Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

My portable Macs won't shut down

Oct 26, 2011 5:44AM PDT

Hello.

Both my portable Macs, a White MacBook 4.1 and a new MacBook Pro, running Snow Leopard 10.6.8, just refuse to Shut Down. After I give them the Shut Down command, they sure quit all the programs, go into the blue screen with the little whirling circle underneath, and they stay like that forever; that is, until I have to press the on/off button for 5 seconds.

I have run DiskWarrior and fixed Permissions on both. To no avail. Some 2 months ago I had the same issue with the MacBook, and had to erase the hard disk, install Snow Leopard anew, and then manually install each and everyone of the programs. Well, it worked for three months...

Sure, I migrated my MacBook info into the MacBook Pro, so that explains part of the problem, but isn't there a way to find out what is causing the problem?

Thank you very much for any and all help.

Cinetuous

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
That depends
Oct 26, 2011 10:18AM PDT

That depends on how comfortable you are, and also how good you are, at picking apart some of the Unix level log files that MAY (and I stress MAY) offer some insight.

Otherwise, I would suggest that it is some program you have installed. What program it is will involve a lot of tedious trial and error, but I would start with any older programs. Especially any PPC programs you may have still. Those are probably more likely than the rest, but it's no guarantee.

- Collapse -
Agree on that
Oct 26, 2011 11:25AM PDT

Just wanted to give a tentative suggestion in line with the previous post for the new computer fix. If one upgrdades it to Lion, no PPC programs would be able to run, and this might take care of the problem.

- Collapse -
Reply to Jimmy Greystone
Oct 27, 2011 2:40AM PDT

Thanks so much, Jimmy. Although, as you rightly guess, I am not conversant on Unix, I think you do shed some good light on the possibility of the problem residing in some PPC programs that I sure still have. So I'm going to start testing each and everyone of them to see if there is something in them. Of course, that's going to take some time, so I probably won't get back to you in a few days time.

Something I forgot to mention is that when I start anew (after having forced the shut down), if I give it the Shut Down command before having worked with any program, the computers do shut down normally; but it only takes one single program (Outlook, Safari -- latest versions) to work in for that to happen. If that gives you any clue, please let me know.

I'd like to also thank macnerd10 for the hint on moving into Lion, although for the moment being I don't want to give up my PCC programs.

Cheers,
Ram

- Collapse -
It was just a suggestion!
Oct 27, 2011 3:50AM PDT

Just a simple tip that helped menu to sort out some weird things before you go any further. Go to system preferences>accounts and create another account, allowing it to administer the computer. Log out and log into the new one (you will need to assign it a separate password). If the new account has no problems, that would mean you don't have a system-wide issue; that thing is easier to remedy.

- Collapse -
(NT) not "menu" but "many"))
Oct 27, 2011 3:51AM PDT