Trying to force quit unresponsive app causes mac to freeze

recently my MBP has begun freezing when I try to force quit a not responding app.  the only thing that works is shuting down via the power button.  The main culprits seem to be Sparrow & Filemaker but it is difficult to tell if these are the source of the problem or not. has any one else experienced this problem?

Thanks guys (I'm using guys in a non-sexist way in case one or both of you are differently equipped).
My problem 71 is that I live 125 kms from the nearest Mac Store. And it's a holiday so I'm losing a day's work. The local guys who does repair Macs is great. But since I couldn't contact Apple I would feel obliged to pay him for his services.
I realize I am under the 90-day service period and I do plan to buy Apple Care, as I get close to the end of the 90s days. But the failing, it seems to me, in Apple Support is they it is built around you having access to your machine or the web. And if, like today, I couldn't access them then the service is moot.
I'm lucky in that I still have my old MacBook pro stuck in a closet in reserve.
I do appreciate you and WZZZ taking the time to help me out.

Similar Messages

  • There ' is a panel that sayscopy' preparing to duplicate to "desktop". I clicked stop three days and it still trying to stop. Tried to 'force quit' does not show up, looked in activity monitor but i am not sure how it is listed. I am new to the mac world.

    there is panel in the upper right corner of my screen that says 'copy' preparing to duplicate to "desktop". I clicked stop three days ago and it is still trying to stop. Tried to 'force quit' does not show up in finder, looked in activity monitor but i am not sure how it is listed. I am new to the mac world.

    Force quit/Restart the Finder.
    Then for safety...
    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.

  • HT201276 The information *****. I'm trying to force quit because my cursor is missing and frozen. I can't just get the machine to close because I have to click on options: 'restart cancel sleep shut down'. So I've tried force quitting and nada. Nothing ha

    Aaaaaarrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!
    I was typing along and then all of the sudden my cursor disappeared! I can't find it. I've tried shutting down my Mac, but I can't do that because the box pops up when I hit the on/off button asking if I want to restart, sleep, cancel or shut down. I've tried hitting return. Nothing.
    I've tried to force quit. Nothing.
    I called Apple - it's a holiday.
    I only bougth this Mac in late July. It took a while to download the new operating system. My track pad hasn't been working, I haven't been able to drag my fingers over it and scroll down. I'm pretty stupid, but the woman who normally handles my tech problems couldn't figure the track pad problem out either. There is a local guy who fixes Macs, but I've owned this for less than 90 days so it should be covered and I shouldn't have to pay for seeing this guy.
    But now I'm losing at least a day's work. HELP! Thanks.

    Thanks guys (I'm using guys in a non-sexist way in case one or both of you are differently equipped).
    My problem 71 is that I live 125 kms from the nearest Mac Store. And it's a holiday so I'm losing a day's work. The local guys who does repair Macs is great. But since I couldn't contact Apple I would feel obliged to pay him for his services.
    I realize I am under the 90-day service period and I do plan to buy Apple Care, as I get close to the end of the 90s days. But the failing, it seems to me, in Apple Support is they it is built around you having access to your machine or the web. And if, like today, I couldn't access them then the service is moot.
    I'm lucky in that I still have my old MacBook pro stuck in a closet in reserve.
    I do appreciate you and WZZZ taking the time to help me out.

  • Lightroom 5.4 is getting stuck in full screen mode. I need to force-quit the app in order to re-start and use again. How can I fix this?

    Lightroom 5.4 is getting stuck in full screen mode. I need to force-quit the app in order to re-start and use again. How can I fix this?
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    I can see that I am not the only one with this problem.

    LOL... this is what I just had to look up... it's not exactly clear or apparent, is it?
    When in Full screen mode.. just press Command-F. Voila!

  • I have an alert message in safari that will not let me exit safari. I tried the force quit did not work

    I have an alert message in safari that will not let me exit safari, I tried to force quit but it would not let. What do i do next?

    Shut it down and when it says to reopen windows disable it

  • IPhoto freezes when i open the app, each time it is open on the same photo and when i try to swap to another photo it freezes until i force quit the app.

    I have recently come back from a trip to Venice, i uploaded my photos to iPhoto to view and edit them, half way through the photos from day three of my trip it has frozen on a particular photo. I force quit the app and then re open it and it is still on the same image with the exact same problem. I am now unable to view any photos of my trip as they're all on iPhoto and i cannot access the albums because they are stuck on this one photo. I need to be able to access them by 11th March because i have a project due in about our trip and we need to include the best of our photos and at the moment i am being stopped from even looking at them. PLEASE HELP!

    What version of iPhoto?
    Assuming 09 or later:
    Option 1
    Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Rebuild iPhoto Library Database from automatic backup.
    If that fails:
    Option 2
    Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.
    Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one. .
    Regards
    TD

  • How to force quit an app in IOS 7.0.4 on iPad 3 ?

    I have searched on this topic, and see repeated references to the double click HOME button, then hold the particular app card, and swipe "up and away".
    This does NOT work on my device. 
    I can double-click the HOME button, and see the app switcher row at the bottom, showing the running (or suspended) apps.  Holding a given card turns it gray, but then nothing else happens.  If I move as to swipe, the card simply un-grays -- there is no movement or any other action.  It will allow me to swipe left and right, but not up.
    I have no other issues with the iPad and this release, that I know of.
    Thank you.

    iPad Frozen? How to Force Quit an App, Reset or Restart Your iPad
    http://ipadacademy.com/2010/11/ipad-frozen-how-to-force-quit-an-app-reset-or-res tart-your-ipad
     Cheers, Tom

  • How do you force quit an app?

    I was doing a drawing on Sketchbook Pro Ink and it froze on the gallery page. Their support forum suggested (to another member) that the first thing to do was force quit the app. But that was a year ago and I don't think his directions apply to my most current iPa

    iPad Frozen? How to Force Quit an App, Reset or Restart Your iPad
    http://ipadacademy.com/2010/11/ipad-frozen-how-to-force-quit-an-app-reset-or-res tart-your-ipad
    iPad: Basic troubleshooting
    http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3274
     Cheers, Tom

  • I have been unable to close the Power Point program.  I have tried to force quit it but it will not close.

    I opened my Power Point program and am unable to close it.  I have tried to force quit and restart the computer but nothing seems to work.  Any suggestions?

    command-option-escape.  Mind you any unsaved data will be lost unless it is stuck in wherever Powerpoint stores temporary autosave documents.

  • Does Force Quitting The App have Any Harmful Effects?

    I have an iPod 3G.
    To force quit an app, I heard that for newer models like mine, you have to hold down the hold button, and when the iPod asks you if you want to shut down, you press the home button for five seconds until the iPod returns to the springboard.
    I heard that force quitting an app is good because it stops it from running in the background.
    Is using this method harmful to your iPod in anyway at all?

    iPod touch and iPhone run apps in what is known as a "sandbox". That is, each app is a separate process and starting, stopping, or force quitting has no effect on the OS or other apps.
    As far as background apps go, the only one I can think of is Music. Everything else is the only app running at the time. The only time you should have to force-quit is if the app hangs up.
    BTW, I think you are getting how the iPhone software operates confused with Android - which does keep a number of apps running in the background.

  • While typing a doc in Word, the spinning wheel appeared and froze the Word document.  I had another Word doc open at the time.  I tried to force quit, but it didn't work.  I would like to save it before losing my work, but the spinning wheel blocks me.

    While creating a Word doc, the spinning wheel appeared and won't go away.  Another Word doc was open at same time.  How do I get this fixed while saving my work?

    rollrock wrote:
    How do I get this fixed while saving my work?
    Basically, you don't.
    The 'spinning wheel' is simply an indicator that an operation is taking longer than it should. It doesn't say anything about why, or even if it's an error or not. If it's in Word, it could be that the app is hung, or it could be that it is waiting for some kind of user input, or input from another app. (My bet would be on the former.) You could go into Activity Monitor, identify the process that's making it wait, kill it, cross your fingers and hope that it would generate an error that would cause Word to return control to the user (you). If you had the expertise, that is, and the moon were in right quadrant.
    Realistically, your only option is to force-quit Word. Once that is done, if AutoRecovery was on, then, with luck, you could recover much of your work. Here
    <http://kb.iu.edu/data/ahnd.html>
    you'll find a quick overview of AutoRecovery and how it works.
    If it wasn't on (it should be on by default), then you're out of luck. Chalk it up to experience, turn it on, and back to the grindstone.

  • Always have to force quit mail app

    A few weeks ago, I starting having problems with my mail app on my imac. I have 2 mail accounts set up in the app, one is my mobile me and the other is through AOL. Before I updated my computer to snow leopard, this app worked fine. It seem to work fine for a few weeks after I did the update, but now once I open the mail app, in order to get new mail to show up in the inbox, I have to force quit out of the app and open it back up. I cannot just go to 'mail' and 'quit mail' the app freezes. I have tried clicking the 'get mail' button and nothing happens when clicking on it. I have also searched the support forums and have tried to delete the 'com.apple.mail.plist' file and nothing changes.
    I am frustrated because I have this exact same set up on my macbook pro and things seem to work just fine. I have checked all the settings and they all match.
    Any ideas? I am sick of force quitting and reopening mail when I want to see if I have new emails....
    Anyway to just get rid of the mail app and reinstall this application. I dont want to have to re-install the entire snow leopard program and have to go through all the tedious work of putting all my stuff back on the computer.... (the first time I did the upgrade, for some reason my computer crashed, and I lost everything, had to call apple support and they had to talk me through the reinstall-- luckily I had everything backed up on disks)

    Finder won't show you invisible Files (filenames beginning with a period). That's what makes fixing Mail such a hassle.
    In Applications/Utilities you'll find a program called Terminal.app. It lets you access the command-line interface where you're free to do absolutely anything. Be careful there.
    Open a Terminal window and paste this in:
    find ~/Library/Mail -name .\*
    A list of invisible files files will be displayed. If it's just caches and index states, as I mentioned in the earlier posting, run the command again with the delete flag:
    find ~/Library/Mail -name .\* -delete
    Don't run this if the first listing looks like it's showing e-mails. I also recommend checking that you have a backup first.

  • Snow Leopard Kernel Panics when trying to Force Quit Applications

    I have been having this problem for about a month now. I am a heavy After Effects CS4 user so this happens to me primarily when working in AE, but definitely is not exclusive to AE. I am working on a 8 Core 2.66 GHz MacPro with 8 GB of RAM. The only other variables are an AJA KONA LSe capture card and a ATTO Celerity FC-41ES Fibre Card. The videocard is the standard ATI Radeon HD 4870. My drivers and software are all up to date.

    Hi Mike,
    I have a very similar setup and am also using AE CS4 heavily. I am experiencing exactly the same issues, and have found that it is the multi-processing rendering app (aeselflink) that is causing the kernel panic when you force quit.
    I have reduced the amount of times this happens by making AE only use 6 of the 8 cores available, in the Memory & Multiprocessing preference section.
    I save my work before rendering or previewing and cross my fingers !
    Nic

  • Force Quit showing apps still open

    I've noticed this on a few occasions. Currently, I'm showing iBooks, Pages, & Preview are still open via the Force Quit dialog but I haven't used them since the previous evening. (Screen shot of dialog and dock for comparison).
    I have an older Macbook (Aluminum, Late 2008) so I try to run as lean as possible. There are no extra windows open that I can find.  Double clicking them from Force Quit brings them up to then quit from the application proper, however, I would really like the apps to quit when I tell them to.
    Has this to do with iCloud integration? (Like Pages wasn't quite done with an iCloud upload before I quit).
    Is it a random hang?
    Should I try a reinstall of the apps or Mavericks? (I'm not even sure if 'still open app' is consistent).
    Thanks in advance.

    I've noticed this same problem, but with TextEdit and Preview.  The dock will say all my apps are closed, but when I check in Force Quit, some of them are still open.  Only noticed by accident once when I needed to Force Quit something else and was surprised by what was also listed in there as open.
    As far as I can tell there are no negative effects of this happening . . . it's just annoying . . . which means Apple won't be fixing it anytime real soon.
    I'm about to upgrade to Yosemite . . . wonder if it also happens there.
    BTW, I've only seen it happen with Apple Apps . . . none of my other apps have shown up as "quit, but still open".
    I'm on a Mac Mini running 10.9.5

  • My macbook pro frooze, "spinning wheel of death", I tried to force quit.  When that failed I held down the power button.  Now I can't get by the white apple start up screen, the wheel just keeps spinning and nothing will happen...HELP!

    Again,
    My macbook pro just frooze while on-line.  I got the rainbow wheel spinnin and it wouldn't stop I tried to do a force quit and I was unable to do that.  So I held down the power button.  Now when I try to restart it I can't get by the while page with the apple symbol on it.  All I have is the grey circle spinning continuosly like it is working.  I tried a command S when I started it back up and checked the HD and rebooted, still can't get by the startup page.  Any suggestions?

    I'm having the same problem. I started an automatic upgrade that then got "stuck" for hours. I did a hard shut down and now all I get when I try to reboot is the spinning wheel. I haven't done a backup in 3 months and can't afford to lose everything in a reinstall. Any suggestions?

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