I have a Mac and I'm worried

Ron_Tomkins

Satan's Helper
Ron_Tomkins
Joined
Oct 29, 2007
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I have had a couple times when due to loading several things at the same time, or maybe doing it too fast, has caused the computer to freeze. The mouse cursor turns into the multicolored spinning ball and basically nothing happens. I am then forced to shut down the computer manually.

What would be the equivalent to the Ctrl Alt Delete option on PC for this situation?

Also, what would be a good Anti-Spyware program recommended for making sure there hasn't been any malicious malware downloaded into the computer?
 
Ron - you've been conned! Your computer can't be a Mac because they are perfect and they never ever crash or hang or do anything bad!

Actually I'd like to know the answer to this as well I usually just use the power-off button or when that doesn't work switch it off at the wall.
 
On a Mac, hit Apple-Option-Esc to bring up the Force Quit menu. Then begin quitting applications until the system restores. This has happened to me before and generally it is one offending program, usually published by a third party.
 
Thanks - and I didn't know iTunes and iPhoto and the rest of iLife were 3rd Party - does Apple licence the "i" name.... :halo:
 
Oh, and as a response to anti-spyware for a Mac, generally Macs are not susceptible to malicious programs because programmers do not target them (smaller user base and all). That doesn't mean that spyware doesn't exist that targets Mac, just that it is very very rare. If you are interested in getting some programs though, SecureMac has been writing security programs for Macs since 1999.
 
Darat said:
Thanks - and I didn't know iTunes and iPhoto and the rest of iLife were 3rd Party - does Apple licence the "i" name.... :halo:
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AFAIK the "i" is licensed by Apple Inc. and the components of iLife are published by Apple, making them first party. The programs that generally muck me up are Adobe products and Microsoft Office products.
 
Ixion - I am pulling your leg a little bit, I know the iLife suite is a 1st party Apple product. But I do have to say they are the ones that crash the most on my Mac.
 
Darat said:
Ixion - I am pulling your leg a little bit, I know the iLife suite is a 1st party Apple product. But I do have to say they are the ones that crash the most on my Mac.
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I kinda figured. :D Sometimes iTunes slows my system down. I suspect there might be a memory leak, but I haven't looked into it. :p
 
Darat:

If the first-party products are crashing your Mac, I'd start looking at your extensions and control panels (or do they still use that on OS X, is it drivers now like everyone else?).

I'd suspect some issue in your display or audio drivers, or some other hardware device that's called on by the applications. While I don't believe Macs never crash (I worked on too many of them to believe that), the first-party apps are usually very stable.

I'm not real familiar with OS X, that was just coming into market when I quit working with Macs, so sorry if none of this is detailed info. In general, though, I'd look for updates to any hardware drivers, and also at any programs that are intrusive (such as anti-virus that scans on-access or similar utilities).
 
Being a Mac user myself, I second everything Hellbound has said.

A lot of instability on my system was caused by the Logitech mouse "driver". I kicked it out, and use the standard Mac OS X mouse settings. Otherwise, 1st party Apple software runs very stable. The most common culprit for me right now is Microsoft Office (Office 2008 crashed the Dock, Spaces and Expose a week ago, fer cryin' out loud).

Ron_Tomkins, please check every 3rd party software running (with the activity monitor).

Another common possibility are hardware problems. Most common RAM problems. Have you upgraded your RAM yourself? Sometimes reseating the RAM modules makes such problems go away.

PS. It would be helpful if you provided some more info. Such as your Mac model, OS X version, RAM, harddrive size and how full your HD is, and which programs cause the problems.
 
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Also one of the issues many people neglect on the Mac is verifying disk permissions. Usually when I am having problems it is usually a matter of doing this. As for Adobe and other high graphics programs, when doing complex work or using big files it is not uncommon to get the spinning ball; usually I just let it run for a minute or so and it works itself out. The positive side is that OSX doesn't take it upon itself to close out programs.
 
Ixion said:
Oh, and as a response to anti-spyware for a Mac, generally Macs are not susceptible to malicious programs because programmers do not target them (smaller user base and all). That doesn't mean that spyware doesn't exist that targets Mac, just that it is very very rare. If you are interested in getting some programs though, SecureMac has been writing security programs for Macs since 1999.
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Thank you. I will try that one.

elgarak said:
Ron_Tomkins, please check every 3rd party software running (with the activity monitor).
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Will do from now on.

elgarak said:
Another common possibility are hardware problems. Most common RAM problems. Have you upgraded your RAM yourself? Sometimes reseating the RAM modules makes such problems go away.
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Not at all. This computer is brandly new. I haven't even considered such "RAM upgrade" activity.

elgarak said:
PS. It would be helpful if you provided some more info. Such as your Mac model, OS X version, RAM, harddrive size and how full your HD is, and which programs cause the problems.
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I can't quite tell which programs are causing the problems because for one thing this doesn't happen often. But I just wanted to know of a better way to close programs, rather than shutting the computer off.
 
Darat said:
Ron - you've been conned! Your computer can't be a Mac because they are perfect and they never ever crash or hang or do anything bad!

Actually I'd like to know the answer to this as well I usually just use the power-off button or when that doesn't work switch it off at the wall.
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Conned? Is that some sort of curse inflicted by the Coneheads?

(Insert Coneheads pic here)
 
The last pushed OS upgrade (10.5.3) indeed caused a bunch of incompatibility errors with iLife applications. Things that worked just fine one day stopped working the next. This is not a good summer for Mac users who rely on iPhoto and iMovie!
 
Ron_Tomkins said:
Thank you. I will try that one.



Will do from now on.



Not at all. This computer is brandly new. I haven't even considered such "RAM upgrade" activity.



I can't quite tell which programs are causing the problems because for one thing this doesn't happen often. But I just wanted to know of a better way to close programs, rather than shutting the computer off.
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There's also a nice Dashboard widget called iStat Pro that tells you all kinds of useful little things, like the most active processes (good to find offending programs), network i/o, HD usage etc.

To shut down programs: As mentioned, Apple-Option-Esc should work always. If not, there's not much you can do beside shutting off. You can also try to switch to other programs, since mostly it's just the foreground process not responding when you get a spinning beach ball. You can switch with Apple-Tab, or clicking outside of foreground windows. Then you can reach "Force Quit" in the Apple-symbol menu.

Re. Offending programs: You mentioned trying to start up multiple programs at once (or short after one another) that causes problems. I just wanted to know which programs you most commonly use like this. For instance, I automatically start iChat when I boot up the MacBook, and starting iChat like this takes some time that appears to freeze the whole system. Fortunately I seldom have to reboot -- the last time was over a week ago.

Re. RAM: Mac OS X is pretty good at handling memory requirements. However, I'll try to keep my system clean by stopping programs I don't use, even though I have my MacBook maxed out with RAM. I occasionally forget to do it, so I check the Dock for glowing balls that indicate running programs (with no open windows anymore... I always forget to close video players). Also, keeping a lot of files in the Trash uses up a lot of RAM -- Activity Monitor can tell you if have a lot of inactive data in RAM.
 
I'll try to make a note of which programs I had running next time it happens, but I can tell Safari, Msn Messenger and Skype are usually some of the programs that are running.
 
Ron_Tomkins said:
I'll try to make a note of which programs I had running next time it happens, but I can tell Safari, Msn Messenger and Skype are usually some of the programs that are running.
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I run Safari and Skype continuously -- without much trouble. The times that Safari crashed are rare -- maybe twice the last six months? Once was me being on a baaad webpage.

So, plus the given track record of Microsoft of having the most crashes on my system, I strongly suspect MSN Messenger the most likely culprit. There's the freeware option of Adium that can connect to MSN chat.

As always, make sure to use the latest versions.
 
Ok it just happened a couple times. I have been running nothing but Safari, loading some websites and a couple times the computer froze for a little while and displayed the infamous multicolored spinning wheel on the cursor. So apparently I don't even need to be operating different programs at the same time.
 
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