Applications won't force quit

I'm having an issues with apps freezing and not being able to force quit them.

So far it's happened with: Finder, iChat, iTunes, textmate, coda, photoshop, firefox, safari.... and maybe a few more i can't remember.

I'm running:
I'm on Mac Intel g5 OS X 10.5.5
Processor 2 x 2.66 Ghz Dual Core
2 gigs Ram
2 internal ata disks
1 external back up drive (for time machine)

The only way to get the application(s) that have quit is to hard restart the computer. I've tried checking and repairing permissions on all my hard disks as well as verifying disks. I've also done a clean install of OSX 10.5, same issues, didn't help anything.

Thanks,

G5, Mac OS X (10.5.5), 2 Gigs of Ram

Posted on Oct 20, 2008 12:30 PM

18 replies

macjack

Level 10

111,242 points

Oct 24, 2008 4:23 PM in response to gudphilip

Good tip from Ken. Also, check your system.log for errors when it happens.
That is /Applications/Utilities/Console >> log files >> system.log

-mj

Oct 24, 2008 4:38 PM in response to jaydyke

Hi,

I didn't mean to imply that the cause of this problem is definitely a memory leak. I just provided an example of a situation in which the operating system could be powerless to allow the user to force-quit an app, through no fault of the operating system itself. Although this may in fact be the cause, check the System Console log entries at the time when odd things were noticed, and then move backward through the log for a few minutes to see if there are signs of unusual things happening. Usually going back no more than 20 minutes should be enough to see if something odd was happening. From those messages, you should be able to determine what app was having problems, and from there, concentrate on that app, especially keeping track of whether that app is always running when your system problems occur.

Ken

woodan

Level 1

15 points

Dec 7, 2008 4:13 PM in response to gudphilip

This is has started happening to me, but it's happening everytime I run certain applications. Namely iTunes, Firefox, Garageband, Mail, and most likely many more.

I've tried to force quit - no success.
I've tried to kill the process - no success.

However, when I list the processes they appear like this:

212 ?? E 0:00.00 (GarageBand)

The E being trying to quit. I don't know if this is the same problem. Hopefully, it isn't and someone knows what I can do to sort this out. I noticed the guys in this thread talking about external drives. Now that I think about this only started happening to me after I plugged in my WD MyBook and backed up my iTunes. This must have something to do with it.

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Applications won't force quit