Why won't my Mac shut down?

I've got a Quicksilver G4, 867MHz, 1.25GB RAM, Tiger 10.4.11 at home that just won't shut down. My wife and I share this computer; she has her log in, I have mine. The problem started over a month ago. At that time the G4 had a very difficult time starting - the gray screen, Apple logo and spinning wheel would stay on the screen for up to 4 minutes, then the computer would shut itself off. Three tries and it would finally start up. I ran utilities from the OS disk, ran Tech Tool Pro, ran Disk Warrior, ran Onyx; I did everything I could to clean up the system. It sort of worked - the machine would at least start (although slowly), run (slowly) and shut down normally (occasionally). I decided to reload the operating system along with all the updates. For the first few days after reloading the OS it started, ran and shut down normally. It now starts normally, runs OK, but will not shut down. When prompted to shut down everything on the desktop disappears except the wallpaper. The machine just sits with the wallpaper on the screen for as long as we let it go without forcing a shut down with the power key. What's the solution?
Thanks in advance to all who can help me.
Jon

Hi-
Startup and login items that are corrupt or incompatible can cause both starting and shut down problems.
Troubleshoot following the steps in this article:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/startupitems.html

Similar Messages

Why won't my G5 shut down after upgrading to OS 10.4?

Hey guys. I have a problem with upgrading my OS to 10.4.
I am running a Late 2004 Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 with two internal drives. About a month ago, I upgraded the OS to 10.4.3. It was great having spotlight, but the comptuer would refuse to shut itself down. Instead, it closes all the apps and windows, and gives me a spinning ball. After about 10 minutes, the hard-drives stop clicking, after which the fans kick on and stay on full blast until I manually unplug the comptuer. I have upgraded to 10.4.6, reset PRAM, reset SMU (PMU?), verified and repaired...
In thinking that this was a problem with the OS on the previous system, I installed 10.4.3 (my install disc) onto my second drive, which was happily running 10.3 (this was my backup). If running on this other drive, with 10.4.3, it also fails to shut down! I have done the same suite of resets and upgrades to 10.4.6, but it still doesn't shut down. Is there an incompatibility between my G5 and 10.4? Any advice about what I can do? Help!

Contributed by Fumiaki Kawashima a Level 4 here;
There are many reasons to become unable shutting down or restarting from Apple Menu. Some were explained by other posters.
Most importantly, loginwindow (the parent process is launchd.) close out the user session, continue to set the device permissions and user preferences to their defaults in a restart action, or the process power off the system in a shutdown action. However, the issue proves that somewhere in those routines cannot be performed.
Users authentication system seems to be intact because you can restart or shutdown from the login window. However, the admin account authenticated by the Tiger security systems could confuse somehow and affect loginwindow process for setting up the user environment. This may result in interfering with the process for the shutdown and restart mentioned above.
Test if you can shutdown from the keyboard-- Holding down controloptioncommand keys, and then press the eject key.
Check if the loginwindow plists are corrupted. To do this test, remove the followings to temporary folders on the desktop, and shutdown from the keyboard shortcut combination. Restart the computer to test the recurrence.
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
/Users/HOME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
Try disabling Login Items for third-party applications via the Accounts system preference, if any.
Verify whether any third-party kernel extensions (including device drivers) interfere with the loginwindow hooks process-- Start up with a Safe-mode, then test the Restart from Apple Menu to see whether it works. Also, boot into a Single-user mode, and test if "reboot" command is available from the BSD layer. The I/O Kit API for software developers provides a shutdown hook so that ".kext" troubleshooting may need to be considered. Besides, some bad programmed extension may not be unloaded automatically at a shutdown or restart.
If the computer is configured with Irish language Input method and/or third-party Irish keyboard, try disabling them to test.
A third-party application or custom script may interfere with the loginwindow hooks for the Shut Down or Restart. For example, if you install an application that prevents casually powering down a system, the Shut Down and Restart buttons may not work. Also, if you install a P2P file sharing application, try uninstalling it.
As last resorts, troubleshoot a bad RAM and consider "Erase and Install" solution.
OPTION:
Post a part of system.log that indicates events from "localhost kernel[0]: standard timeslicing quantum is 10000 us" to the next same line.
This may help to narrow down because restarting or shutting down the system process can initiate the procedure programmatically by sending an appropriate Apple event to Mac OS X Tiger's system process (loginwindow).
Likewise, check console.log whether any failures is reported.
Corrections:
Most importantly, the loginwindow (the parent process is launchd.) close out the user session, continue to set the device permissions and user preferences to their defaults in a restart action, or the process power off the system in a shutdown action.
However, the admin account authenticated by the Tiger security systems could confuse somehow and it may impact on the loginwindow process for setting up the user environment. This may result in interfering with the process for the shutdown and restart as mentioned above.
Addendum:
If you post a copy of system.log, consider to edit the Ethernet interface ID to a fake value.
API = Application Programming Interface
Cheers!
DALE

Why won't my MacBookPro shut down?

My 17" MBP works fine, but 2 nights ago it started to refuse to shut down, and it continues not to shut down and not to restart. It does, however, go to sleep.
I'm concerned, and would like to fix whatever is wrong without bringing it to a Mac store, if possible.
Any suggestions?
Thanks so much for your input!
Dennis

book2: My money is on the printer as the culprit. Make sure you have nothing queued up for printing when you shut down, and also make sure you have the latest Canon driver version for your printer.
There are still some USB devices and drivers that interfere with sleep, and perhaps with shutdown, by sending a very brief "Hello? Are you still there? I'm still here!" signal to the computer at regular intervals, in some extreme cases as often as once every second. A computer that is constantly plagued with such activity on the USB bus may never be able to carry out a Sleep or Shut Down command. Your printer or its driver software may be indulging in this kind of misbehavior, in which case it's no surprise that disconnecting it it before trying to shut down is an effective workaround. (Just turning the printer off might or might not do the same.) A newer driver version, if there is one, may remedy the problem, or it may not.

Why does my i mac shut down when sizing photos?

I have a new 27' i mac with 2t drive and 16 gigs of ram the Pentium i5 quad core 2.8 ghrtz computer running OS 10.6.7. I have the Adobe Master collection CS5 installed and when sizing photos in photoshop my computer shuts down completely. It crashes the computer not just the program.I have re-installed all software including the OS twice. I have all the latest updates installed.
I have tried using earlier versions of the OS and still have the same problem. One apple tech said there was a letter put out by Adobe in January talking about a conflict with Adobe CS5 and mac OS 10.6.7 but I can't find it. I am also having problems online when filling out online forms or copying and pasting can turn it off as well. Has anyone run into this or similar problems.

I took my computer to the apple store and they tested the hardware for a week and they did replace the power supply but said they could not find anything else wrong and that the ram was ok too. They said the stressed my computer to the max and could not produce the errors that I could do be sizing a 2mg photo.I've been trying to get this fixed for months.
One apple tech said that the error message when he saw it crash said it happened in Quartz? I think thats what it was. They reinstalled my OS to an earlier version and thought that might fix it until Adobe came up with a fix. When I got home I found they installed the wrong version of OS. They walked me through a few downloads to put my computer on 10.6.6 they thought the10.6.7 was the issue but its not.

Why won't my computer shut down

My computer will not shut down. Most the times it says that it is because applications are failing to quit. Yes, I have tried to force quit multiple ways, such as Command+option+esc. I have also held down the mouse if on the dock, but the force quit option has not been present during those efforts. Applications that have been unresponsive so far: iTunes, The Sims 3, Safari, Word, Preview. I tried deleting applications, but failed because they need to be quit before that is possible. This also goes for installing updates. Thank you for your help.

hold option and right click the app you're trying to close and then you will see force quit. you can also force quit in Activity monitor

Why won't Firefox 33 shut down properly?

I must have just got an update to V33 because I was not seeing this problem before today. I have not myself been messing with the configuration in the last couple of weeks. (Not sure when the last time I actually closed Firefox successfully, but it was definitely within the last 3 days.) Looking at Submitted Crash Reports, I see just one on 10/3 and then 53 of them spanning the interval from 7PM to 8PM this evening, during which I had had to kill it from the Task Manager 3 times because it was just hanging when it was supposed to be shutting down. Here is a small sample:
af0c75a7-feaf-4ad3-aae2-81ddeedeaaaf 10/18/2014 8:00 PM
f0309bc5-4bc8-435f-9f33-aa2c6bb3a09d 10/18/2014 8:00 PM
02906c47-fc27-4559-b735-093215ac92b5 10/18/2014 8:00 PM
302fce44-9e80-440c-8f79-241b3a3d8328 10/18/2014 8:00 PM
Firefox seems to be working normally when I restart it.
I really do not want to have to do a reset to fix this. However, if I were to have to, would Sync put things back?
Is reverting to V32 an option? If so, how?
I'd appreciate any help.

Uhh. Never mind. After restarting Windows, it started shutting down normally again.

Why won't my iPod shut down ??

hey !!
i have a problem with my nano, i dont know what's happening, but it wont turn off ! i keep pressing the "play" touch like i normally would to shut it off, but it just wont work !! can anyone tell me what to do ?

Finally did that. I didn't realize it took that long so I was just figuring there was a problem and you couldn't shut it down that way. New to Macs, but not to PCs
MacBook 2.0GHz 2 GB ram, Mini Core Duo 1GB ram, and 3 Windows machines Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Why won't my K9NGM shut down automatically?

Ever since I installed this mobo it has never turned itself off (as every other board does) I have to manually turn it off when presented with the windoze ok to turn it all off now message...
I've tried searching to find out why but never found anything so now I'm in 'The Land of the Knowledgable' can anyone enlighten me? Am I doing/not doing something stupid?

Quote from: DavidND on 11-April-08, 05:14:40
Fred - no i didn't. I haven't yet upgraded.
Boss - I tried that but am not given ACPI as a choice! where do I find it please? Sorry to be a pain!
"Boss - I tried that but am not given ACPI as a choice! where do I find it please? Sorry to be a pain!"
If its not listed you can't.. You should perform a new fresh installation, or force it by that way:
1. Changing HAL require changes in corespond kernels too. Each HAL use different kernels.
2. The HAL file along with corespond kernels need to match with exact XP version installed. Example:
If the user is using SP2(most popular and recent), we must use HAL & kernels version for SP2 too.(else will not gonna work)
So let's comment here again:
"expand d:\i386\halmacpi.dl_ c:\windows\system32"
If we use SP2, we need to use correct version of halmacpi.dll (in the string above its older version), we can get it from here:
expand d:\i386\sp2.cab -F:halmacpi.dll c:\windows\system32 /* I assume that we have XP SP2 installation disk */
or we can use other location, which will no need to have XP installation disk, XP is keep a copy of files locally, we can use this one instead too:
expand c:\windows\driver cache\i386\sp2.cab -F:halmacpi.dll c:\windows\system32
If we use SP3, we should use sp3 versions of halmacpi.dll,(and kernels which will be described below) e.g. in the string above we must replace sp2.cab with sp3.cab
OK, think that part should be clear, the next stage updating the kernels for our chosen HAL, ofc. we will follow the rule 1 they to match with our version used.
"ACPI Multiprocessor PC" is using those kernels: ntkrnlmp.exe, ntkrpamp.exe which must be renamed and overwritten to ===> ntoskrnl.exe, ntkrnlpa.exe in %systemroot%\system32 directory.
/* MS$ is using the same names for kernels, but in reality they are different for each HAL... */
So our complete scenario to successfully change(force "ACPI Multiprocessor PC") will look in that way:
expand c:\windows\driver cache\i386\sp2.cab -F:halmacpi.dll c:\windows\system32
expand c:\windows\driver cache\i386\sp2.cab -F:ntkrpamp.exe c:\windows\system32
expand c:\windows\driver cache\i386\sp2.cab -F:ntkrnlmp.exe c:\windows\system32
or better going to c:\windows\driver cache\i386\ folder 1st, to type lesser by:
cd c:\windows\driver cache\i386
and
expand sp2.cab -F:halmacpi.dll c:\windows\system32
expand sp2.cab -F:ntkrpamp.exe c:\windows\system32
expand sp2.cab -F:ntkrnlmp.exe c:\windows\system32
clearing the way for new HAL and kernels and making backup of current one in same time by:
ren ntkrnlpa.exe ntkrnlpa.old
ren ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.old
ren hal.dll hal.old
then naming new HAL file with kernels to expected by OS with:
ren halmacpi.dll hal.dll
ren ntkrpamp.exe ntkrnlpa.exe
ren ntkrnlmp.exe ntoskrnl.exe
reboot PC by:
echo g=FFFF:0000|debug /* or just hit reset key...*/
In short to be more clear what we have changed:
To force "ACPI Multiprocessor PC", we need to overwrite:
extract & rename & replace(overwrite) Halmacpi.dll to ---> %systemroot%\system32\hal.dll
extract & rename & replace(overwrite) ntkrnlmp.exe to --> %systemroot%\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
extract & rename & replace(overwrite) ntkrpamp.exe to --> %systemroot%\system32\ntkrnlpa.exe
Just we must be sure that source files will match with actual XP OS version, etc:
If we use SP2, we must get source files(Halmacpi.dll, ntkrnlmp.exe, ntkrpamp.exe) from %windir%\driver cache\i386\sp2.cab,
If we use SP3 we must get source files from %windir%\driver cache\i386\sp3.cab,
If we use SP1 we must %windir%\driver cache\i386\driver.cab
If we use XP without SP we must get the source files from %windir%\driver cache\i386\ /* they exist there but compressed, which can be done by same way with expand command)
Then just to rename files and replace into %systemroot%\system32 folder as followed:
Halmacpi.dll to ---> %systemroot%\system32\hal.dll
ntkrnlmp.exe to --> %systemroot%\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
ntkrpamp.exe to --> %systemroot%\system32\ntkrnlpa.exe
We can use XP installation disk recovery console, we can use some DOS version which NTFS mounted which have write ability to NTFS, or just second OS installed to replace files from there.
Have used the procedure above xx times working every time without single issue
Else enter in BIOS and "LOAD BIOS OPTIMIZED DEFAULT", followed by "SAVE AND EXIT" then perform a new fresh OS installation

I downloaded the new Firefox but it constantly freezes, doing absolutely nothing, and I can't even close it from my Mac dock bar, I have to turn off my laptop using the power button as Firefox won't let me shut down. What can I do?

Hi
I recently downloaded the new Firefox (Firefox 4, I think - you can tell I'm very tech savvy!) and it constantly freezes, I can't do anything with it at all - I can't even close it from the icon in my Mac dock bar.
I have tried restarting my computer - though I have to turn it off by using the power button as as Firefox is open and totally unresponsive it won't let me shut down. About a minute after re-starting Firefox, restoring my tabs or starting afresh, it freezes again.
This is obviously very annoying and I'm not sure what I can do about it. Firefox is my preferred browser, and I'd really like to be able to use it again!

This is not a reply. I just want to elaborate on this problem.
My computer freezes occasionally when it is used after being sleep for a while. The spinning ball appears and everything is totally disabled. Nothing on the keyboard works.
The mouse moves, but does not work.
The only solution is to turn the power off and on (losing all data in open applications.)
I kept the System monitor running on the side to find out which program was running when the computer froze. The Monitor as well as all other applications froze, but the data showed:
Firefox 18.4%
Activity Monitor 0.9%
Firefox Plugin 0.2%
This is all the information I have. By the way, I am using iMac with OS 10.6.

Safari won't close, which then prohibits Mac shut down. Quit safari on menu is grey.

Safari won't quit, which then prohibits Mac shut down. Quit safari on pull down menu is grey / won't allow select.

From the menu bar, select Apple menu > Force Quit > Safari.

HT1338 My mail won't open but it won't close on my finder bar...won't let me shut down my Mac.

My mail won't open but it won't close on my finder bar...won't let me shut down my Mac.

Choose Force Quit from the Apple menu and shut it down from there. If that doesn't work, save and close everything you can, and then use the Activity Monitor in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder to force quit the loginwindow process.
(88933)

Just found new FBI Virus on my MAC Pro. Won't let me shut down. What do I need to do?

Need help removing new FBI virus from my MAC Pro. Virus won't let me shut down computer. What do I need to do?

It's not a virus.
Quit Safari. Force quit if necessary.
Relaunch Safari by holding down the shift key and clicking its icon in the Dock. That will stop the bad page from reloading automatically. From the menu bar, select
Safari ▹ Preferences... ▹ Privacy ▹ Remove All Website Data
to get rid of any cookies or other data left by the server. Open your Downloads folder and delete anything you don't recognize.

Why is it when i shut down my mac i loose information like bookmarks,desktop files and my photos?

why is it when i shut down my mac i loose information like bookmarks,desktop files and my I photos?

Hi Beth, sounds like your Username got edited or changed.
Return to default desktop, apparent "loss" of home directory, (it can happen spontaneously too)...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107854

I-Mac shuts down after sitting for a while, why and how can it be fixed?

i Mac shuts down when left for a time in sleep mode. Am I missing something or is this supposed to happen?
It has never happened while anyone is using the computer but that may just be because it often sits over night without use.
Am using a logitech Wave USB keyboard and mouse because my wife likes it.

OK reset the SMC > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
1. Shut down the computer.
2. Unplug the computer's power cord.
3. Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
4. Release the power button.
5. Attach the computers power cable.
6. Press the power button to turn on the computer.
and check all of the power connections.
The iMac's are sensitive to power issues (sag or momentary outage) while in sleep mode. If in the Energy Saver preference "Start up automatically after a power failure" is unchecked (as it should be) then you could/would/should find the iMac off after a power problem.

Why is my mac shutting down in middle of my age of empires 3 game. did not do this until 10.6.8 everything including the game is updated.

when i play age of empires 3 my mac shuts down for no apparent reason. Any suggestions? 10.6.8 ; 2.8 ghz; i dont know how to find any other info. This did not start until i purchased and installed snow leopard. please help me!

Do an SMC reset, which can fix problems with the system randomly shutting down:
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord.
Wait fifteen seconds.
Attach the computer's power cord.
Wait five seconds, then press the power button to turn on the computer.

Why won't my Mac shut down?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for