Applications won't force quit

To me this is the single biggest problem with the Mac and one that has persisted over way too many operating system updates.

Now to Apple's credit, the issue is not that applications are crashing frequently, its the exact opposite. I can't even force my apps to crash! And like you, I've tried everything. I'm no stranger to the Terminal and killing the process ID doesn't do anything either.

This issue effects me about twice a week, and occasionally I look for some ray of hope here on the forums. And we'll see this thread get to about 10 responses before someone marks it as solved, which it never really is, but I guess some moderator deems it about as solved as it ever can be.

What I really hate is having to force-restart my entire system when it gets locked up like this. The longest 5 minutes of my life are waiting for a questionable reboot. And to have to do this twice a week because a Mac-made application like Safari won't quit or force-quit.

Apple, wake up. What is going on??

Oh and to the poster, I wouldn't cash in your Apple Care over this. You'll find a thousand other people having this same problem. My previous G5 was like this, and my G4 before that. So as satisfying as it might be to make Apple take their computer back, you'll just be wasting your time and energy by getting back the same problem in return.

Color me different, but my two Macs (see profile) have no problem ever quitting/force quitting any apps, either with CMDOPTEsc, OPTION-clicking and holding their Dock icon and selecting Force Quit, using the quit/force quit option in Activity Monitor, or using the killall command in the Terminal. If you're experiencing that issue, reinstalling the latest OS COMBO update, repairing permissions, and restarting should fix what ails you.

There's definitely plenty of people that have never seen this issue, and if you are one of them, please don't post here. The "this should fix it" answers are what causes threads like this to get closed as solved. We've tried everything you've suggested already. We've restarted plenty, we're up-to-date, we've done Terminal kills, we've repaired permissions. I appreciate the help Baltwo, but I've seen this same thread get closed too many times.

*I'd like a solution from someone that has definitely experienced this first hand, as a recurring problem. Keyword, recurring. If you've once had an app that didn't force quit, and you restarted and it didn't happen again, you are NOT experiencing this issue, so please refrain from posting.*

To the original poster, I'm curious how many external harddrives you have connected and what kind. I've got two pre-installed internal drives, and two external. Both externals are LaCies. Between my current computer and the previous ones with this same issue, the external drives are one of the few carryovers.

Run the Apple Hardware Test program that came with your machine; the extended tests at least twice. If everything passes, download and run Rember.

Really? How do you know these basic steps will fix the problem?

<Edited by Moderator>

If the best you can come up with is to re-install the system software what hope do we have?

Sorry if I come off a bit strong but I have had it to my eyeballs with forum experts in their own lunchtimes.

I feel your pain James. Like I said before, this issue has been raised so many times on the forums (for years) and it still occurs. Its very frustrating for those of us that this occurs. Its an Apple turd that won't flush.

I hadn't heard of Rember though, so thats at least something new to try. Here's a link to it....
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/rember.html

Did all that. Everything checks out. Fixed permissions again too. Nothing major needed fixing. And Rember found nothing defective.

I wonder if Apple has ever considered a "super force quit" for apps running when you try to restart. Aside from this problem in the thread, I'm sure everyone has dealt with an application that has timed out a restart. It would be nice to just have a toggle box that gives the option when restarting to just kill any app that might get in the way of shutting down.

jaydyke wrote:
*I'd like a solution from someone that has definitely experienced this first hand, as a recurring problem. Keyword, recurring. If you've once had an app that didn't force quit, and you restarted and it didn't happen again, you are NOT experiencing this issue, so please refrain from posting.*

First of all, you do realize that someone who has not experienced the problem may be capable of solving it, don't you? Secondly, since this is not even your thread, it is presumptuous for you to be laying down the rules.



-mj

Oh I see. There's people who "own" the forums here at Apple. Well lemme go buy up some land, and start digging for gold on my own claim. Hey MacJack, here's some advice. Lend some or don't post. Are your other 8,844 posts as useful as this one. When do you get a prize, at 10,000?

Hi,

I've encountered this problem, and though I don't have a fix, I might be able to shed some light on what's actually happening and why OS X can't force-quit the app.

During this summer, I had periodic problems with Entourage when it was unable to connect to my mail server. It would display an error dialog that I couldn't close. If I attempted to force-quit Entourage quickly enough, it teminated, but if I waited too long, I wasn't able to force-quit the app. At this point, things got worse. The longer I waited, the less likely I was able to terminate or force-quit any of my other apps, as well. So I learned that once Entourage got into its error state, it was important to force-quit it as soon as possible. After one of the system restarts I had to do due to this, I took a look in the system console, and saw a lot of messages that reported that Entourage was leaking memory (allocating system memory and not releasing it). This explained why if I waited too long, that Entourage was probably allocating so much memory for itself that there was not enough for any other app (or the operating system itself) to use in order to function. Fortunately for me, the upgrade to 10.5.5 made this problem go away. But if you encounter this problem, it might be useful to check the system console to see what was happening leading up to the time you had to restart the system. It may be that the culprit isn't the app you couldn't force-quit, but some other app that's misbehaving and preventing other apps from getting the resources they need to run properly.

Hope this helps,

Ken

Wow thanks. That is insightful. So I need to figure out which program is leaking memory then. Thank you.