Freezing for no apparent reason + question about force quitting

H

hinotoxin

Registered
Hey all, sincere apologies if this is a rpeat thread, but I did a search and couldn't seem to find anything similar to what I've been experiencing.

For the past few days, at very random times, my computer sometimes freezes, as in, it doesn't let me click on anything. For example, I was chatting in Adium, and suddenly the little vertical blinking line that appears in the text box (I never knew what that was called) STOPPED blinking. But I could still type and hit return to send the messages, I just couldn't highlight what I was typing, or click on ANY other thing on my screen.

I thought it may be an Adium fault, but it just happened while using Camino.

I repaired disk permissions a few days ago and thought that cleared it up, but apparently not. So now I've just had to press command+option+escape to quit the program I'm stuck in, and when it quits, everything works fine.

That brings me to my other question.. is force quitting applications too much bad for them?

Thanks a lot to anyone who can help me.
 
When you go to Disk Utilities, and select your Hard Drive, there is information on the lower portion of the window. On of them is S.M.A.R.T., this usually indicates whether or not the Hard Drive is in good shape. Can you report, or post a screen capture of this?
You could also follow the instructions on this page:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
 
It says that my S.M.A.R.T. status is Verified.

Hmm, that seems a bit daunting but I'll give it a try, although it says it would only be needed if I'm having start-up problems etc.

Hmm, it hasn't been happening too much lately, but if it keeps doing it I'll have to try something because I don't want to mess up my apps with so much force quitting.

Thanks for your help, and if anyone else has any other ideas they'd be very appreciated.
 
yes I too have been having the same problem !

what happens is for no apparent reason everything will freeze but i can still use the mouse to move around the screen but it won't click on anything!!!
 
I do not have any other ideas, other than to suggest backing-up your important files, etc.
You could also try to create another user account and see if you experience the same problem.
If you are comfortable enough, and think it is warranted, you could do a reinstall of OSX.
 
hinotoxin said:
and suddenly the little vertical blinking line that appears in the text box (I never knew what that was called) STOPPED blinking.
Click to expand...
I know this probably wasn't exactly the part you wanted answered, but that vertical blinking line is called "cursor". Yes, it's confusing that the mouse arrow is _also_ referred to as cursor (or 'mouse cursor'), but that line was here before the mouse cursor, so it's got the older rights to that term. :)

-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursor_(computers)
 
I just found a way to escape from it without having to force quit! So anyone with the same problem, all you need to do is press command+alt+escape to bring up the force quit window, and then if you actually try clicking on stuff without force quitting anything, it should work. So then you just close the force quit window. Works for me anyway.

fryke said:
I know this probably wasn't exactly the part you wanted answered, but that vertical blinking line is called "cursor". Yes, it's confusing that the mouse arrow is _also_ referred to as cursor (or 'mouse cursor'), but that line was here before the mouse cursor, so it's got the older rights to that term. :)

-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursor_(computers)
Click to expand...

Oh haha, thanks for that!
 
I've been having this problem over the last few days as well. I think it may have arrived with 10.4.8. Suddenly (often after waking from sleep) I can't click on anything. The system is running, I can launch apps via Quicksilver and quit them via the keyboard (Command Q). I just can't select anything with the mouse.

So everything seems to be running fine except for the click input from the mouse (or trackpad). I have also checked with activity monitor to see if anything unusual is happening when this happens but no, everything looks just fine.

The tip about bringing up Force Quit is one that I'll try if it reoccurs. So far I've used Onyx to reset caches and optimize, trashed the Finder plist, and so on but I'm not sure about the results yet, whether or not it's made a difference.
 
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