Screensaver frozen - any way to force quit?

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Level 1

13 points

Screensaver frozen - any way to force quit?

I checked on our server yesterday and noticed it was stuck on the screen saver with the mouse icon shown as a loading symbol. I let it run to see if things would clear up by today. No luck. Everyone can still access files fine and communicate with the server, I just can't log on directly to the computer. Any suggestions on how to get the computer up and running without doing a hard restart?

Thanks in advance,
B

Mac OS X Server 10.5.5

Posted on Dec 11, 2008 1:18 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 12, 2008 9:22 AM in response to BJ13

By "loading symbol" I assume you mean the spinning pinwheel? Assuming so, something (important) has crashed... the Finder, SecurityAgent, Login window session... The system services continue to run because they are daemon processes.

Assuming that you can't ssh or ARD into the system, for a "nicer" shutdown, you're going to have to power it down. Either way, I've never recovered a system from this state without rebooting it.

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Answer 2

foilpan

Level 4

1,385 points

Dec 12, 2008 12:04 PM in response to BJ13

try to ssh into it and kill the windowserver process. you might also need to kill the screensaver and loginwindow processes.

if you can't ssh into it or kill the processes via ARD, you'll need to power down.

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