El Capitan will not restart or shut down.

This has solved the problem for me: disconnecting manually server connections before shutting down (SMB and AFP shares).

Bump:

Exact same issue. I've been running the betas since well before launch so this has been occurring for months now... Directly after a manual restart reboot and shut downs work fine, but there is definitely some app or system utility that is stopping the restart. Unfortunately, system logs haven't shown much. As soon as I start using the computer (gasp), the restart/shut down will fail.

Guys (and girls), this issue was getting me crazy, after searching for days i have found the issue... Finder crashed at shutdown/restart... There is Audio plugin from AVID/Digidesign that blocks the shutdown.

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/309403-el-capitan-unable-to-shutdown/

Thanks a lot to the guys posting this... I hope is useful for other audio lovers troubleshooting El Capitan... Compatibility ***** in el Capitan!

Holy Cow Dude!

Yeah, I'd been using my laptop for tracking protools sessions earlier this year... went through and deleted avid/digi files like an angry monkey and it seems to be acting properly.

I'll let it ride for a day or two and report back. May not fix everyone's issue, but it's a start.

Oh yeah !!

This solved my problem!

Now my mac pro is shutting down and restart correcty!

Thanks SebRex to find and share this solution! I waiting to see if deleting this plugin maybe causes any instability on ProTools.

Thanks too the insanelymac.com and his contributors.

🙂

I am also having issues shutting down on el capitan on both a macbook pro and a 2008 Mac Pro. I have identified that if i open activity monitor via command space bar search, I can force quit the 'window server' process, and it will log me out immediately, from there i can shut down.

If anyone has a better way to make this process quit, I would love to hear it, as I am on the verge of a complete erase and reinstall.

C

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012) OSX El Capitan 10.11.1 (15B42)

Since installing El Capitan my will not shut down under the admin as user. It goes through the normal shut down process then just hangs at the desktop screen and the dock is still active. I cannot get a new finder window, but I can launch other apps from the dock. I can get it to shut down correctly when I log off admin to guest user or if logged on as admin I can force it to shut down by holding the power key down for 4-5 seconds. If I boot in safe mode, log on as admin, it does shut down with no problem. I have tried everything short of a clean install. I have very few apps installed. Nothing has helped.

Thanks, this works for me, too. Please post if you find a permanent solution to the underlying issue.

I tried all of the above, but nothing worked. Finally I found a solution that worked for me. I have Avid Pro Tools installed, and there's an other app that comes with it: Avid Application Manager. I uninstalled it and finally, my mac shuts down again. This might help other people...

I had similar success by identifying a bad application. In my case Avatron Air Display host software was causing the problem. I quit it before shutdown it before shutdown and my MacBook finally shut down normally. I removed it from login items and haven't had the issue again.

Thus, your best bet is to uninstall third party stuff from smaller developers in turn and see which is causing the issue.

Experienced the same problem after an automatic update of acroread.

After deleting anything with the 'acroread' in its name, the problem was gone as fast as it appeared.

Gerf.

THANK YOU !!!!!

this digidesign plugin was the problem for me.

Apple : I love you but take better care of your users please. Lots of wasted time here.

I think this is the issue I am having. Have not managed to sort it on my macbook pro, but my old Mac Pro 2008 is restarting after removing the old core audio digi design plug in. It was one of only three programs installed after the first reset and as soon as i had installed the old driver, i had issues. Now if i could only work out how to remove all elements from my MacBook Pro without a erase and reinstall

I found that in my iMac shut dowm problem occurs every time after the computer has been in Standby operation. In this mode the computer will go through about 3 hours (14400 sec) of inactivity. This help me to solve the shut dowm poblem:

sudo pmset -a autopoweroff 0

sudo pmset -a autopoweroffdelay 86400

To restore initial data use:

sudo pmset -a autopoweroff 1

sudo pmset -a autopoweroffdelay 14400

To see all power system data use:

For more informatiom see:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4512384?start=0&tstart=0

and

https://www.garron.me/en/mac/macbook-hibernate-sleep-deep-standby.html

"autopoweroff - Where supported, enabled per default as an implementation of Lot 6 to the European Energy-related Products Directive."

It is unfortunate that Apple has not provided the option of turn off and on autopoweroff (Standby mode) in the system preferencies, and only left this possibility through the appropriate command in the terminal !!!