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leperkuhn · Jul 22, 2004, 10:50 AM

So I've noticed that my system doesn't really respond to force quit. If there's a beach ball, forget it. The finder just hangs there. apple-option-escape, force quit, the name goes away. bring up the window again, it's back. I've also noticed that all my apps go down at one time. My comp was up for about.. oh.. 2 days, this morning it started a freakout (quicksilver, finder then safari). Then I left for work, hoping it might fix itself over the course of the day. We'll see.

Anyone else notice this, or am i in the minority? maybe an archive & install is an order?

Sargas · Jul 22, 2004, 10:54 AM

Just had a problem like that, turned out the harddrive was dying. You might want to run a few checks on that, just a possiblity though.

chris v · Jul 22, 2004, 12:02 PM

Or go to version tracker, and download EscapePod. Less mouse clicks, anyway.

Alternatively, keep a Termminal window open, and try kill -9. The -9 tag means immediately, with extreme prejudice, basically. If it won't kill the app, nothing will. I think Force Quit just issues the standard kill command without the -9.

CV

absmiths · Jul 22, 2004, 01:25 PM

I have noticed that there are MANY times when the computer is too hosed to restart. Sometimes a fullscreen app will absorb all user input, and the CPU is so busy I can't get in through the network - yet the mouse still moves happily.

It is really very annoying. I have done a hard-reboot several times this week.

Macrat · Jul 22, 2004, 03:03 PM

My force quit almost never works one time (10.2.8). I usually have to force quite a frozen app 2-5 times for it to actually quit.

mikemako · Jul 22, 2004, 04:09 PM

it's interesting.. right after I read this thread, I was trying to look in my iDisk, and the Finder got the beachball of death.. then I tried to force-quit, didn't work.. Then I opened Activity Monitor to see if that would help me figure out what was holding things up and it got the beachball! I tried the Terminal thing "kill -9", but I really don't know how it works, so I couldn't figure out how to specify what to kill.. I ended up having to hold in the power button to reboot.

Something else: I just clean-installed OS X last night, and I haven't added any drivers or apps yet. There's no reason I can think of that I'd get a system wide crash! suckie..

leperkuhn · Jul 22, 2004, 04:14 PM

new western digital IDE 250 gig drive.. can anyone recommend a good tool to use to check it?

Originally posted by mikemako:
it's interesting.. right after I read this thread, I was trying to look in my iDisk, and the Finder got the beachball of death.. then I tried to force-quit, didn't work.. Then I opened Activity Monitor to see if that would help me figure out what was holding things up and it got the beachball! I tried the Terminal thing "kill -9", but I really don't know how it works, so I couldn't figure out how to specify what to kill.. I ended up having to hold in the power button to reboot.

Something else: I just clean-installed OS X last night, and I haven't added any drivers or apps yet. There's no reason I can think of that I'd get a system wide crash! suckie..

fisherKing · Jul 22, 2004, 04:41 PM

if the finder gets stuck, you can bring an open app to the front, then access the force quit menu; works for me...

Chuckit · Jul 22, 2004, 05:01 PM

Originally posted by Macrat:
My force quit almost never works one time (10.2.8). I usually have to force quite a frozen app 2-5 times for it to actually quit.

That only even happens to me with Firefox. It seems like force-quitting once just sends a TERM signal, while the second time it sends KILL.

Anyway, it sounds like leperkuhn's force quit is working fine; it's his applications that are giving him grief. Which is obviously not normal.

mikemako · Jul 22, 2004, 05:50 PM

Originally posted by fisherKing:
if the finder gets stuck, you can bring an open app to the front, then access the force quit menu; works for me...

Is using the Force Quit "window" more effective than just right clicking on the icon and choosing "Force Quit"? I remember in 10.0 applications would ALWAYS immediately quit when I chose to Force Quit them. Since 10.1 that has not been the case!

When my Finder crashed, I tried several times to force it to quit and it wouldn't work. About 10 minutes after I stopped trying, the arrow below the Finder icon went away on its own, meaning it finally quit, but then it wouldn't re-launch. Choosing to "restart" from the Apple menu also did nothing.

Is it possible to just do a bad clean-install of the OS? Should I try re-installing OS X again?

wil · Jul 22, 2004, 05:55 PM

If force quitting and kill commands don't clear up the issues AND you can't just restart using the restart menu item, you can type "sudo reboot" (in terminal) to force the system to restart. works every time for me. not sure if i'm hurting anything though.

Angus_D · Jul 22, 2004, 06:21 PM

I believe Force Quit tries SIGQUIT first, I seem to remember having to do it 3 times to get it to send a SIGKILL. If that still isn't working, you may find you have some serious underlying problems.

asdasd · Jul 22, 2004, 08:04 PM

It sends a SIG_INT, followed by a SIG_TERM within a second or two if the process resists. There is no need to retry to force quit.

A process will not even handle a force quit (SIG_TERM) if it is stuck in a file read or write.

People with this problem, probably have disk issues.

chris v · Jul 22, 2004, 09:09 PM

Originally posted by mikemako:
I tried the Terminal thing "kill -9", but I really don't know how it works, so I couldn't figure out how to specify what to kill..

First, run 'top' which will list all your running apps, and their process ids. Take note of the id # of the app you want to kill (say the finder has a pid 344) stop the top process (control+c) then type 'kill -9 344' (without the quotes) and press enter. If that doesn't work, then it's gotta be pretty hung up. There have been times (10.3.0) when I killed the login window, logged back in, and the finder was STILL hung. Hasn't happened since 10.3.2, though.

CV

bma_mat99 · Jul 22, 2004, 09:37 PM

I use a g5 dual 1.8ghz (the old version, the new one sucks, can only upgrade to 4 gb ram lol), and I have yet to have a problem with force quit. If its an application that goes full screen (like all my games), pressing command+option+escape just force quits it right away. if its not full screen, i get the force quit window. Anyway, I was wondering if there is any keyboard shortcut that can minimize a full screen window (like a game), or a command that will hide it (sometimes command+h does not work with games that are full screen ). thanks

Angus_D · Jul 23, 2004, 06:11 AM

Originally posted by asdasd:
It sends a SIG_INT, followed by a SIG_TERM within a second or two if the process resists. There is no need to retry to force quit.

Bleh, that sucks. It should send SIGKILL if all else fails, and actually wait for the process to die before removing it from the list. And show some progress. I would file a bug on this if I could be bothered

GENERAL_SMILEY · Jul 23, 2004, 08:01 AM

I use something called 'horse menu' - it's a menubar item which among other things allows you to kill and non-background process - also it lets you renice them too. Much better that force quit - can't find somewhere for you to DL this useful app though.

JMII · Jul 23, 2004, 08:15 AM

I keep Terminal running and use the directions that chris v posted. Run Top, find the PID # of the problem app and Kill it. POOF

problem fixed with no rebooting.

- John

Jim Paradise · Jul 23, 2004, 08:16 AM

Originally posted by leperkuhn:
So I've noticed that my system doesn't really respond to force quit. If there's a beach ball, forget it. The finder just hangs there. apple-option-escape, force quit, the name goes away. bring up the window again, it's back. I've also noticed that all my apps go down at one time. My comp was up for about.. oh.. 2 days, this morning it started a freakout (quicksilver, finder then safari). Then I left for work, hoping it might fix itself over the course of the day. We'll see.

Anyone else notice this, or am i in the minority? maybe an archive & install is an order?

I hate this problem. If I force quit an app while still in the app, Force Quit doesn't always work. If you have a game that hangs, double the chance that you won't be able to force quit out of it. Apple really needs to work on this. (Not that I'm happy others are having trouble, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Force Quit needs to be worked on.)

ginoledesma · Jul 23, 2004, 09:53 AM

Depending on where the Finder is stalling, force quitting (command-option-esc) may not end it immediately. Sometimes I have better luck through the Dock (option-click relaunch). But if the dock is hosed, then that's where the terminal comes in.

I've noticed that for I/O processes that block (e.g. disk or network), even kill -9 won't do much good to the Finder.

Sargas · Jul 23, 2004, 09:58 AM

Originally posted by leperkuhn:
new western digital IDE 250 gig drive.. can anyone recommend a good tool to use to check it?

You can do it with the Disk Utility, but if you have Apple's TechTool Deluxe X, that also works. I'm sure there are others out there. If your disk is new, then it might not be a disk problem, but it wouldn't hurt to check.

I was working with an older system, started getting loads of cascading system failures (beachball effect), of course after a few days the harddrive started clicking (bad sign). Force Quit was ineffective though all this. Anyhow, if you don't keep getting the problem, shouldn't be a cause to worry.

yukon · Jul 23, 2004, 02:59 PM

EscapePod....great idea, it's a bit old though now. It really should be in the OS, and the "programmers button" on my G4 should be useful for something. even if it's something complex like shift-control-alt-command-delete-tab-f8, something to quit to CLI/console would be really useful in the odd unhappy occassion.

wadesworld · Jul 23, 2004, 05:03 PM

If I force quit an app while still in the app, Force Quit doesn't always work. If you have a game that hangs, double the chance that you won't be able to force quit out of it. Apple really needs to work on this. (Not that I'm happy others are having trouble, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Force Quit needs to be worked on.)

This is poor programming by the application developer.

If the application developer sets his application up to respond to signals, then force quitting will work, even in a full-screen OpenGL application.

Wade

dogbreath2200 · Jul 23, 2004, 05:12 PM

Download quicksilver from this site http://blacktree.com/apps/quicksilver/ . You don't need to open term, run top, note the pid and kill the pid. This can take a while, and won't work too well if the finder is responding. Now, whenever you need to kill an application You hit Command-Space, type the first two letters in the program's name, hit tab, type k and you've just killed the program. (this takes less than two seconds for me to do)

mikemako · Jul 23, 2004, 06:19 PM

Originally posted by chris v:
First, run 'top' which will list all your running apps, and their process ids. Take note of the id # of the app you want to kill (say the finder has a pid 344) stop the top process (control+c) then type 'kill -9 344' (without the quotes) and press enter...

Thanks for your help, and thanks from the others, too. Can anyone speculate why Apple did not build Force Quit to execute the kill -9 command?

leperkuhn · Jul 23, 2004, 08:33 PM

Originally posted by fisherKing:
if the finder gets stuck, you can bring an open app to the front, then access the force quit menu; works for me...

not if the dock also goes completely nuts.

Big Mac · Jul 24, 2004, 01:15 AM

A couple of times UT2003's demo hung at the loading screen, but thankfully, even though I couldn't see the Force Quit window behind the screen, pressing return after invoking it (command+option+escape) successfully force quit the app. I have noted that sometimes Classic can crash and completely obstruct all of Aqua, but that only happened to me once on my iBook.

Don Pickett · Jul 24, 2004, 11:12 PM

kill -9 owns.

neutrino23 · Jul 25, 2004, 02:23 AM

Originally posted by mikemako:
it's interesting.. right after I read this thread, I was trying to look in my iDisk, and the Finder got the beachball of death.. then I tried to force-quit, didn't work.. Then I opened Activity Monitor to see if that would help me figure out what was holding things up and it got the beachball! I tried the Terminal thing "kill -9", but I really don't know how it works, so I couldn't figure out how to specify what to kill.. I ended up having to hold in the power button to reboot.

Something else: I just clean-installed OS X last night, and I haven't added any drivers or apps yet. There's no reason I can think of that I'd get a system wide crash! suckie..

For some reason idisk is really touchy. Almost the only problem I every have with the system siezing up is with idisk. I don't know why Apple can't fix this. Weird thing is idisk will connect really fast from windows.

I used to connect to my idisk using the Go/Connect to server command in the finder. I think it was something like afp://idisk.homepage/username. That worked more reliably than the Go/idisk command.

The few apps I've had to force quit have quit on command. Only the finder resists. Sometimes the dock/relaunch trick will work. When all else fails give up and hold down the power key for five seconds.