Leopard unable to force quit application

jeno · #1 March 24th, 2008, 05:56 AM

I am running 10.5.2. and just recently the systems acting weird.

I have some software such as mail, text edit running and suddenly it stop responding. The mouse cursor keep on spinning for a long time. What you normally do is hit Option + Command + Esc to force quit the software. After i've done so. The software crashed and ask you to send in the crashed report and everything else is very normal. But the software dint actually quite. i can still see a small indication (at the dock) below the icon that the software still running and when i hit Option + Command + Esc again. I still can see the software in the force quite dialog, it doesn't report it as stop responding. When i check the Activity Monitor, there is nothing there. Everything else works fine except the crashed software cannot quit and i can't relaunch it.

Anyone experience this?

Rhisiart · #2 March 24th, 2008, 06:09 AM

I had the same problem. Tried various repair utilities and repaired permissions etc. Nothing worked so I did a clean install and the problem hasn't come back.

I am sure others can suggest a simpler way of getting around the problem though.

**Giaguara** · #3 March 24th, 2008, 06:55 AM

In Terminal,

top

should show all running processes. There are two options: either the application is running and we can kill it with

kill pid

where pid is the number for the process, e.g. kill 928 for killing a process that shows that PID. The second option is that the process is a zombie, and it can't be killed, and the RAM wasted by it will be released only at reboot.

Top should also list how many processes are running, and if there are any zombies.

ex2bot · #4 March 25th, 2008, 04:33 PM

I had a problem with Logmein, because it would restart any of its processes I tried to force-quit. Finally, I found the installer and nuked the whole thing.

Doug

Kelmon · #5 April 7th, 2008, 09:55 AM

I've had this problem and I think it is related to Time Machine. When the problem occurs programs lock-up, can't be killed so that they can be relaunched (process running in the Dock but not in Activity Monitor) but I've found that when this happens Time Machine is preparing a backup to the attached FireWire disk. Telling Time Machine to cancel the backup doesn't do anything (gridlock condition, perhaps?) but unplugging the disk causes all "orphaned" processes/applications to quit properly. Needless to say, OS X complains that I unplugged the disk without unmounting it properly but it does appear to resolve the issue.

I am not certain if this is the same situation that you are seeing but if you are using Time Machine then I think that's your problem.

jeno · #6 April 7th, 2008, 09:35 PM

Its not only Time Machine. Looks like Mac OS / Mac computer has some trouble with external storage devices. Mac OS will "freeze" if it fail to read the disk even though the disk is fully functional. Sometime it see the disk but did not recognize the content inside it. It is ok to leave it plug into you Mac and it will show up at your deskstop like it always does without accessing it. But when you try to access it, it will spin and spin and "freeze" everything. It even happen to thumb drive too.

duboisj · #7 April 8th, 2008, 09:42 AM

I just had the same problem - disk access on my firewire drive failed (the drive is new and seems to work fine), and time machine hung, along with the system prefs and the finder. Neither sys prefs nor finder would respond to a force quit (exact symptoms as above: sys prefs showed up in the list of applications to force quit, died & tried (but failed) to send an error report, and then persisted in the dock and would not respond to subsequent force quit requests). Finder relaunch also failed - finder showed up after re-launch as running in the force quit list, but in fact the finder was not running. I pulled out the firewire cable for my external drive, and the zombie system prefs disappeared and the finder started responding immediately.

Thanks for describing the problem. I hope apple ships a fix.

TimmR · #8 April 28th, 2008, 09:04 PM

We have just started experiencing the same thing on the Mac my secretary uses. Thanks for pointing out that Time Machine may be the culprit. We'll try deactivating it and see if things clear up.