What's causing hard shut downs?

My mid-2011 iMac has been intermittently shutting down without warning. The first time this happened it would not restart. I took it to the Apple Store where a Genius ran a diagnostic check and then suggested it was probably power supply related. He unplugged the power cord from the back of the iMac and then the iMac would restart. He said it may never happen again or could repeat. Nothing I needed to do immediately.
I experienced two more hard shut downs during the next 3 months. Each time I was able to restart the iMac. A few days ago it did three hard shut downs in a space of two hours. I again took it to the Apple Store where a diagnostice check was run. It indicated a failing hard drive due to bad sectors (the 500 GB hard drive has about 400 GB free space). Disk Utility showed no problems. I'm assuming the Apple diagnostic check can find problems that Disk Utility misses.
Apple has now had the iMac for three days running "stress tests" to try to duplicate the hard shut down problem without success. Apple recommends replacing the hard drive, but has nothing to say regarding the cause of the hard shut downs.
My undestanding is a bad hard drive does not cause hard shut downs. Does a hard shut down not leave some sort of system log that might point to a cause?

You're clearly thinking about the problem logically. I agree a failing HD should not mimic a "loss of power". Is it possible that your home power outlet is flakey? Voltage drop low enough to cause a trip? I know ground bounces happen at home and the power company will put a meter on one of your outlets. Do you ever see the lights in your home brighten or dim?
When you get the mac back, you should try a different outlet (a UPS would be even better).

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What is causing random shut downs on new iMac?

I have a new iMac which is shutting down without any warning! Anyone know if this is a known issue? Is it software or hardware?

Hi FPMS
That sounds like partially seated or a dislodged ram module! I would first check to see if they are both seated correctly, you'll need to push real hard on each module with both thumb's. Use the iMac Installing or replacing memory link below to assist you if someone else installed them for you.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306204
Dennis

Hard shut down causing restart error

A prompt to do a software update froze my MacBook. Force quit didn't help, so I did a hard shut down. Now, the machine will power on, but as soon as I hear the startup tone, a black screen drops down with the following message: "You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button." when I do this, I just get the startup tone and the same message every time. Im not familiar with the "Restart button." What can I do to get out of this loop, and what will I need to do once I do get past it?

You are experiencing a Kernel Panic, as shown in Apple doc. #HT1392.
Bad or incompatible RAM is, more often then not, the cause of most Kernel Panics. It could also just need to be reset.
Here's the most used site for Resolving Kernel Panics. Please do all the steps in order, even if you don't think you need to do a certain step.
Here is a great MacFixIt article.
 Good Luck! DALE

Yesterday for the first time i turned on my macpro 2011 model and i got a crazy gray screen with lines all over it ,so i held down the power button and turn off then restarted and all was ok could someone help me with this,what caused this shut down. werd

yesterday for the first time i turned on my macpro 2011 model and i got a crazy gray screen with lines all over it ,so i held down the power button and turn off then restarted and all was ok could someone help me with this,what caused this shut down. werd

Are the lines like psychedelic herringbone? If yes, I had that happen once, it was something serious, like the
Logic board. The good news is that it was fixed without any loss of data on the hard drive. Take it in to have Apple look at it ASAP. I took it to TekServe at the time, they are very nice about preserving your data and user library when possible.
Good luck and don't panic.

Macbook was frozen, did a hard shut down, when powered up it is stuck on a white screen with a rotating dial

macbook was frozen, did a hard shut down, when powered up it is stuck on a white screen with a rotating dial

Sounds like the 'white screen of death'.
Try rebooting your phone. Take the battery out for a few minutes then re-insert battery and see what happens. It may take some time to reboot. There have been numerous "fixs" for this problem, but until RIM come up with a definitive answer to stop it happening, then really theres nothing we can do except try some things. The battery pull has been offered on a few forums and some say it worked for them. Worth trying again.
You could always try THIS
but that seems a bit extreme, but may work if the reboot doest. Do you remove the battery whilst its still on? thats how you normally do a reboot. take batt out whilst powers on. Sorry if this doesnt help, but i know theres people all over the net that get this issue.

Have to Hard Shut Down a lot of times...

Hello Apple Community!
I have a problem with my Macbook Pro on Mac OS X Lion.
The Problem is normally like this: I turn on my Macbook, do some work, leave it on for some time, and when I try to click on something, it doesn't respond.
It doesn't even go to sleep! When I close the lid, and when I open it, it's still stuck.
So the only option is to hard shut down it.
hard shut down is when you push the power button for a long time, and your Mac shuts down, no matter what.
I'm putting this on Mac OS X Lion, not Macbook Pro, because it didn't act like this on Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
Thanks for the help!!

Sounds like a hardware issue. You need to contact Apple.

After att moved my contacts n pic from my 3s which is only 3 monts old to my 4 the 3s constently reboots every few min did hard shut down but tro no help anyone know how to solve thanks

3 month old 3gs never had a problem bought iphone 4 att moved contacts n pic now 3gs is always mre booting its self every few min any help to stop it have done hard shut down no help

Basic troubleshooting steps outlined in the User Guide are restart, reset, restore from backup, restore as NEW.
Try these steps.

Once in awhile my screen will freeze while I'm watching a video. Lately it's happening more often, I'm watching a video and it'll freeze BUT I can still hear the dialogue. Only solution I've found so far is to do a hard shut down. HELP!!

Once in awhile my screen will freeze while I'm watching a video. Lately it's happening more often, I'm watching a video and it'll freeze BUT I can still hear the dialogue. Only solution I've found so far is to do a hard shut down. HELP!!

Hi there, im also having this problem, i tried running most of the games on my system, and some that are considered "high end" games, are giving me the exact same problem, but other games are running and im able to message fine, i also got some friends to send me messages, and i can recieve messages perfectly, also i noticed moving the actual window around on the screen or just closing down skype also lags. I have 16GB of ram and 4.4Ghz Octa-Core CPU, i checked my load while on the high end games and it there was more than enough hardware usage left like normal for skype to run, and skype wasnt taking any extra up than before. I also checked by bandwidth and i was having no problems with that as skype would lag even on offline games.
I have tried re-installing under a different directory and still the same problem persists, this has only been a problem within the last 24hrs and i haven't installed any other programs that could affect this at the moment.
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Hard shut down Now wont even startup

Thank you for reading and hope you can help! Ok So I was trying to get into the finder and couldn't, then Safari locked up, let it think then for the first time in like 3 months I did a hard shutdown. (held power button) It shut down and then went to turn it back on and it didn't and still hasn't
Bought in early 2003
Got new logic board in early 2004
128ram
10.2.8 (I think)
40gigs
If you need any more info I will gladly give it. I will check the board frequently.

Well here's some more fun today....
I opted to try putting in the Apple Hardware Test CD in - as the last time this breakdown happened, the computer wouldn't access it at all just like it hasn't been paying attention to the Install CD I am trying to use this time - and it found it.
I ran the tests and everything is A OK! (by the way, does this Hardware Test CD check the internal disk drive?) At the end of the test, it asks you if you want to RESTART so I did and what do you know - the computer was back up and running.
In another post though (re: popping sounds), a lot of people recommended to do a Archive and Reinstall and that seemed to alleviate issues for some. So I tried it as well.
I was able to install all the CDs beautifully and then I went to Software Update and of course, I needed to update OS X 10.3.5 to 10.3.9 and well, as it was finishing installing that, my computer began to do the pop sounds at about 39% and 81% of the installation, finallying giving out at 81% of the installation. It froze.
Thus, it is safe to say that when I get the pop sounds, freezing will occur thereafter (color pinwheel in perpetual motion), and eventually will have to shut down the computer as it won't do anything else.
Of course, thereafter, I couldn't get the computer to start on its own or find its HD, etc.
So now I am back to square one using the external hard drive to boot up and use.
My last gesture of kindness to this iBook, is to erase everything on it and install the OS X.
I'll have to see how much those disk utility programs cost cause I've already spent more money on this laptop than I have wanted to. I should have just purchased a new one instead!
Thanks Ronda for your help.

Wife's Mac Book Pro locked up will not allow her to log on, it froze up on her so she did a hard shut down by holding power button until it shut down. Will power up but not allow her to log in on the log in screen. Any suggestions?

Wife's Mac Book Pro locked up. She shut it down by holding power button unitl it shut down, when she powers it up now it will not allow her to log in on the log in screen. Any suggestions?

Reinstalling Lion/Mountain Lion Without Erasing the Drive
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Computer locks up -have to do hard shut down- after about two times its ok

Seems like the computer locks up on battery or AC. When I shut down with the power button two or three times things seem to work ok for a while. I bought this about two weeks ago and the seller stated that g4's have a problem with processor location that can make computer act up. could this be the problem.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
When you say the computer locks up, do you mean it freezes and you have to force shut it down? This is not considered normal behavior. It could indicate logic board problems. What the seller told you sounds like BS to me. You might want to consider returning this one and looking for a different one. Even if the problem is intermittent now, it likely will get worse over time. And could be expensive to fix.
Good luck!

TV Shows causing iTunes Shut down

In the last week, whenever I try to play a TV Show iTunes shuts down. It doesn't happen with movies, music videos, etc... Just TV Shows.

I have been having the same problem for quite some time now. When playing a tv show (and most recently, when merely downloading tv shows from iTunes store while listening to music!), iTunes shuts the computer down. No BSoD, no nothing; just off. I downloaded and ran windows debugger and it suggested that the problem was probably caused by nvata.sys. So I uninstalled all my video drivers, used a driver cleaner, reinstalled the drivers and got the same problem right away. I'm kind of at my wits end. Help?

How do I keep lion from remembering what was open at shut down?

I know I can uncheck the box when I shut down, but it happens with Mail and pretty much any other application like Microsoft office. I don't want it to remember what I had open, where do I shut this stupid feature off?

Untick the 'Restore windows...' option.
Regards,
Colin R.

What is the normal shut down time for the mac book pro retina display (late 2013). Mine takes around 20 secs.Is this normal or should i be worried ?

Hi I got a new mac book pro retina display of 8G ram and 256GB ssd (late 2013 model). I was trying to shut down.It was taking around 20-30 secs.Is this normal? When i say shutdown i mean , i just login and shutdown.Do nothing else. I repeated the same process for 4 or 5 times. The numbers are the same.
The boot up takes around 15 secs. Are the numbers crazy or normal.
Any reply would be helpful.Thanks.

You can return a new Mac within 14 days of purchase.
Return it and get another one.
A new Mac is in warranty for 1 year from the date of purchase.
A new Mac comes with 90 days of free tech support from AppleCare.
AppleCare: 1-800-275-2273
Call AppleCare.
Best.

Windows 7 won't boot after hard shut down

Earlier today while in Windows and using Steam, Windows locked up. I gave it about 30 minutes to see if it would unlock, but when it wouldn't I decided to do a hard shut off. Now when I try to boot to Windows, I'm able to select the windows disk, get to the blinking cursor that is usually right before the Windows 7 loading screen, but after the cursor the screen just stays black forever.
I'm wondering if there is any way to try to fix this without having to reformat. Also, if reformatting is the only option, have people found that their original Windows 7 keys are reusable? I know that they key gets locked to a machine, but I don't know if it being a Mac machine has any effect on that.
Thank you for the help.
Also I didn't see an appropriate forum category for this. If one is more fitting than this one, I apologize.
Message was edited by: Rweir

“Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” Coming October from Microsoft Press by Windows 7 News Editor
Restoring Windows from system image (requires you made a backup image first)
http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/totw/repair.asp
Windows Recovery Environment and Startup Repair
http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/ff_winre.asp
Retail version is not locked to one machine, and can be reinstalled multiple times.
Your first thing would be to boot from Windows 7 DVD and let it attempt a repair. Not that different from Mac OS. There is also Safe Boot, chkdsk, uninstall programs and drivers, and of course you might want to install CCleaner and use that to keep temp files to a minimum and your system running smoothly.
But instituting a backup strategy should be one of the first things to do after getting it installed and updated.

What's causing hard shut downs?

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