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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Mac OS 10.4 will not shut down

asp272 - Jul 31, 2007 - 8:21 am

I have been using 10.4 Tiger since it first came out at 10.4.0. I am now using 10.4.10 on three different Macs and have been seeing a consistent problem with two of them. The two that have the problems are both dual 1 Ghz MDD G4 PowerMacs. Both machines have 1.25 GB of RAM and new 80GB hard disks (both had factory disk failures earlier this year and they were replaced). They both had 10.4 installed as a clean install from two different 10.4 discs, one at 10.4.0 and the other, purchased later, at 10.4.6. Both have been updated to 10.4.10. The problem: both machines will not shut down on a consistent basis. In fact, more times than not, they will not shut down. What happens is everything will disappear from the desktop including all Finder elements (dock, menu bar, icons), but the background image will still remain. Sometimes it will move past the desktop image and go to the blue screen, but will remain that way permanently (with the little circular lines spinning at the bottom indefinitely). We've left them on over night and come in the next day to the same thing, a desktop image or a blue screen. What ends up having to happen is a Force Shutdown by pressing the power button for 5 seconds, which could ultimately be doing more damage. I've run disk permissions on both machines as well as Tech Tool Pro 4 to check for Volume Structure damage, which came up negative for errors. Seeming to have something to do with this problem, we often have trouble getting our Illustrator CS2 to quit at the end of the day. The application disappears, but the icon in the dock still shows the black triangle indicating it is still active. This has sometimes caused the shutdown process to stop and send up the message - "an application would not quit - yadda yadda yadda". This is a less often problem than the machines not shutting down, but could have something to do with it. Any suggestions would be very helpful and welcomed. Sincerest thanks! Aaron

Cheryl - Jul 31, 2007 - 8:39 pm

Aaron,

There could be many things that is causing the problem.

First, do you normally shut down the computer every night? If so the nightly system jobs are not being done. If for security reasons or power interrupt reasons (in case of a power failure) you should have a program installed that will do those jobs when you start up. I use Macaroni on my machine at work.
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Are any Windows shared volumes mounted when you attempt to shut down? If the network processes have been terminated but the system still "thinks" it has the shared volume mounted, it may hang attempting to unmount the shared volume that is now inaccessible since the network has been terminated. The obvious workaround is to disconnect shared volumes before initiating a shutdown.

If the system cannot unmount a mounted drive, either an external drive (USB/FireWire) or an internally-mounted drive, even an optical disc in the optical drive. If you have any external hard drives mounted when the problem occurs, restart without those drives connected and see if the problem recurs. If not, troubleshoot the external drives via process of elimination.

Illustrator maybe giving you problems because of a large cache folder. Go to Home>Library>Cache and open the Illustrator folder. Trash everything in there. Empty the trash. You can do this with Safari (or any browser), Mail, and Dashboard Client as well. Remember to empty the trash.

Let me know if these tips help you.

Cheryl

asp272 - Aug 2, 2007 - 7:20 am

Thanks so much for the quick response Cheryl! I would have gotten right back to you, but for some reason your response alert was sent to my old email address, yet the reminder that I hadn't responded to you was sent to my new one today. The Help! application is not working for me either. It keeps telling me I have to do email verification, which has already been done. Anyway, about your suggestions . . .
1. We do shut down the computers every night, for both security reasons and due to being in a warehouse office where the power can go out quite frequently. I completely forgot about the nightly system jobs. I'll get Macaroni going on all the machines right away, and that could be a start. Kudos for that reminder. At home I never turn my machines off, even in stormy weather. I have everything on the strongest surge protection plus a batter backup system and I have been using the same Sawtooth G4 for over 6 years with no hardware failures or problems otherwise.
2. We do have 3 Windows shared volumes that we mount up when we log in. I always remove those from the desktop before I log out though my co-worker who is also having this problem probably does not. It still doesn't explain why I we would both have the same problem. I did notice, though, that my machine usually hangs up in shutdown on the desktop image, whereas the other machine hangs up on the blue screen with the spinning circular bars. I'll make sure I let him know to remove his shared volumes before shutting down.
3. We don't use any external drives, USB or Firewire, so that's not an issue here.
4. Illustrator didn't want to quit for me again last night. I checked the cache folder you pointed me to and it is empty, without a single file inside. I'll have to check it again when the problem is happening, but I don't really think this is the issue. Illustrator only doesn't want to quit at the end of the day when I am shutting down all programs. Of course, I usually don't try and shut it down during the day. I did notice another problem last night, though, that I forgot to mention in my initial problem breakdown . . . when I removed the Windows shared volumes from the desktop on my machine, I cannot remount them. The Finder simply hangs up in the middle of mounting the second volume (there are three). This has been a problem since I installed Tiger on this machine, ever since 10.4.3 I think. Any ideas on whether or not that has something to do with my shutdown problem, maybe related to the nightly system jobs? I'm hoping that Macaroni can help to clear up this issue, but we'll have to wait and see.
Thanks again for your quick response and great tips! Anything else in regards to my response would be very welcomed, otherwise you've been a big help.
Aaron

Cheryl - Aug 2, 2007 - 8:05 am

Aaron,

First, as for your email address, I sent you an email to the address listed in your membership. If that is your old email address, you will need to log into the site, and go to User CP. The link is at the far left when you are in the forums page.
You can change your email address there. There is no need to change your password unless you want to.

As for the computer problem, try this:

Go to Home>Library>Recent Servers
Delete all the files in that folder. Empty the trash

Now go to Home>Library>Preferences
Look for the Illustrator preference file. It just might be named com.illustrator.plist or com.adobe.illustrator.plist.
Delete the file. Empty the trash.

Now give the computer a test shut down. Keep me posted on how you do.

Cheryl

asp272 - Aug 2, 2007 - 8:34 am

Hey Cheryl,

I did three things you suggested, but used Onyx instead of Macaroni for the Maintenance on the system. I'm sure you're familiar with that app. I ran all of the Automated processes, including repairing permissions, removing caches, etc. After that, I got your message about deleting the recent servers, which fixed my problem with not being able to remount the shared volumes without restarting. The I removed the Illustrator preferences file and quit Illustrator. I then restarted in and quit it successfully twice with no problems. I then did two shutdowns and restarts with no problems. So it looks like, for now, all problems are resolved. We'll have to see how it does at the end of the day or through the next week, but for now I am very hopeful that we've taken care of the issues. I'll do the same on the other machine and see if that gets that shutdown issue resolved as well. My sincerest thanks for your help! Oh yeah, I also deleted the Help! application as you suggested. Wasn't working anyway! Thanks again! Aaron

Cheryl - Aug 2, 2007 - 8:49 am

Aaron,

I am glad to hear the good progress. We can leave this ticket open for now to allow a couple of days for you to watch the progress, then give a progress report.

Our system will close the ticket after three days of no activity and you will get an email reminder.

Cheryl