Apps will sometimes not launch

Question

Level 1

94 points

Apps will sometimes not launch

Hi.

Since Thursday (26th September) my 2011 MacBook Pro has been acting strangely.

Most of the time, all seems okay, but on Thursday, yesterday and again this afternoon, it seems to go into a sort of 'spasm', and refuses to launch any apps at all.

When this happens the app's dock icon just keeps bouncing in my dock, for about two or three minutes, and then when it stops bouncing there is no sign of the app's window anywhere on the screen and there is no little light below it on the dock shelf. If I click the dock icon again, it doesn't even start bouncing. Just nothing at all.

Once the computer goes into this 'state', it will not launch any Mac apps at all, either from the dock, from the apps folder or by double-clicking a file anywhere. I can't even open the System Prefs window to see what's happening.

Curiously though, (and rather annoyingly...), all my Windows programs still open and run perfectly normally under Parallels.

I cannot restart or shut down my computer via the Apple menu, because when I try to nothing happens, and so I find myself having to do a 'forced shutdown' by pressing in and holding down the physical power button on the computer. Once I've shut it down and restarted it, all seems normal again. Until it happens again.

All this is getting very irritating.

As I say, it started happening on 26th, and I updated to OS X 10.8.5 on the 25th. Could there be a connection? Is anyone else having similar problems?

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2010), OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Sep 29, 2013 9:33 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Sep 29, 2013 10:50 AM in response to Steve Zodiac

Do a backup, using either Time Machine or a cloning program, to ensure files/data can be recovered. Two backups are better than one.

Try setting up another admin user account to see if the same problem continues. If Back-to-My Mac is selected in System Preferences, the Guest account will not work. The intent is to see if it is specific to one account or a system wide problem. This account can be deleted later.

Isolating an issue by using another user account

If the problem is still there, try booting into the Safe Mode using your normal account. Disconnect all peripherals except those needed for the test. Shut down the computer and then power it back up. Immediately after hearing the startup chime, hold down the shift key and continue to hold it until the gray Apple icon and a progress bar appear. The boot up is significantly slower than normal. This will reset some caches, forces a directory check, and disables all startup and login items, among other things. When you reboot normally, the initial reboot may be slower than normal. If the system operates normally, there may be 3rd party applications which are causing a problem. Try deleting/disabling the third party applications after a restart by using the application uninstaller. For each disable/delete, you will need to restart if you don't do them all at once.

Safe Mode

Safe Mode - About

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Answer 2

Steve Zodiac Author

Level 1

94 points

Sep 29, 2013 11:34 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks Eric, I will set up another admin account as you suggest. It might be a while before I can tell whether it's worked, of course, because the problem is only happening roughly once every twenty four hours.

In the meantime I've followed a suggestion I saw on another discussion, which was to use Disk Utility to repair my permissions. I don't know if that will help, but I reckoned it couldn't do any harm.

Incidentally, here is the log that DU produced. If anyone can work out from it whether any of the detections/repairs may have been relevant to my problem I would love to know. (Because I'm afraid it's all gobbledegook to me...)

Repairing permissions for “Macintosh HD”

Group differs on “Library/Preferences/com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent.launchd”; should be 0; group is 80.

Permissions differ on “Library/Preferences/com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent.launchd”; should be -rw-r--r-- ; they are -rw-rw-r-- .

Repaired “Library/Preferences/com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent.launchd”

ACL found but not expected on “private/var/root/Library”

Repaired “private/var/root/Library”

ACL found but not expected on “private/var/root/Library/Preferences”

Repaired “private/var/root/Library/Preferences”

Permissions repair complete

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Sep 29, 2013 3:23 PM in response to Steve Zodiac

When you next have the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.

Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar.

Scroll back in the log to the time you noted above. Select any messages timestamped from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).

When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.

Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

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Answer 4

Steve Zodiac Author

Level 1

94 points

Oct 1, 2013 1:11 AM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks for that Linc.

The good news is that I haven't had a recurrence of my problem since I did the 'repair permissions' thing as above. (Knowing my luck, now that I've said that it will recur directly...)

If I don't come back here it means that the problem seems to have been fixed. If I do come back, I will copy the relevant lines from Console as you request.

Thanks again.

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Answer 5

Steve Zodiac Author

Level 1

94 points

Oct 3, 2013 7:03 AM in response to Linc Davis

Linc. I thought the problem had gone away, but after just four days it has returned.

The 'bouncing icon' problem started again today, and I made a note of the exact time as per your request. According to my radio-controlled clock it started at local time 14:32:20.

The bouncing icon -which happened to be Safari- continued bouncing until 14:34:10, then it stopped as before with the entire Mac side of my computer then becoming hung.

I had to perform a forced shutdown with the power button at about 14:36:00.

Following the restart I copied the lines from my Console log that covered the period when the icon was bouncing. (I hope I've not been too liberal in my selection.)

It means absolutely zilch to me, but clearly the thing that keeps repeating itself is the 'launchd.peruser' thing, and that in turn seems to relate to my AirPort BaseStation, (which is actually a Time Capsule back-up drive/router).

Have you any ideas as to what might be occurring from this?

Console log:-

03/10/2013 14:32:22.948 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40207]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:32:22.948 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:32:32.979 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40209]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:32:32.979 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:32:43.011 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40212]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:32:43.011 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:32:53.041 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40214]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:32:53.041 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:33:00.432 coreaudiod[160]: Disabled automatic stack shots because audio IO is active

03/10/2013 14:33:00.491 coreaudiod[160]: Enabled automatic stack shots because audio IO is inactive

03/10/2013 14:33:03.075 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40216]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:33:03.075 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:33:13.107 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40219]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:33:13.107 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:33:23.141 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40220]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:33:23.141 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:33:33.173 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40223]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:33:33.173 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:33:43.206 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40225]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:33:43.206 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:33:53.238 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40226]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:33:53.238 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:34:03.271 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40228]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:34:03.271 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:34:13.301 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40231]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:34:13.301 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:34:23.334 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40233]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:34:23.334 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

03/10/2013 14:34:33.368 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent[40235]) Exited with code: 1

03/10/2013 14:34:33.368 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[223]: (com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

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Answer 6

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Oct 4, 2013 6:39 PM in response to Steve Zodiac

Problems such as yours are sometimes caused by files that should belong to you but are locked or have wrong permissions. This procedure will check for such files. It makes no changes and therefore will not, in itself, solve your problem.

First, empty the Trash.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:

find ~ $TMPDIR.. $ -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 -o -acl $ 2> /dev/null | wc -l

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.

The output of this command, on a line directly below what you entered, will be a number such as "41." Please post it in a reply.

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Answer 7

Steve Zodiac Author

Level 1

94 points

Oct 5, 2013 11:58 AM in response to Linc Davis

Hi Linc. Thank you for taking the trouble to continue to try to help me.

Right. I have absolutely no idea what it is that I've done by following your instructions, but follow them I did and the number that resulted was: 363

I didn't think what I'd pasted into Terminal was working at first, but it did eventually throw up the number as you said it would.

Incidentally, when I pasted the line into Terminal, the following appeared in the Terminal window immediately after the pasted-in line:-

! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 -o -acl \) 2> /dev/null | wc -l

Is that what would be expected to have appeared?

Does the resulting number 363 mean anything to you? I'm fascinated to know what it is...

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Answer 8

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Oct 5, 2013 12:15 PM in response to Steve Zodiac

Back up all data. Don't continue unless you're sure you can restore from a backup, even if you're unable to log in.

This procedure will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership and access-control lists to the default. If you've set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it.

Step 1

If you have more than one user account, and the one in question is not an administrator account, then temporarily promote it to administrator status in the Users & Groups preference pane. To do that, unlock the preference pane using the credentials of an administrator, check the box marked Allow user to administer this computer, then reboot. You can demote the problem account back to standard status when this step has been completed.

Enter the following command in the Terminal window in the same way as before (triple-click, copy, and paste):

{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; } 2> /dev/null

This time you'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.

The command will take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear, then quit Terminal.

Step 2 (optional)

Take this step only if you have trouble with Step 1 or if it doesn't solve the problem.

Boot into Recovery. When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select

Utilities ▹ Terminal

from the menu bar. A Terminal window will open.

In the Terminal window, type this:

res

Press the tab key. The partial command you typed will automatically be completed to this:

resetpassword

Press return. A Reset Password window will open. You’re not going to reset a password.

Select your boot volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if not already selected.

Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.

Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.

Select

 ▹ Restart

from the menu bar.

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Answer 9

Steve Zodiac Author

Level 1

94 points

Oct 6, 2013 1:48 AM in response to Linc Davis

Okay, thanks again Linc. I have followed the above instructions, and it took about 5 minutes for the dollar sign to appear again in Terminal.

The problem has not recurred now since 3rd October, so nearly three days in the clear. That infrequency, while welcome, makes it slightly difficult to know whether suggested solutions have worked or not, of course.

For info, I also received advice to send all the contents of Library > Caches to the trash the other day. They have started to re-fill of course since then and I've no idea whether it made any difference.

(I think I've spotted what caused me to point out the 'extra' text that appeared after I did the first Terminal session; only part of the text you asked me to triple-click was actually visible in this discussion, because of the width of the column I suppose. The same thing happened this time too, with different text of course.)

I will get back if the problem recurs.

[I've just tried to give you two sets of points, but I must have gone wrong somewhere and clicked on the wrong post... ended up thnking myself!]

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