctors office in Charlotte.  The issue of the day is that they use Terminal to connect to their server for their practice management software.  They have about 13 iMac's (with more to come in the future to replace all PC's) all of which have been fine up until now.

I find it very strange that they have to use "Terminal" to connect.  There would most likely be a much better way than using unix code to drill in.  I would be interested to know what software they are using.  If it's Mac Practice, then terminal would not be necessary.  

 There was a new that was just setup and when they connect to their practice management software, there are some additional characters that show on the screen.  As you go into different menu items, things get worse.  It's almost as if the lines are wrapping or items are shift so much so that you can tell where you are in the system.  What make it most frustrating is that we have set the preferences in Terminal to be exactly like the setting on the other iMac's that work beautifully.

I would first, be sure that all software is updated.  Next I would be curious to view the network and sharing settings of each Mac.  Are there a limited number of nodes the software will handle at once?  Is the software living on a mac server or windows based?  I just find it difficult to believe that terminal would be required to interact with any server based software.  There's got to be a GUI that would make things much easier.  I have several doctor's and dentists in my client base and have not encountered this system.  

Is there something simple I'm missing?  Also, can you give me an idea of rate to troubleshoot and correct this problem?

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Another issue is that they've had the hard drives fail on a couple of the machines and in trying to save money, I had Geek Squad install new hard drives and I was going to re-install the operating system.  (I've done it numerous times on Window machine and didn't think it would be much different.)  The problem is that I load the disk and it gets to the point of asking me to select the location to install it and the hard drive doesn't appear.  I'm sure there's some formatting or something that needs to be done first, but I haven't had the time to research it.

easy one, yes the drives installed are most likely formatted for windows and the OS X install disk does not recognize them in that state.  To solve this issue, go to disk utility within the file menu while booted from the DVD then you'll see the disk.  Use disk utility to reformat the drive for "mac os extended journaled" then quit disk utility and return to the installer.  You should now see the disk as a selectable item.  

The last issue is that a screen has gone blank.  When it's first turned on, the screen looks fine for a few minutes, then goes completely black.

This could be a hardware issue.  Hard to tell what it is with the description.  Possibly a power supply issue.  Just not sure.  
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