Problems shutting down - reset PRAM?

Hi
The last two evenings I've come to turn on my macbook (1.83 GHz) pressing the on button hasn't worked. The first time, I had previously left something plugged into one of the usb's so assumed I'd run the battery down. Plugging the macbook in allowed me to start up but I had the "OSX shut down unexpectedly" message.
Anyway, after charging it back up, when I came to shut it down, I noticed that when the screen was closed (not when it was open) the sleep light was continuously lit. I could hear a fan going so thought it was just cooling itself down and it would be fine.
However the same thing happened again, there was no battery when I came to start up, warning message etc...
Searching on these boards, people seem to be suggesting to reset the PMU and the PRAM (?) Can someone explain what this is and how to do it please?
Any comments on the shutting down issue? All programs were closed etc before shutting down.
Thanks
Macbook 1.83GHz 1GB Mac OS X (10.4.6) iPod nano, iPod 3G

I have had my computer for 8 days and it has ran great until yesterday. I was just surfing the web and it shut down. It completely shut off. I wasn't doing anything other that surfing and I think all I had open was safari and mail. The battery was low around 10% but it reboot and was fine for a while after.
Today, a friend sent me a trial code for World of Warcraft so I decided to download it and give it a try. I burnt the image to a DVD and was installing it off the image and it shut down part way through the install. Tried the exact same thing again and got the same results. I was running on almost a full battery.
I then decided to do the hardware test. I ran the short one - no prob then I tried the extended test and it shutdown part way through AHHH. Man this ticks me off. This machine is awesome in every other respect other than it gets warm.
I saved the system logs and will call Applecare tomorrow. I am doing a format and install to see if that fixes the issue and hopefully I can make it through the install ok without it crashing.
I have a default basic config with no RAM upgrade so everything is stock.

Similar Messages

I am having problems shutting down my MacBook Pro. I go to the apple and click shutdown or restart, it appears the shutdown process starts, the screen goes blue and the little circle keeps going round and round, but nothing happens even after 30 minutes.

I am having problems shutting down my MacBook Pro. I go to the apple and click shutdown or restart, it appears the shutdown process starts, the screen goes blue and the little circle keeps going round and round, but nothing happens even after 30 minutes.

Make sure you quit all your applications before shutting down.
And try resetting the SMC.
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

Problems shutting down laptop

Good morning!!
I have a Toshiba Satellite P75-A7200 and sometimes I have problems shutting down it. I have seen in some forums that it can be because I have open apps. After checking it out I see that all of them are closed and I cannot close the laptop yet... Do you have any idea why it can happen and how to solve it?
Thanks!!!!!

Satellite P75-A7200
Have you upgraded to Windows 8.1? If so, did you follow these instructions?
How to Update from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1
What happens when you disable fast startup?
Control Panel > Power Options > Choose what the power button does > Change settings that are currently unavailable (near the top)
Under Shutdown settings at the bottom, clear the check box for Turn on fast startup (recommended), and click the Save changes button.
-Jerry

Problems shutting down after installing 10.5.3 update?

Has anyone had any problems shutting down there IMac's after installing 10.5.3 update? I've tried shutting down twice and the image that appears when shutting down seems to go in an endless loop an doesn't shut down.

Can you restart from the menu and hold the shift key down, until the Mac
boots in a SafeBoot login screen; then choose Disk Utility (shortcut under
GO in Finder window, to Utilities folder) and run 'repair disk permissions'
then restart the computer normally...(?)
You may also have to consider starting the computer from the OS X
installer disc and choose from an option menu there (not to install)
and choose to use Disk Utility from the booted installer disc, to run
'repair disk' from there? You could also run 'repair disk permissions'
while booted from that installer disc, but maybe you'd still have to
repair those from the running system for best effect once it is back
running from the hard drive's system.
Some minor issues can happen after an update, usually just repairing
disk permissions before installing the update, and/or running up in
SafeBoot, can help. There are other things to try and do, if these don't
help that much. The state of the system prior to an update is important;
since an update can't fix anything otherwise non-related to an update.
Maintenance issues aside, after you repair disk permissions, safeboot,
and restart, if there still is an issue, you could try to download the Combo
OSX 10.5.3 update file and install it over your system; and then repair
disk permissions again after it finally restarts normally.
Was the 10.5.3 update a smaller (delta) file or was it the Combo (large) file?
Good luck & happy computing!

On start up, says had problem shutting down mac book pro mavericks

on start up, said had problem shutting down, mac book pro mavericks 10.9.4
recently loaded dragon dictate

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
I am wondering if your hard drive is failing? You might try downloading and running SMART Utility on it:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/smartutility.html
You can download the demo and run it several times for free. It is somewhat more critical than Disk Utility, and may give you earlier warning of impending drive failure.
You might also want to run the extended version of the Apple Hardware test and see if you get any error codes.
From the way your hard drive is behaving, it sounds to me like there is something wrong with it. Since reinstalling the OS doesn't solve anything, you are likely dealing with some sort of a hardware issue.
Good luck!

When I put my macair to sleep overnight and want to put it back on in the morning, it says that it had a problem shutting down and all my work is lost. Is that normal?

In the evening when I put my mac air to sleep and turn it on in the morning it says it had a problem shutting down and had to restart again, so all my work is gone, and this is happening quite often now and I bought it in January. So shouldn't I use the sleep mode over night is that too long and causes it to crash? Or should I take it to a apple store for them to check it out?

Overnight isn't too long for sleep mode. I do it all of the time with no problem. However, I save everything first so I would not have the "all my work is gone" issue even if there was a problem. I would have it checked out.

Black screen on starting up in OSX, problems shutting down in XP.

Hi there.
I have a 2-month old iMac with Bootcamp and Win XP installed. It ran OK for a while, but Bootcamp has started behaving erratically. I did postst this in the Bootcamp part of discussions, but have come to the decision that it is not a Bootcamp issue.
If I restart holding down the 'alt' key to bring up the Mac HDD or Bootcamp startup choice, when the screen comes up, it really chugs. The mouse moves once every second, and I cant actually choose the Bootcamp drive. I click on it, double click, etc, and nothing happens. I hit the power button to reset, and it eventually (after literally a few minutes) starts up in XP.
Once XP has started, it runs OK, perfectly fluid. But when I have finished, I try to re-start into OSX. I choose 'Shut down, and nothing happens. I choose 'shut down' a second time, and it turns off almost instantly, but when I restart the mac, I get the startup chime but nothing on screen at all – totally blank.
I tried restarting loads of times, but nothing worked. Eventually I unplugged it for a couple of minutes, started off my system disk, reselected the iMac HDD as the startup disk, and it restarted in OSX fine.
This whole episode really scared me, so I really want to stop it from happening again.
I have some ideas of what might have caused it, but need someone with a better brain than mine to troubleshoot my logic. Here are my thoughts.
1) Bootcamp in itself just facilitates the installation of windows and auto-installation of hardware drivers, etc. Once Windows is installed and working, Bootcamp has really finished it's job.
2) the 'holding Alt at startup' thing is an OSX thing (not Bootcamp specific). I reckon 1 & 2 together logically rule out Bootcamp the app as the problem.
3) The actual OSs and apps in either partition actually work fine once the rigmarole of changing from one to the other is done. So the problem isn't in apps or high-up in the OS.
4) Is it therefore a start-up/shutdown issue, present when either entering or exiting both partitions? As it's both partitions, could it be OS-independent as well?
This leaves hardware. Could corrupt P-Ram settings cause this (if it's still called P-Ram – I originally started using macs back in the days of MacOS 8.6). I'm guessing that the unplugging might have cleared the PMU, as sticking a reset button on the M/B inside an iMac would be pretty bad design.
Any thoughts?

It was the PRAM.

Problems shutting down and starting up

my MacBook Pro (OSX 10.9.3) doesn't shut down when I want it to but goes into a coma periodically.
when I use "Shut Down" every once in a while via Apple menu, the machine doesn't appear to actually shut down. when I open it or got to it the next time, it's in a state of sleep and I can't awaken. when I finally get it to shut down manually and restart, a dialogue saying "you shut down due to a problem" arises next startup. this whole chain is odd to me. I'm a long-time Mac user (IIvx, iMac and iBook) and I don't recall the startup problems but maybe I've just forgotten.
moreover, and related, sometimes when I simply shut the screen to put MacBook Pro to sleep, it won't reawaken. clicking space bar or pushing mouse pad have no effect. so then I have to manually shut down by holding power button, and then restart.
in the old days, we would "zap the PRAM" when there were freezing or startup problems. (I don't even remember how to do that, as my iBook which I had for ten years never gave me these problems). do I zap the PRAM? how? any other ideas?
Thank you!

brutus775,
if you boot into Safe mode, does your MacBook Pro still go into periodic comas?
With MacBook Pros, one “zaps the NVRAM” (or “resets the SMC”) instead.

Problems shutting down, starting up

My IMac has been giving me several problems lately. It sometimes will not go to sleep, and when it does, will not wake up. I have to re-start the computer to wake it up. It often shuts down with no warning or the grey film comes over and says the Mac must be re-started. This morning, I had trouble turning the computer on with the power switch, and when it did turn on, the apple stayed on the computer and the fan turns on loud. I have re-installed the system folder, re-set the PRAM and run Disk Warrier. Any suggestions? My computer is a little over 3 years old.

Hi jfedor, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Since your problem is different, feel free to start a new topic, as it will get more attention, and you problem(s) can be addressed specifically.
Here's the link if it's hard to find where to do it...
http://discussions.apple.com/post!default.jspa?forumID=758
Include what color the Install Disk is, and what it says on it, as well as RAM & free Disk space on you eMac!

Problems shutting down - just starts up again!

Hi
When I try to shut my macbook down, it just bounces back to life again. Very strange. It only started doing this today (I don't think I installed anything new this morning). Everything on the desktop, incl. dock goes away but then it comes back again.
I can switch it off by holding the power button down but that doesn't seem to clear the problem.
I hope this isn't a dumb newbie question.
Does anyone know what the matter could be?
thanks very much
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Here's something you can try, you will need to turn on your System administrator account to do this.
Reboot with the original CD by holding the C key. Select english in the list of choices, and when the installer window opens, go to the top menu and select utilities, then choose Reset Password.
Select your drive
Select the user list and drag down to System Adminstrator (root)
Type in a password and verify.
Save
Quit Installer, select Startup Disk
Select your Mac OS X on your Hard Drive, and restart.
Once that is done make sure all applications are quit and saved, you'll need to open Terminal, which will be located under Applications: Utilities
In Terminal type: su
Then your password that you set
It should say root#
then type shutdown -h +1
This should shutdown your system in 1 minute. If this works, then make sure you let the Genius' at the bar know that you succeeded in shutting down this way. It will give them some insight if it is a software issue or not.
Word of the wise... su is a very powerful login... use caution when longing in as a this. I don't usually recommend it but this might help get some insight.
Good luck
-T

Phone shut down & reset ringtones & notifications

Phone for the first time just shut down by itself, had to pull the battery & restart. Have had it reboot by itself but never just shut off. I see both of these are pretty common
It reset all my ringtons & notification sounds to default. The other strange thing was it deleted the default Verizon ringtone all by itself. I used that ringtone for a few business contacts, and had personalized ones for other contacts.
Anyway to get that ringtone back? Not really a big deal but was a random event for my otherwise pretty stable phone.

justryan wrote:
Recently I got a new Droid Razr for my birthday. Well it was all fine and dandy till this morning when i look down at my phone and i am going to try to check my messages but the phone screen doesnt power up. I go and see if there is a battery i can pull but there isnt, then i do a soft reset (power+down volume) and that does nothing. I then use my Ipod touch and google how to do this and i find out that you plug in your phone for around 30 mins - 1 hour. I did so and now it works, but around 10-15 mins later my phone does it all over again. So to the point, how do i prevent this from happening? Also i get a green solid notification light when its plugged in but when i unplug it, it shows nothing
Has it been less than 14 days since purchase? if it has go back to the store and have them give you a brand new phone. If after that time verizon will swap out for a refurbished phone.
Not fun I know. If you just return it and cancel out the contract there will only be a restocking fee. Better to find out now that its a problem before it acts up even more.

Problems shutting down...

50% of the times i try to shut down, my computer quits all the open applications and then just gives me the spinning rainbow and does nothing. i eventually just manually turn it off with the button in the back. any advice on fixing this problem?
also when the computer starts up, the first image on the screen is of a folder with a question mark in it. is this a related problem? or a different fix?
thanks
brett

729/3175
"invalid leaf record count"
You are using the Tiger DVD, are you?
(- http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301266 )
Always use the Tiger disc to repair a Tiger volume, and the Panther disc to repair a Panther volume.
If you did so, then I don't know what kind of problem this is, and I'd run a more powerful tool like DiskWarrior, since anything like that should not be left unrepaired IMO.
How do your shutdown times go now?
If not better, try removing all Login Items, see if it is related.
Personally my iMac takes a much longer time to shutdown, since it has Tiger installed, so I wouldn't be surprised, unless of course the machine just NEVER shuts down, even after six or seven minutes...
At the contrary the boot time is much shorter than in Panther.

Thread problems - shutting down.

Okay, I've got my multi-threaded server program working just fine and all is well...until I shut down the server.
By some quirky twist of fate, java chat servers seem to be a popular education assignment in the last two weeks, which will probably put some people off answering this simply because of all the clueless posts on the subject recently. :)
Anyway, a little background on how I'm doing things first.
At the top there is the Server object, which is implementing Runnable. This instances the ClientManager, creates the ServerSocket and then kicks off its own thread and loops in the run() method waiting for connections while a boolean is true. If it gets a connection it calls the ClientManager addConnection() method and passes it the received client socket.
The ClientManager holds a List of ClientConnections and provides methods to add and remove ClientConnections. The ClientManager also runs in its own thread by implementing the Runnable interface and uses its run() method to loop through checking for incoming messages from each client.
A ClientConnection object also runs in its own thread via the Runnable interface. This checks for incoming messages from the client and stores the String ready to be received by the ClientManager and broadcast to all ClientConnections.
So, you've got the Server running in its own thread, the ClientManager running in its own thread and the ClientManager maintaining a List of ClientConnections, each running in its own thread.
I'm starting my threads like this:-
// Constructor.
Public SomeObject() {
    start();
// Runnable method.
Public void start() {
    // threadObject is private class variable.
    bThreadActive = true;
    this.threadObject = new Thread(this);
    threadObject.setDaemon(true);
    threadObject.start();
}I'm running my threadded object like this: -
Public void run() {
    do {
        // Do work here.
    } while(bThreadActive);
    // Activates the shutdown method for this object.
    shutdownObject();
}I'm shutting down my threads like this: -
Public void shutdown() {
    this.bThreadActive = false;
// The main shutdown code.
Public void shutdownObject() {
    // Kill thread object.
    this.threadObject = null;
    // Do other stuff.
}Which I think should work fine. Anything wrong with the above?
I'm getting problems with NullPointerExceptions with the Server object at the point where it tries to shutdown the ClientManager. This works by shutting down all ClientConnections in the List first and then emptying the List before killing its own thread. Also, the Server object seems to shutdown before the ClientManager. And other such weirdness.
I know you're all going to ask for specific code and a stacktrace, which I'll provide....I just want to check that my method for using threads as above is correct first, so I can rule that out - mostly because I suspect I'm missing some vital piece of knowledge on using threads....things are not working as I expect.
Anyway, a quick answer on the above and then I'll start posting more specific info.
Thanks all :)

Ooops....my mistake. I was calling shutdown() twice. Once from the GUI code and automatically from after the loop in the run() method. Funny how the stacktrace doesn't drill down any further than the method that makes this call.
Okay, its almost all working perfectly, except for this part....
    // Start accepting client connections from the server service.
    public void run() {
         while(bThreadActive) {
             if (sockServer != null) {
                 if (!sockServer.isClosed()) {
                     try {
                         sockClient = sockServer.accept();
                         if (sockClient != null) {
                             this.clientManager.addClientConnection(sockClient);
                             this.pOutput.printOutput("Connection accepted from: " + sockClient.getInetAddress().getHostAddress());
                     } catch (IOException ioe) {
                         if (bThreadActive) {
                             this.pOutput.printOutput("ERROR: Could not accept incoming client connection");
                     } catch (NullPointerException npe) {
                         // Leave this for now.
         shutdown();
    // Shutdown the server service and disconnect all client connections.
    public void shutdown() {
        try {
            clientManager.stopThread();
            sockServer.close();
            threadServer = null;
        } catch (NullPointerException npe) {
            npe.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException ioe) {
            pOutput.printOutput("ERROR: Could not cleanly shutdown the server socket");
        pOutput.printOutput("Server service shut down successfully");
    // Stop the server thread (automatically shuts down).
    public synchronized void stopThread() {
        bThreadActive = false;
    }When I call the above like this from the GUI object...
    // Stop the server.
    private void stopServer() {
         try {
              server.stopThread();
              setGUIMode(MODE_DISCONNECTED);
         } catch (NullPointerException npe) {
              npe.printStackTrace();
    }...the string "Server service shut down successfully" from the completion of the shutdown() method never appears, so it looks as though its not executing.
But if I do this instead in the stopServer() method and remove the shutdown() call in the run() method, it works......but I get two (sometimes three) outputs of "Server service shut down successfully" which makes me think its being run twice somehow.....once before the ClientManager has been shutdown and once after or twice after.
Server service shut down successfully
Shutting down Client Manager...
All client connections disconnected
Client Manager successfully shutdown
Server service shut down successfully
Server service shut down successfully
Any ideas?

Problems shutting down a 6534

Hi,
I have searched the forums and couldn't find this sorry if its a rehash.
I reciently built a box with a 6534 and a celery 1.7.
Everything is fine it runs fine, doesn't heat up, actually very stable.
Except...
I can't shut it down.
It will shut down/hbrn8,suspend fine, but the power supply fan continues to spin and after a few seconds it will boot back up on its own. I can shut it down and then turn off the powersupply switch, turn it back on and it will stay off. But after I hit the power button, it will again act incorrectly when shutting down. I have replaced the power supply with a know good and it reacts the same.
any help would be appreciated.
bios to 1.4
1.7 celeron
6534 msi board
window 2k
320 megs ram (2 sticks could be problem?)
crappy pci video card sis 6326 (its a business machine not a gamer)
realtec nic
onboard sound
thanks
dex

For STR-1 mode: Standby mode in normal state where the system is "actively suspend". To re-activate system in this mode can be through keypress or mouse press buttons.
For STR-3 mode: Standby mode in power saving state where all active activities are being virtually saved into system memory. When this mode is activated, the system will direct go into a "fake shutdown" state to consume the least amount of power. To re-activate system in this mode is only through the power switch, once activated, the system will fall back to it's last active stage.
STR-3 mode is a recommend suspend mode for quiet and power saving step for a system.
For your case, what are the errors that occurred after a shutdown and a cold bootup?

Problems shutting down illustrator cs3

greetings -
just curious if anyone else has had issues w/ illustrator not shutting down (i.e., file/exit). i have yet to attempt an uninstall/reinstall since it took a long time to install cs3 on my machine the first time (had to restart it once).
about 9 out of 10 times when exiting illustrator, it will freeze up, and i have to do a "ctl+alt+delete"" to terminate the process.
any thoughts are appreciated.
- c

I've been having this daily problem of this 'hanging-on-quitting' problem, too, until I saw this first post (recently, always searching for solution thru other forums as well) and thought that what might be the problem..., often times I would just quit by clicking the Close button, too. For a while, it did work (if I'm using Illy for short period of time) it doesn't hang - but if I would keep it up & work with it for a long period of time, then on quit (even with the File>Exit method) it'll go blank & 'hang' (again). I'm "wild-guessing", but could it be something to do with application's cache/memory issue? I mean, its seems like the more I use it, the more it keeps "building-up inside" so to speak. Also I agree whole-heartedly with JET's post #29 (under "New to Illustrator - all I want to do is draw a triangle") concering the "inelegance" of Illustrator, etc. He really said it well. It seems that each Illy's "improvement" is two-steps-backward at the same time. Very frustrating! I have Windows XP SP2 on two different machines. I hope this post would help to bring out any other thoughts or ideas on this annoying issue.
David Cripe

Problems shutting down - reset PRAM?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for