[Kerrigan]

When I use Spotlight's dedicated window, the program will occasionally freeze up, and I can't figure out how to force-quit Spotlight. I've tried the usual things, like waiting for the beachball-of-death to go away, and I've tried relaunching the Finder via command-alt-esc. Neither of these things work, is there any other solution? Or am I going to have restart my computer every time Spotlight crashes? Cheers.

[nonhuman]

How comfortable are you with the terminal?

[Kerrigan]

I rarely use the terminal, but I can perform basic tasks within it, like browse through directories and copy/delete files. I could figure out how to quit Spotlight if I knew the proper commands.

[nonhuman]

Ok, then. It's generally not too difficult to do. I don't have Tiger yet (getting it tonight/tomorrow), so I don't actually know that Spotlight works the way I expect it does ...but it probably does.

This is how you would force-quit the Dock, should be pretty much the same for Spotlight. Just use your imagination.

Code:
Josh:~ josho$ ps -auxw | grep Dock
josho    374   0.0  0.4   144332   6940  ??  S     9:19AM   0:03.46 /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock -psn_0
josho    526   0.0  0.0    18172    336 std  S+    5:23PM   0:00.00 grep Dock
Josh:~ josho$ kill -9 374

Now with the Dock, it is automatically restarted when this happens. That may or may not be the case with Spotlight. But if it isn't you should also be able to restart it from the command line using the info you just got from the ps -auxw.

Again, for the dock, just follow the model for Spotlight:

Code:
Josh:~ josho$ open /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app

[JellyBeen]

Activity monitor is also an easy one. Look at which process uses the most cpu then force quit it.

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by JellyBeen

Activity monitor is also an easy one. Look at which process uses the most cpu then force quit it.

Uh, potentially a very bad idea.

[edit]
Although Activity monitor should also let you find and quit Spotlight without resorting to using the Dock. Guess my Linux admin experience is getting the better of me.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by JellyBeen

Activity monitor is also an easy one. Look at which process uses the most cpu then force quit it.

The Spotlight interface is handled by SystemUIServer. It will automatically restart when you force quit it (or when it crashed).

[Kerrigan]

Thanks for the help nonhuman. As Tetenal pointed out, I need to restart the SystemUIServer, which I can do do from Activity Monitor. Is it safer to do this from the terminal, or does it not make a difference?

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan

Thanks for the help nonhuman. As Tetenal pointed out, I need to restart the SystemUIServer, which I can do do from Activity Monitor. Is it safer to do this from the terminal, or does it not make a difference?

Shouldn't make a difference, the Activity Monitor probably does exactly the same thing that you would do from the terminal when it kills a process.

[nonhuman]

Damned database errors making me double post...