[hotani]

I seem to keep running into this problem which makes me suspect something is not right on my machine. If an application hangs up (spinning beach ball), something like iPhoto, I go in to force quit it. That makes it disappear from the force quit menu, but it is still in the Dock. Then other apps start freezing up. iPhoto still in dock. Finder locks up. "Relaunch Finder" does nothing - still reports: "Application Not Responding."

Even going into terminal and killing off the problematic apps does nothing - they are still in the dock, still not going away, moving, just stuck.

Once I get to this point there is no way out but a reboot.

I've had to reboot because of this about 3 times in the past couple of weeks.

Any ideas or suggestions? It doesn't happen in the same app either - once it was handbrake, another time it was iPhoto, another time it was having trouble reading a DVD which ended up bringing down the whole system the same way.

ug.

[Big Mac]

It sounds like a reinstall is in order.

[Chuckit]

My computer used to do that after it suffered some disk corruption. I fixed the corruption, but apparently it damaged something important. So I reinstalled and then it worked fine.

[d.fine]

I've seen a couple of these instances as well. Only sometimes they solve themselves, meaning if I let the machine be for a minute everything comes loose, and it's like nothing happened. But other times I was forced to reboot like yourself. I plan on reinstalling Tiger on this machine.

[Randman]

Could try trashing the finder plist, trashing your caches and repair permissions.

If that doesn't work, consider a reinstall.

[jay3ld]

the dock it self might of be frozen. you are going to have to build an apple script to terminate it so it will start back up.
I have had times were my dock wouldnt response to anything i did.

heres the code i just pulled from memory. hopefully the script will kill the dock and the dock will auto start again.

Code:
tell application "Dock"
	quit
end tell

[hotani]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll mess with repairing permissions and ditching the plist... Maybe when I get a system upgrade (still running with the panther) I'll do a reinstall.

I've done the Dock thing - in the past it worked, but recently it hasn't done anything. When it comes back the problematic apps are still sitting there.

[Randman]

You could try creating a new user profile and see if the problem goes away. If it does, you know yours got hosed somewhere. But you could migrate to the new user and kill off your current buggy one till you Tiger-ize.

[hotani]

I repaired permissions, now will just have to wait and see if it happens again. This could be a very slow process!

[timmerk]

It's 10.4 fault. Just do it a few times, and then it will quit. 10.4 sucks.

[Lord Kronos]

Originally Posted by timmerk

It's 10.4 fault. Just do it a few times, and then it will quit. 10.4 sucks.

Yes, you're absolutely right, it has to be Tiger's fault. Too bad he's running Panther though.

[Randman]

Originally Posted by Lord Kronos

Yes, you're absolutely right, it has to be Tiger's fault. Too bad he's running Panther though.

[JHromadka]

When I have an app that I can't force-quit, I kill the WindowServer process to get back to the logon screen. It seems to kill the bad app too. Works in Panther or Tiger.

[alphasubzero949]

Permissions repair is a placebo effect.

Either you have a corrupted cache file somewhere or a bad directory.

1. Delete your cache files in /Library/Caches and ~/Library/Caches. You can use AppleJack to accomplish this.
2. If that doesn't work, run DiskWarrior.
3. If the problem still occurs, you'll need to re-install.

[Ji Eun]

i use to get this A LOT...

at the time, i was unaware that i had bad RAM as well as a failing HD.
don't trust apple's hardware check CD.
remove any extra RAM you purchased (apple-installed or otherwise) and use the computer for a day with the onboard RAM only (painful as it may be) and see if your problem persists. be sure to check the S.M.A.R.T. status of your HD, too.

Good Luck!!!

[hotani]

Good suggestions. I'm trying to be somewhat scientific about it and do one thing at a time, wait for it to happen again, then do something else. So it could take a while. In the end, hopefully I'll have some clear idea of what exactly cures the problem. Hopefully that cure will come before the dreaded reinstall.

Although... I don't believe running ye olde hardware test would interfere with the process, so maybe i'll give that a shot soon, i'll post back what it reports.

[asdasd]

It may well be a currupted hard drive . Force Quit wont work if an app is stuck writing to disk, to avoid data corruption.

[Ji Eun]

as i said... do NOT trust the apple Hardware Test CD.

check S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics from SMART Reporter (check version tracker) or Disk Utility and remove RAM to check if it's a RAM issue.

[Big Mac]

I'm not experiencing SBoDs like the original poster, but force quit applications are staying around in the Dock after they have been killed (10.4.1).

[mduser63]

I've had this problem occasionally with Tiger too (never with Panther). In fact, it happened today with iTunes. iTunes froze, and nothing I could do would get the triangle off the dock icon. Killing iTunes and iTunes Helper in the terminal didn't work. The really annoying thing was that I had a CD in my drive and it disappeared from the desktop and wouldn't eject. Logging out and back in would kill iTunes, but as soon as I started it up, it complained about not having permission to open my iTunes library. Finally I rebooted, and everything's working now.

[hotani]

Yep. That is exactly it. Not ejecting a disk seems to be involved many of the times it has happened to me.