WTF? Can't shut down/restart

1. Thruster Deeply - 8 January 2006

   I've got a 733/G4 with OS X 10.4.3 running, and recently it won't shut down or restart without physically pressing the restart button. All the apps shut down, but the desktop picture stays and nothing more happens - even leaving it overnight! The cursor remains visible and is able to be moved normally, but no keys do anything. The ONLY thing I have been able to determine is that if I leave it long enough, the system doesn't go through it's disk verification procedure on startup as it does when there is an unexpected crash/power failure. This is a recent development, but I can't pin it down to anything that I have done/installed lately. <grrr> - In the "olden days" I would have been able to track this down with Conflict Catcher easily enough, but I don't suppose tha there's anything like that for OSX. I've tried restarting after a shift-boot as well and there's no difference. Terminal and Console, of course, shut down when the other apps do, so it's no help, as it's beyond that point that things are hanging.

   Not a clueless n00b here, been on Appls/Macs since the early Apple ][+ days, and speak Unix as a second language. Anyone have any suggestions, clues, hints, or anything else? Are there any logs somewhere that I don't know about that would give me the point where it's hanging?

2. spudnuty - 8 January 2006

   I have a G4 running OS 10.3.9 and recently had a no shut down problem. Turned out to be the PRAM battery. It read 3.6 V on my digital meter but when slightly loaded (10 ma) it dropped to 1.7 V. I replaced with a new one and problem went away. Hope that's what's wrong with yours. Richard

3. matt neuburg - 8 January 2006

   Thruster Deeply wrote:

   I've got a 733/G4 with OS X 10.4.3 running, and recently it won't shut down or restart without physically pressing the restart button

   When this happened to me, it was due to a rogue StartupItem. Here's how to test. Look in /Library/StartupItems. If anything is in there, delete it. Force the shutdown, and now start up and see if you can shut down normally. If so, that was it.

   In my case this was due to a program called something like SpeedTools. The solution, after deleting its startup item, was to delete to the program so I can't accidentally run it again.

   m.

   matt neuburg, phd = matt@tidbits.com, http://www.tidbits.com/matt/ Tiger - http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/tiger-customizing.html AppleScript - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005571 Read TidBITS! It's free and smart. http://www.tidbits.com

4. Geoff Welsh - 8 January 2006

   Thruster Deeply wrote:

   I've got a 733/G4 with OS X 10.4.3 running, and recently it won't shut down or restart without physically pressing the restart button.

   my G3 running 10.3.9 does that if I leave my Flash Memory stick on a USB port.
   Shows blue screen forever.
   GW

5. Thruster Deeply - 8 January 2006

   Bingo! Thank YOU. I had several things in the StartupItems folder, but several of them were necessary long term (i.e., the Retrospect background startup driver and such) and I didn't want to just dump them all willy-nilly, but I did have a SpeedTools folder there - I dumped it, but the problem remained.

   I went ahead and pulled them ALL out, and it began restarting and shutting down again, so I did the put-them-back-one-at-a-time routine, and it turned out it was an item called QuickBackStartupItem... which turns out (after a little Googling) is _also_ part of SpeedTools, and this is a fairly common occurance on older machines using Tiger with SpeedTools installed. Fortunately, I don't use SpeedTools (never found them to be that effective), and even if I did, I've already budgeted for a full upgrade to the Quad <WhateverProcessorSpeedIsCurrentlyFastestAtTheTime> machine this summer.

   Anywhoo, once again, I can restart properly - and thanks once again for the steer in the right direction!