iMac will restart on a power failure or hard off/on, but not on a soft shutdown or restart command. it just goes to a blank screen stage (wheel tops spinning eventually) but will not power off.
Is there a log entry that will show any piece of software that may be stopping my iMac (2017) from shutting down (e.g. on restart)?
iMac 27" 5K, macOS 10.14
Unfortunately your system has some major issues due to what you (or someone that has access to the computer) have installed. There is not backup for the computer, if this is correct this is a guarantee of lost data at some point. At the very very least you shoudl be using Time Machine to backup, if you are not familiar with TM please review https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250
Next, the computer has the Sophos Antivirus app installed. At the very best this app is 100% worthless and at worst it has harmed Mac OS. Mac OS is EXTREMELY secure and does not benefit or require any third party antivirus, cleaning or any other third party "maintenance" apps. In order to remain secure Mac OS only needs to be kept up-to-date. Locate the developers unisntall instructions and uninstall and then restart in Safe Mode to clear any corrupt caches.
Next, it appears you are using Paragon NTFS software to share a hard drive with your Mac and a PC. Paragon is nothing more than a hack and IMHO is troublesome and should be removed.
These are the standouts I have seen. You also may have outdated third party apps, however I think if you got rid of the AV app that may help quite a bit.
Please navigate to the Mac App Store and download the free version of EtreCheck OR please click www.EtreCheck.com where you will find the app. Once you downloaded the free app and created the report please post it as your reply to this post. In order to post it, please use the following link for more detailed instructions on how to correctly post the results:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250000211
We can then look for obvious issues that may be causing your problem.
Thanks for assisting. Here's the report. Any suggestions welcome. There's some old stuff here that could be removed but it's not obvious what could be holding up the shutdown. I have some network drives mounted and earlier versions of Mojave had Ethernet issues that randomly unmounted them - but that problem was fixed by recent updates - though I have a lingering wonder if the problem might lie there?
iMac won't perform soft shutdown.
