Force shutdown / restart in Mac OS X
First see if it’s just one program, or the whole machine. If the foreground program is unresponsive, before you force a restart check to see if other programs still work, because a lot of times, only one program is stuck and the rest of the system is OK. It’s actually very rare for all of OS X to freeze up. Try switching to the Finder or another program in the Dock or by pressing Command+Tab to use the Application Switcher. If these work, your whole system is not frozen, only the foreground program is.
Forcing just one program to quit. Use the Force Quit command from the Apple menu (or press Option+Command+Esc) to select the unresponsive program and quit it.
Forcing the entire system to shut down. If you cannot switch to other programs and you can’t choose the Shut Down command on the Apple menu, force a shutdown by holding down the Power button for several seconds until the machine powers off. To verify that it really is shut down, press one of the keys that lights up, like Caps Lock or Num Lock. If the key’s LED lights up, power is still on. When the machine is fully off, press the Power button to start up normally. For an emergency restart on a notebook while the machine is still running, press Command+Ctrl+Power. Using either method, any unsaved changes in open documents will be lost.
Holding the Power button to force a full shutdown works on many kinds of Macs and PCs. Use this technique only in an emergency.
In normal use on a notebook, pressing the power button without holding it down is the same as choosing Shut Down from the Apple menu; you see the same dialog box. On a desktop, the shortcut is Control+Eject.
Failing to wake up from sleep mode. If a Mac doesn’t wake from sleep when it should, or pressing the Power button doesn’t start up a Mac that appears turned off, the computer may be in a state where the screen is blank but it’s still running. This sometimes happens when something’s gone wrong while a Mac was in or waking from sleep mode.
First press Caps Lock to see if it lights up. If it does, the machine is still on. In that case, press the Increase Screen Brightness button to make sure it’s not because the screen backlight is off. If none of that brings the screen to life but you know the machine’s getting power, your machine is in a sort of coma. You might as well do an emergency shutdown at this point.
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This is exactly the kind of info I was looking for, thank you.
I’m a new Mac OS X user … general question:
I leave my Mac in “sleep” all the time …. how often should you actually shut it down when not in use?
Alice, the main reason to shut down is if you aren’t going to use the Mac for several days. For example, if you’re going away on a trip for a week and you’re leaving the Mac at home.
Sleep mode uses a tiny bit of energy. If it’s a desktop Mac, you could leave it in sleep indefinitely, as long as it’s got power. If the power goes out, sleep will fail, you’ll lose any unsaved data, and would have to start up again.
If you have a Mac laptop and you’re only going to sleep it overnight, that’s fine, there will be plenty of battery left (until it was almost empty to start with). Sleep mode will slowly drain the battery until after several days, it’s empty and you’d have to plug it in to start it up. A shut down laptop won’t drain the battery for a very long time, probably months.
Sleep mode is what I use all the time, even when I take my Mac laptop on extended trips. I typically restart after a week or two just to be safe, but otherwise I just sleep it. Currently, it’s been 9 days since I last shut down or restarted this laptop.
May I ask you a question about my Mac OS X? Ever since I fiddled with the “dock” or shortcuts on the desktop, (I wanted to stop Word from opening at login) the Mac has been cutting out of the internet after just a few minutes.
I have a Toshiba laptop and it is connecting just fine….
Thank you!
Susan
Wow, I am sorry to say that I can’t think of how working with the Dock or desktop shortcuts would affect the Internet connection!
The only thing I can think of is if you had edited your Network settings while you were doing that. Otherwise, the cause of the Internet outages is probably unrelated to what you did in the Dock, and you’ll have to track down the real cause using normal troubleshooting, such as restarting the router and modem, etc.
If you are talking about a wireless connection, one way to help narrow down the cause is to note what happens in the Airport menu when you lose the connection. If the Airport icon goes gray and then back to black, then its temporarily lost its wireless connection to the router and the problem is either with your Mac’s wireless setup or hardware, or the wireless router might be malfunctioning or resetting itself. If the Airport icon stays black when you lose the Internet, then your Mac’s wireless setup might be OK and the problem might only be on the router side. If the Toshiba works fine at the very same time the Mac loses it, then the problem is with the Mac.
If you are talking about a wired connection, I’m not sure what it could be.
Good luck!
question. i was copying a song from a burned cd to my mac when it suddenly gave me a message saying it couldnt because the cd is damaged (the cd was really scratched but i thought it would still work), i tried to close out of the progress bar but it wouldnt let me. it would say 5 seconds left before finishing. i also tried ejecting but because it was still technically “copying” it wouldnt let me. all other programs worked. it wasnt as if my computer froze. it was just that that program wouldnt close. so i forced shutdown (hold the power button). Everything works fine now but was wondering is that harmful to my laptop? sorry im paranoid lol
Albert, one forced shutdown of a Mac should not cause problems. The file system has a feature called “journaling” that helps retrace steps before an unexpected shutdown and can help prevent wrecked files. However, you want to avoid doing force shutdowns very often because the more you do it, the more chance there is that some data will fall through the cracks and be corrupted. So let it go this time, but in the future, always try to force quit an individual program before forcing the entire machine to shut down, or wait.
Recently a friend of mine with a Windows Vista machine got impatient with a long period of unresponsiveness and force shut down the machine, and next time some files were actually lost despite our efforts to recover them. I was surprised. I’m not going to use that to make fun of Vista, but as a cautionary tale that there is always the chance that any system, including a Mac, may get screwed up by a force shutdown.
Hi I have the same problem as Albert above, and I’ve googled it but can’t find any help. I pressed the eject button forgetting that files were still being copied on my macbook and now I can neither eject or close the application (it doesn’t exist in force quite and refuses t stop copying, so I was wondering if there was any other solution to this (asides from force shutting down i really don’t want to chance it if it happens again.) Thank you for your time
[I'm not sure, because if you mean the Eject button on the keyboard it normally doesn't allow a volume to be ejected while files are still being copied. I am assuming that when you say "I can neither eject or close the application" you mean you tried force-quitting the Finder. If you wait forever and it doesn't clear up, you might have to force shut down after all, unfortunately. - Conrad]
I will be completely honest, that I have forced shutdown twice recently, for the same reason. My battery was running low and I got a message stating this. I waited (bad habit) and forgot to plug in my adapter. Then my computer went into a deep sleep. I then plugged the power cord in my computer and… nothing. So I waited patiently and forced a shutdown, by the hold of my power button. I tried to boot it up and… nothing. Until after a minute my laptop woke up and restored all the windows I had open when the power shut off. Is a forced shutdown my best way out of this situation, or is there an alternative. I have a MacBook Pro 10.5.2 .
Thanks,
Marcos
[That sounds unusual, so I don't know if I have any other ideas that wouldn't end up the same as a forced shutdown. Normally, when you run down the battery it's supposed to wake from sleep as soon as it's got AC power plugged in. The only time I have seen it not do that is when I was using a Kensington power adapter for my G4 that provided a lower power level than the Apple adapter, but if I waited long enough the battery would eventually reach a level where the system would start.
So I guess the first thing I would do is wait a few minutes with it plugged in. If it didn't wake after the battery has gone up an LED or two I might give up and force shut down. But I haven't had to do that lately. - Conrad]
I have had my MacBook, OS X, for a year and a half and have had nearly no problems whatsoever with it. Until last week. I got a big message in the middle of my screen, in about 5 languages, saying that I had to restart or shut down my computer immediately. The entire system was non-functional, and the only thing I could do was hold down the power button until it shut down. This was a bit disconcerting the first time, but now it’s occurring more frequently– twice more in the past 2 days. What could be causing this??
[You're experiencing what's called a kernel panic. These should never happen. The cause may not be obvious, and it's almost never because you did something wrong. It's sometimes caused by hardware that has developed a problem, like a RAM chip that has gone bad or a problem on the motherboard. Another major cause is a hardware driver software like a bug in a video or USB driver. For example, the PowerBook G3 once got kernel panics because of a bug in the trackpad driver software. All you can do is try to isolate it, such as running without one RAM chip or the other, but if you run out of ideas you pretty much should talk to Apple. Apple has a tech note on it:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1392
It sounds like something changed in your machine recently, either a problem developed that you did not cause and had no control over, or you installed/updated a driver for a hardware device and the driver has some bugs. Those aren't all the possible causes but just the most likely.
Good luck -Conrad]
Thanks Conrad,
I had recently installed a driver for an external hard drive, and since uninstalling it, I have had no more recurrences of kernel panic. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
Hi All,
i have one problem with my Mac ,that when i select the “Shut down” or “Restart” button in the Apple menu nothing happened .
if i want to shut down my laptop i will use the power button to do that.
about my Mac :
Mac OS X 10.4.11
can you please help me
HI
My Mac locks up when I connect my external hard drive. Usually it is just Finder that locks up and the little spinning ball icon will not allow me to click on anything in finder. If I try to disconnect or restart the whole computer or turn the harddrive off it tells me that I am not disconnecting it properly and that data will be lost or damaged, but it won’t let me shut it down by clicking on the disconnect/eject icon.
What do I need to do to fix this as my Mac is the heart of my photography business and I need to back up my files off the external harddrive to disk, and can’t.
Thanks
Rhondda
thank you
this is the type of info/help that makes me happy and really helps.
thanks:)
Hi,
A year ago I bought a used (1 yr old) MacBookPro to run my theatre company’s video and audio cues for our summer tour. All worked well till week 10 of the tour (we were running Qlab), and then the sound files started glitching, with intermittency. Even in Itunes the sound cues were glitching.
Now, a month later, the machine is having startup problems. I’m having to force start it, and I suspect that the battery is not taking a charge. Any ideas?
There’s a lot going on there. Playing back sounds or iTunes shouldn’t stress any recent computer enough to cause glitches. Maybe try it in another user account on the same machine, to see if it’s a problem with a specific account. If you have a spare hard drive lying around, you can also try installing a fresh test copy of OS X on it to see if the problems happen if you boot off of that. If the problems still happen, it’s probably a hardware problem in the computer. If they don’t, there may be a problem with OS X on the main drive that might require updating or reinstalling. Beyond that, the problems are such an unusual combination that it might be a good idea to bring it in to Apple to have it looked at, because it isn’t obvious to me what would cause all of that to happen.
what happens if the caps lock doesn’t come on but you know the computer definitely getting power? the only key working is the on/off switch! can’t get it to boot up at all and i have tried the fixes suggested above
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