ATSSERVER KILLED MACBOOK PRO

My ATSServer has the same problem on 10.5.3
Pushing CPU continuously togheter with mdworker...

Starts randomly...

Try disconnecting the power and removing the battery for a few minutes and then try to start up the laptop.

I have a pretty serious problem with ATSServer. When I open certain folder (click on it in Finder), a Second ATSServer starts and eats up ALL my CPU. I can move the mouse pointer but it's only beachballing. The Mac doesn't respond at all then, no clicking, keyboard commands (not even shutdown CTRL ALT+CMDEject).

I have read that you're supposed to delete the ATS Preferences. I did that a few days ago and it didn't help. Now the files aren't even there in /Library/Cahes and /Library/Preferences/ and not in the home folder either.

The only thing I can do is force the Mac to power off by holding the power button (it's a Mac Mini). I tried doing SSH from another mashine and "killall ATSServer" but apparently, that process doesn't belong to me so it won't allow it, SUDO won't work either.

I suspect it's a corrupted file somewhere. But it's probably just one in a few thousand files (the problematic folder has many subfolders) and those are all very important documents. Any suggestions?

I have the same problem. It's apparantly caused by .pdf files created by HP scanning software. It started after updating to 10.5.5. After trying various tips on how to disable ATSServer, I got no improvement. This is a serious problem that makes accessing important files I have impossible. How do you report this to Apple, or find out what they are doing about it?

I can confirm I have the same problem with ATSServer, running about 160-190% cpu on Macbook Pro. It seems to trigger by a first backup with Time Machine. I am backing up first time to a new TimeCapsule. I tried the font cache clear suggested above but the same problem is back after time machine did 40GB out of 120Gb. I checked the snapshot of the ATSServer process and it looks like this:

"Sampling process 1782 for 1 seconds with 1 millisecond of run time between samples
Sampling completed, processing symbols...
Analysis of sampling ATSServer (pid 1782) every 1 millisecond

==================

Call graph:
846 Thread_2503
846 0x4b36
846 0xdcf3f
846 CFRunLoopRun
846 CFRunLoopRunSpecific
846 __CFMachPortPerform
846 0xdba02
846 0xdb711
846 0xc530e
846 0xc2c6f
846 0xccf66
846 0xcd246
846 0x1191ee
846 0x1172bd
846 0x11151d
846 0x1160f3
846 0x113efe
846 0xef557
846 calloc
846 malloc zonecalloc
846 szone_calloc
846 0x2b3344
846 0xc2561
846 syslog
846 vsyslog
846 asl_new
846 calloc
846 malloc zonecalloc
846 _spinlock
846 _spinlock


=============

846 Thread_2603
846 thread_start
846 pthreadstart
846 TS exception_listenerthread
846 0xc2b36
846 TSExceptionContinue
846 free
846 _spinlock
846 _spinlock

Total number in stack (recursive counted multiple, when >=5):

Sort by top of stack, same collapsed (when >= 5):
_spinlock 1692
Sample analysis of process 1782 written to file /dev/stdout"



To me (developer but never seen mac stuff before) this looks a lot lika a dead lock due to waiting for something that is not happening. For sure the ATSServer is always waiting in a spinlock here. A spinlock is standard use i kernels where you assume never having to wait for long, or very seldom wait at all. Conclusion is that it is at least not doing any work so there is no luck for it to finish!

Apple, this is a serious show stopper!

First, take a breath and rest assured this does not happen on all MacBook Pros.

Have you just dumped a ton of PDFs onto your machine?

ATSServer is part of Mac OS X's font mechanism, and whenever you add a PDF to your system, Spotlight indexes the PDF files and ATSServer has to process the documents' internal fonts.

If you remove the PDF files or tell Spotlight not to index whatever directory you've installed the PDF files to, you should see the issue go away (at least if it's due to the PDFs; ATSServer can also spin like mad if you have a bad font installed on your system.)

This is particularly likely to happen if you've just installed large PDF files, like ebooks.

I did not add any new PDFs but I have plenty of old PDFs on my drive, of all kinds, some scanned from HPs scanner software. So in my case the ATSServer spin hang seems to be triggered by TimeMachine passing some stage in the first back up session. Assuming this new behaviour came with 10.5.5, I probably did not access these troubling PDFs until now after the upgrade.

Is there a TimeMachine log to you can possibly find the causing files?

As for the stalled TimeMachine first backup, I actually succeeded to complete the first generation backup:
1. Manually stop slow/hanging backup.
2. Kill ATSServer from the console. After that the ATSServer restarted but it nice and calm. (In Terminal sudo kill -9 <pid>)
3. Start the backup now.
I did these steps but probably step 2 only would work.

I am having this issue as well. I've started converting all of the paper in my office to PDF's. I noticed that the more I scanned, the higher the temp on my MBP would go and the louder the fans would get, and the slower my MBP would operate - I thought I was going nuts. As soon as I started digging into the issue and killed the ATSServer process, the temp dropped 20 deg and it started running normally. I hope Apple fixes this soon.

chaos.theorist - try putting your PDFs into specific directories and then tell Spotlight not to index those directories.

Many have found that doing so solves their problem.

Thanks, William. That's what I had done after discovering what the process was linked to. It has calmed down for now - but the impetus for my converting all the paper in my office is to have a nice index and the ability to search it all from spotlight. Obviously, this bug throws a big wrench in my plans!

I am having the same problem.

It started this summer. Incidentally, i did scan many documents with a HP scan-to-PDF (with OCR) this summer. Additionally, i had lots of beachball incidents when opening those exact files, be it with Acrobat 9 Pro or with Preview. Sometimes, the beachball renders my system completely unusable.

Today however i got "only" ATSServer gobbling up whatever free resources i had.
This seemed to happen just when Time Machine did its magic.

My suspicion is that we are seeing some sort of malignous co-operation between HP-scanned (and OCRed) files, the fonts used therein, and Time Machine.

My target is to verify the individual components and to find ways to fix them in a minimally invasive way (i. e. leaving as much of the system's functionality intact, especially Time Machine and Spotlight, which i value highly and would not like to part with).

So, my time permitting, i will post here the results (if there are any) of my findings.

Steps already taken are:

1) Two hours ago, i disabled Time Machine.
Up to now, ATSServer behaves very nicely.
If that remains so, i first will reproduce the fault by re-starting Time Machine; then, i expect ATSServer to run amok again.

Next steps: If the problem recurs, i will take the fonts out of all and any HP scanned files, replacing them with Apple homebrewn varietys and observe ATSServer.

I'd really like to see some additional help here as well. My MDS processes are doing fine, but the blasted ATSServer is hanging out between 160-199% consistently. Not the end of the world on an 8 core machine, but annoying as all get out.

Apple please give us a more robust ATSServer. You've really got to get better logging facilities in place that tell us what is actually having problems (ie, what font is the problem or what part of the process is failing!).

Thanks.

Apple still does not have a fix for this. I am starting to get quite annoyed by this ignorance. I think I could make a pdf that crash any Mac. What do you think, if I send this to all apple sites and have alla Macs crash and burn? Apple seem to think this is some minor thing. It is a serious security check in every Mac OS X!

10.5.6 just came out. I went back to 10.5.4 but would like to upgrade. Anyone brave enough to upgrade and see what happens when spotlight or preview hits a hp-created pdf?