IMac freezes up ... ctrl+opt+esc no longer brings up force quit

I recently upgraded my iMac to 2 GB of RAM... and then installed Snow Lep, now ... on the occasion, it freezes up using and, while the mouse moves, I can't do anything else (i.e., access restart, put it to sleep, click out of browser, etc.) and I used to use ctrloptesc but that no longer brings up the 'force quit' option.
I tried reinstalling SL but it's still happening.
Any suggestions?

I'm having the exact same problem. It happened to me a total of 3 times, twice in the middle of switching Spaces and once waking up from sleep, any suggestions?

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IMac froze while surfing web last night (color pinwheel), I forced quit and now when rebooting the fan and chime come on, the monitor stays on grey and the apple sign is replaced by a stop sign and I can't get past this, is there self fix? Never backed up

iMac froze while surfing web last night (color pinwheel), I forced quit and now when rebooting the fan and chime come on, the monitor stays on grey and the apple sign is replaced by a stop sign and I can't get past this, is there self fix? Never backed up.
The computer (top / back of monitor) gets really hot within minutes.

How old is the iMac?
With no backup, you have probably lost all your data.
Sounds like serious hardware problem for which you are going to have to take it to Apple for an estimate of repairs.
Allan

Special Keys(Ctrl-opt-esc) in Screen Share no longer working after latest update

I typically remote into a machine back home through icloud once or twice a week to help my wife kill a program that can get stuck. I used to be able to send command+opt+esc to get to the remote computers force quit applications window. But now when I do that after the latest update, it only does it on my computer and no longer send the command to the remote screen share session.
Anyone else experience this or have a fix?
-Dan

(A) Try reset iPad
Hold the Sleep/Wake and Home button down together until you see the Apple Logo.
Note: Data will not be affected.
(B) Close all apps in the multi-task window
1.Double-click the Home button.
2. Swipe the app's preview up to close it.
3. Preview will fly off the screen.

Pages (5.2) won't quit on 27" iMac with OS 10.9.2. I need to force quit and then reopen. Fortunately the document is saved. Anyone else have this issue?

In summary I purchased a new 27" iMac with Mavrickes, OS 10.9.2. When I try to close a Pages (v5.2) document after saving the document the application freezes and I get the spinning rainbow ball. I then need to Force Quit Pages. When the Pages application is reopened the documents pop back up, with the data saved after the Force Quit, I am able to close the document. Any suggestions?
I deleted Pages and then reinstalled a new downloaded copy of the application and the issue persists.

If you migrated from an older Mac, Pages '08/'09 might still be in your Applications/iWork folder.
Peter

Uploaded pictures. Chose deleted originals. Took long time. Forced quit. iphoto uploaded a few, deleted most. Deleted pics in trash. Can't open w/ or send to iphoto. Help!

I was uploading pictures from my canon into iphoto. After the upload was completed, I chose to deleted the originals. The "finishing import" was taking longer than usual. I chose "force quit" because iphoto wasn't responding. When I re-opened iphoto, 60 of 370 photos had been imported. The rest were missing. I checked the camera, and the 60 that had been imported were still on the memory card. The rest were gone. I found the deleted photos in the Trashbin of my Mac. I can view these in Preview as JPEG files. However, I cannot save these to iphoto. Nor can I import them into iphoto. I also tried saving them onto a flash drive, but the computer said the JPEG files were corrupted and could not be opened from the flash drive after I saved them there.
Is there any way I can move these pictures into my iphoto library? Help is greatly appreciated!!!!

You can recover the files from the card with an app like MediaRecover
The more important tip: Never let your computer erase any data without you first checking that the data is safe. Specifically never use iPhoto (or any other app) to delete the photos from your Camera Card. Disconnect the camera, check the transfer has gone correctly and then use your Camera to Reformat the Card. This has three advantages:
1. You know your data is safe - because you've taken the time to check it.
2. Reformatting the card is much, much faster - takes a couple of seconds
3. Reformatting also refreshes the Directory Structure on the Card, helping prevent issues with the card and prolonging its life.
Regards
TD

Firefox has been freezing constantly on my Mac, and I have to force quit the program every few minutes.

For the past week or so, Firefox has been freezing multiple times per day. Each time, I have to force quit the program. I tried resetting the plug-ins and add-ons and things, I uninstalled and re-installed Adobe Flash Player, and I uninstalled and re-installed Firefox itself--none of these things has worked. I really don't want to stop using Firefox, but it is currently unusable. Can someone help?

Hello,
I am glad to hear that your problem has been resolved. If you haven't already, please select the answer that solves the problem. This will help other users with similar problems find the solution more easily.
Thank you for contacting Mozilla Support.

Firefox freezes upon opening up the program. Have to force quit (mac) every time. I've reinstalled 5 times.

I have no idea what's causing this. I used Firefox exclusively for years and one day it just froze. I tried rebooting my computer, and eventually deleting and reinstalling Firefox multiple times. Nothing has helped. It was several months ago that the problem began, so I don't recall exactly what I was doing when it first happened. I've searched my hard drive for leftover remnants of an old Firefox program that might be causing problems, but I've found nothing. I've used Safari ever since and that works fine. I just prefer Firefox so I'd like to be able to use it again. My mac is about 6 years old, using OSX 10.8.5.
Thanks!

Unfortunately my music software is not compatible with the new Mac OSX update (it may be in the coming months), so I have to stick with this one for now. Do you think Firefox would really just shut me down like that, just because I'm on a previous operating system?
I guess I'll just stick with Safari until my Native Instruments Maschine II allows for the Yosemite update.
Thanks for trying to help out!

IMac freezing during downloading

When downloading videos from the internet my iMac frequently freezes, though the cursor still moves. I cannot force quit, but must shut down the computer. On startup I get a message saying "the name of your computer is already in use on this network. The name has been changed to . . ." This is happening with different browsers including Safari and Whitehat Aviator. I'm using 10.6.8. I've looked this up and fear I may have to do a clean install. Any advice would be appreciated.

Hello,
Bootup holding CMD+r, or the Option/alt key to boot from the Restore partition & use Disk Utility from there to Repair the Disk, then Repair Permissions.
And/Or...
One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problem in Safe Mode...
PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive
Reboot, test again.
If it only does it in Regular Boot, then it could be some hardware problem like Video card, (Quartz is turned off in Safe Mode), or Airport, or some USB or Firewire device, or 3rd party add-on, Check System Preferences>Accounts (Users & Groups in later OSX versions)>Login Items window to see if it or something relevant is listed. Or an errant process eating up RAM.
Check the System Preferences>Other Row, for 3rd party Pref Panes.
Also look in these if they exist, some are invisible...
/private/var/run/StartupItems
/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Library/LaunchDaemons

Program Monitor Freezing Every 10 Minutes (Fixed by Force-Quitting - Relaunch)

When editing in Premiere Pro, everything is fine and responsive for about 10 minutes, then, while previewing my timeline, my program monitor will freeze randomly causing me to stop, save my work, force quit Premiere then re-open to continue editing.
Anyone have a similar issue? I'm thinking it's GPU related, but I've tried switching hardware acceleration off and the issue persists. Very frustrating.
Running a timeline with a mixture of footage - GoPro H264, FS700 MTS, Canon H264 and some ProRes.
2009 Mac Pro with Yosemite and GeFore GTX 680 4GB, 24GB RAM.

In addition, occasionally when playing the timeline, the video will continue not allowing me to stop. Audio and video will continue, I'll get the beach ball cursor and I'll have to force quit Premiere.

Applications Freezing in Dock - Can't Force Quit

In the past month I've been experiencing a reoccurring problem where my applications tend to freeze for absolutely no reason, and I can't Force Quit them. Every other day it's been Skype that freezes for no reason, and I have to totally reboot to shut down the programme, but today it's Firefox too. I tried using Terminal and Activity Monitor, however when the programmes are frozen, even though it still shows as running in my Dock, they don't appear as active on either Utilities (so I can't kill them). What can I do? This problem happens so frequently I'm losing my mind.

I have just started having the same problem, with applications that freeze. When I force quit them, they appear to shut down (their windows close) but they are still highlighted in the dock and are still listed as unresponsive in the force quit window. If I try to shutdown the laptop, it says it can't shutdown because of whatever application. I have to manually reboot.
Some observations- I have tried logging in as a different (guest) user, the problem still persists. It now happens every time with Skype, iChat, Firefox, Safari, Software Update and weirdly enough, System Preferences. Other apps like Word run fine. So it seems like it might have something to do with Airport or internet settings. If I turn my Airport off, I can then open and close Safari just fine. With Airport on, instant spinning beachball. I have noticed the fan working overtime during all of this - however the fan has been working overtime often lately.
Sadly I'm travelling so I can't do anything involving the install disks, and I'm quite a hike away from a Genius Bar! Any suggestions would be appreciated...

MacBook Pro is freezing-- force quit not responding

My late 2008 model macbook pro running Yosemite 10.10.1 with 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 memory has started freezing about every 10 minutes. The entire computer freezes up, including the clock and the spinner, and force quit isn't responsive. When I reboot everything works like normal, but after about 10-15 minutes of use, the computer freezes again and the process repeats. At first I thought it was photoshop, but It doesn't seem to matter what app is open or how big or small the task it's trying to accomplish is. It has always run a bit slow on Yosemite, but this all started suddenly last night with no warning.

When you have the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.
These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
          SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
          View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.
Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.
Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

X301 - Freezes all the time, CTRL-ALT-DEL / CTRL-SHIFT-ESC no effect

HELP, just bought my first Thinkpad, the X301 from tigerdirect. Everything's great except that it freezes every now and then, at least once a day.
Haven't installed anything other than factory pre-installed stuff, thought it was the McAfee hence got rid of it, running AVG antivirus now. Thought it was IE so switched to Firefox, no help there neither, Google Chrome, still freezes.
Strange thing is, on Vista Business, when it freezes, there is nothing you can do except for HARD RESET! I mean CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing at all, neither did CTRL-SHIFT-ESC. Are there any other owners facing the same issues?
Updated the X301 with patches, both ThinkVantage and Windows, still hangs. It's very annoying to pay such a high price to go back to primitive Windows that freezes.
Is this normal? Please help. Thank you.
Message Edited by teeteet on 10-27-2008 08:35 AM

I had a similar issue with my Tigerdirect x301 but seemed to have resolved it by doing a clean install of Vista. There is a good thread on the forums over on notebookreview.com on how to do this. In my particular case I eliminated most of the extra but IMO unneeded software that came with it and went with 64bit Vista business since I had that OEM disc from my desktop build.
I did have one temporary problem in the clean install with it stopping the Vista installation, saying I needed a driver for the Mat**bleep**a CD/DVD device, but I eventually got around that by going into the BIOS and switching the SATA controller mode option to Compatibility from AHCI mode.
I got this thing last week and it must have froze 10-12 times in the first two days and in the five days since I did the clean install it has not crashed once and I swear it does everything faster. Just this afternoon I added another 2 gb of RAM and looking forward to see what 4 gb will do for speed.

IMac Freezes. - new to mac's not sure what to do.

I'm a PC convert, just purchased my iMac a week ago. Have not played with a Mac since high school.
Sorry I am such a newbie with Mac's - I am an MCP and was tech support rep for Microsoft for a few years so I'm not computer illiterate, just mac newbie.
So far I have had the Mac hang on my twice. The screen will freeze and i cant get any response from the keyboard, mouse moves but clicks do nothing.
1st time is happened - I had all sorts of stuff running, iChat, camino, firefox, and World of Warcraft.
Screen froze, I could still communicate with the person on iChat they could still hear me and see my video, but it was all hung on my side, after a moment of trying to click and hit buttons the sound started to loop and the iSight light turned off - at that point I just held in the power button and it shut down. restarted and things seemed fine.
let the Mac go to sleep like normal.
Next morning woke it up and did a few things before work and it all worked fine, put it to sleep while I was at the office.
Woke it when i came home, ran a couple apps and all was good. This time i closed all the extra stuff I had running and just ran World of Warcraft. played fin for a few min then it froze again, same thing as before all i could do was move the mouse, nothing else worked. After a few moments the sound started to loop so I just held in the power button again.
So... What can I try to trouble shoot this?
Are there log files that are created on a hang? Is there a way to Alt-Ctrl-Del feature like windows? Any good apps to use to check hardware and such?
System is a 20-inch iMac w/ 2.16 and 2 gigs ram, plus the upgraded video Ram - 256 ATI - All installed direct from Apple.
I have not installed much yet - a few little apps like Shapeshifter and SteerMouse 3.5 as well as lots of widgets.
I did try to install the X11 from the apple disk so I could run openoffice, but i was unable to get that installed it seems to just reinstall all the iLife stuff. Maybe I messed something up in that process?
Any tips would help.
Thanks.

The problem may be with WoW. That's the common denominator here. I would make sure you have all of the patches/updates for WoW.
There is a log file called system.log that tracks most information about what's going on with your machine at any given time. There is a crashreporter log in /Users/USERNAME/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/. When a application stalls you can usually force quit it by using the keyboard command Apple Option Esc (similiar to Task Manager in Windows) then highlighting the application and selecting force quit. You can also kill -9 the program by using the process ID in Terminal.app.
As far as Ctrl Alt Del you can Ctrl Apple Power to restart or just hold down the power button like you did, to shut it down then power button again to start it.
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8) MacBook Pro

IMac freezes during games

Hi,
I am knowledgable about Macs (used them since '84 and Apple II before that) - well, I was enjoying another insomniac session with the excellent Redline racing game when suddenly the machine locks up. Freezes, completely. I didn't get the kernal panic screen... just a still image of my current car skidding around some corner... frozen solid. Command-Option-ESC does nothing... I couldn't see what was happening but hoped I could Force Quit somehow. I needed to do a hard restart.
This happened several more times after rebooting each time. The machine would lock up after about 5 or 10 minutes of play. So, I reset the SMU... no luck. So, I reset the PRAM. No luck. Then, I reset the NVRAM (open firmware)...still no luck. I wrote to Ambrosia and asked for support figuring it was Redline. No luck.... The problem showed up while playing another game as well (Star Wars Battlefront)...
Long story short... after taking it to my local Apple Store (no luck there) and doing a clean reinstall of Tiger (still no luck)...
After a few minutes of playing any graphics-intensive games my iMac locks up.
Oh, and I used the hardware test that came with the iMac... all systems checked out normally... logic board, RAM, everything.
Thanks,
Jon W. Barto
PS - No new hardware added recently. Games ran fine until this past month... machine is 1 and 1/2 years old. Not an extended warranty issue... it's a revB iMac.
PPS - Follow up to my own post: This morning I removed one of the two 512 MB RAM modules and was able to play my Star Wars game for about 4 levels... 2 to 3 times longer than before. It still froze however, but after a long while. My friend who is one of those alpha-geeks told me that it may have been because most of the RAM was allocated to the OS while the game was running off the hard drive (virtual memory). This makes sense. I am running Rember on the installed RAM right now (the Apple RAM that came with the iMac) to see if it really is defective. Then I am going to install my 3rd party RAM by itself and see if it locks up with just that installed.
I'll let everyone know how it goes.
Still, any advice would be helpful if I am missing something. Thanks.

Hi, Jon W. Barto
just two remarks:
a) the hardware test of apple does not find all
problems; it frequently tests hardware good, which
isn't. so it is ok, if it tells you about a hardware
problem, but it might be not ok, if everything tests
fine.
b) you are certainly aware that you can check the
memory use with the system monitor. thsi might help
you to identify whether you freezing problems are
caused by a shortage in RAM.
My iMac was running with 1 GB of RAM... I don't think there was a shortage. Also, I cannot use System Monitor (you mean Activity Monitor) while I am playing a game.
c) (I apparently cannot count: a, b, c is more than
2)
could it be a logic board problem? How old is your
iMac? you are certainly aware as a long user of macs,
that the iMac G5 had some bad batches, and there is
an extended garantee, if you machine falls into these
batches. check the Apple pages for mor info about
this.
Mine is a rev B iMac... my RMS (I think that's what it's called) did fall under the Power Supply extended warranty agreement, but it is not a power supply issue. The lady at the Apple Store said that it might be the logic board also.
please, report back with the outcome.
Thomas
BTW, does anyone know if replacing the logic board will solve the problem permanently, or is it a temp. solution until it craps out again?
iMac G5 2Ghz 1 GB RAM, iBook 600, 3G iPod Mac OS X (10.4.8) 250 GB LaCie FW HD
iMac G5 2Ghz 1 GB RAM, iBook 600, 3G iPod Mac OS X (10.4.8) 250 GB LaCie FW HD

Why does my iMac freeze so often?

I got an iMac computer last May, and ever since then I have been having some issues that can be quite annoying. First of all, it freezes very often. I could be in the middle of reading an email and suddenly the rainbow spinning ball comes on and never seems to go away. Sometimes I go off and do something else just to see how long it would take for my computer to un-freeze, but after being gone for several minutes, it still continues to load. I end up having to restart the computer about 5-6 times a day because of constant freezing. Again, this computer is barely 7 months old and I already have some serious issues. I do not run many apps at the same time, and the only apps that I have running most are Safari and Skype. I don't run any big programs that could slow the computer down, so that can't be the problem. Also, sometimes when I try to use the computer, it is just a black screen. It isn't black like it's turned off. It's kind of hard to explain, but it seems that the computer is on because it emits light, but it is just a black screen. But the problem is that I can't do anything to wake it up. Moving the mouse doesn't work, so I am left to holding the power button down to turn it off. This probably happens about once a day. I am not sure if this issue is connected, but I might as well mention it anyways. Many apps don't respond and I need to force-quit them quite often. The app that I have the most problems with is iMovie. It seems almost impossible to open it because each time it freezes and doesn't respond. I have this once in a while with Safari, but not nearly as often as iMovie. Sorry for the amount of questions, I have just been kind of disappointed with the problems that I have been having, especially because the computer is not old at all. My family has the exact same computer which is only a month older than mine, and it operates perfectly. The same applications are loaded on both of them, so I don't understand why my computer has so many issues and my family's doesn't.

The next time you have the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.
If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
â Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
â In the Finder, select Go â¹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
â Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View â¹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Scroll back in the log to the time you noted above. Select any messages timestamped from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

IMac freezes up ... ctrl+opt+esc no longer brings up force quit

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