Powerbook Problem?

F

Firedad

Registered
Hello,
Let me first say -We are new to the "MAC" world.
My daughter's Powerbook, running OSX, would not shut down until I finnaly removed the battery. Any thoughts about why this happened? The unit is less than a year old and was/is running fine with no indication there are any problems.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Firedad
 
I am not sure why this happened. The important thing is not to panic. First all OS X is based on Unix so you have to think a little. First all, follow these instructions:

1. Launch /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and "Repair Permissions" on the drive.

2. Reset the PRAM.

3. Download Onyx and run some of the maintenance routines.

Hopefully these steps will help your situation.
 
Also, you should never suddenly power down any Mac OS X computer -- critical procedures are run at both startup and shutdown, and interrupting these procedures can leave you with an unbootable system, or worse (data corruption!).

If the computer simply will not shut down, that lends to a bigger problem which should be solved, since yanking the battery to shut down will eventually lead to an unbootable system.

Can you explain exactly what happened when you tried to shut it down? Were there programs running? Users logged in? Did it just hang there in some semi-shutting-down state indefinitely? Did it not respond to the shutdown command at all?
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
Also, you should never suddenly power down any Mac OS X computer -- critical procedures are run at both startup and shutdown, and interrupting these procedures can leave you with an unbootable system, or worse (data corruption!).
Click to expand...

Sorry, I know I should be providing solutions, but I have also had to shut down my computer forcibly a couple of times. For example, when I open 3 3D programs and 5 normal programs at once, and the whole system hangs while 2 things are loading, etc., when I am driving my PB to the extreme with only 512 Ram. Obviously it's mostly my fault - still, what do you do when it doesn't respond and you can't power off, other than force a power off? I don't remove the battery, I just hold the power button, but, is there something else I should try first?
 
WonderFool said:
I don't remove the battery, I just hold the power button, but, is there something else I should try first?
Click to expand...

I guess it all depends... is the system in a hung state from which it will never return? Does the mouse cursor move? Are things on screen still moving or being animated? Is the pinwheel cursor still spinning? Have you tried force-quitting programs?

WonderFool said:
For example, when I open 3 3D programs and 5 normal programs at once, and the whole system hangs while 2 things are loading, etc., when I am driving my PB to the extreme with only 512 Ram.
Click to expand...
This just sounds like, no offense, impatience. Forcing a computer off because you launched too many programs and there's an insane amount of memory swapping going on isn't good -- you'd be better off just waiting until it's done, which could be an hour or more in the worst cases. It just depends -- if you've got a good backup and don't mind reloading the whole system, then perhaps it's acceptable to force-shutdown and reboot to save time but risk data corruption.

It's just never good to completely cut the power to your computer suddenly without properly shutting down first.
 
first of all thanks to all who have replied to my problem and sorry it took so long to get back.
The problem we has wioth opur powerbook occured as my daughter was using it and then closed the lid more than half way. She said after awhile, she opened it again and the sceen was blank but the machine was still running. No curser, no sceensaver - nothing. She tried to turn it off with power button but that did not work either.
She left the machine running for 36 hours until I got home, with no change to the state of the powerbook. It was only after she told me of this problem did I remove the battery.
Since then, she has been able to work on the PB with no problems.
To answer one other poster's question; there were no programs running at the time of this occurance.

Firedad
 
Sounds like the PowerBook had gone to sleep. Have you tried just hitting a key or clicking on the trackpad button to activate it? I know that on desktop Macs clicking on the mouse button usually wakes it up from sleep.
 
nixgeek said:
Sounds like the PowerBook had gone to sleep. Have you tried just hitting a key or clicking on the trackpad button to activate it? I know that on desktop Macs clicking on the mouse button usually wakes it up from sleep.
Click to expand...

Actually, to Firedad's situation, IF it was just in sleep, trying to shut down with the power button would have woken the system up, I think (just tested on a June 2005 PB).
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
I guess it all depends... is the system in a hung state from which it will never return? Does the mouse cursor move? Are things on screen still moving or being animated? Is the pinwheel cursor still spinning? Have you tried force-quitting programs?


This just sounds like, no offense, impatience. Forcing a computer off because you launched too many programs and there's an insane amount of memory swapping going on isn't good -- you'd be better off just waiting until it's done, which could be an hour or more in the worst cases. It just depends -- if you've got a good backup and don't mind reloading the whole system, then perhaps it's acceptable to force-shutdown and reboot to save time but risk data corruption.

It's just never good to completely cut the power to your computer suddenly without properly shutting down first.
Click to expand...

Thanks. In my problem, the machine "hangs" in the sense that I cannot open the force quit window or anything else, I cannot close anything, and I cannot stop anything that is going on. The mouse will move, though it may get stuck showing the wrong cursor and such. In other words, what I think it is is that the machine is simply overloaded with too much stuff going on at once, each task getting in the way of another, like 6 people trying to go through a door at once - nobody gets anywhere. I usually wait about 5~10 minutes before I give up and force it to power off. Yes, it is probably impatience, but Apple shouldn't expect consumers to stare at an unresponsive machine for an hour+ right? I guess what I want is something that will tell all those apps to just stop what they're doing so that I can force quit select ones or all of them. In short, tell those 6 people going through the door to quit struggling. But I suppose since alt+cmd+esc leaves stuff running, it just adds to the problem? Is there such a thing as a force-alt+cmd+esc?

Firedad's problem sounded a little like the screen went to sleep and wouldn't wake up...maybe somewhat like mine? Maybe the computer was so stuck the screen wouldn't come back on?
 
Yes, we did try hitting th track pad and everyother key. It was not until we removed the battery, did the machine turn off.
 
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