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Brand new macbook will not shut down

sivadnycerka

sivadnycerka

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 19, 2008
4
0
Have a friend who just bought a brand new MacBook (the black one). After just a week of use, it refuses to shut down. It will go into sleep when the lid is closed but it won't restart or shut down. When a shut down is attempted, it displays a message that the session has timed out and the program (usually the Finder) failed to quit.

Any ideas on what could be causing this???
 
use activity monitor and force quit the finder before shutdown or restart see if that helps
 
Finder won't quit

I have been having this problem with my 1 year old macbook for a few months. I have repaired disk permissions. I cannot force quit the finder, the only option is to relaunch. If you find any solutions please post. Thanks.
 
The Finder is not designed to be Force Quit. Otherwise, then the dock would go away as well as all your desktop icons. That is the reason that you can only relaunch the Finder.
 
What if you 'force' it to shut down by holding the power button (5+ seconds), or remove the battery? Reboot it from fresh and see if the problem goes away.
 
Thanks for trying to help. I can hold the power button and shut down, or remove the battery to shut it down, but it does not fix the problem. I can force to shut down anything that is open, then tell the computer to shutdown or restart, and it will time out saying "cannot shut down because finder failed to quit"
 
Try creating a new user account and see if the machine shuts down when logged into the new user.
 
Chiming in. I have a similar problem with my MBA. The top menu bar will disappear, but the dock will refuse to disappear when I try to shut down.

Relaunching the finder does nothing, and I have to hold the power button to shut down most of the time.

I can't reproduce it all the time, sometimes it shuts down, sometimes it doesn't. I don't run any special applications that change the way OS X works, just regular ones like Adium, browser, Neooffice, iPhoto.
 
I have the same problem too. I am trying to identify the cause of the problem and I seem to have zeroed in on the Alarm Clock program from robbiehanson.com.

Anyone with this problem, can you confirm if you're using Alarm Clock? I wrote to the developer, but I am trying to garner more info to provide to him.
 
No the Alarm Clock program was not actively used. The problem has now been solved by trying a bunch of different things including what was posted on this thread. Regrettably, the exact cause of the problem could not be identified. Thanks to everyone who posted their ideas!
 
i encountered the same problem, couple programs wouldn't quit, namely messenger. the only way around it was to press and hold the power button at the top right of the keyboard. After it rebooted it was fine, coming from a pc manually restarting was the most logical step to take next.
 
Right, a few things to say here...

My Mac Mini sometimes does this, only a few times though but it does do this on occasion. I'd head to  > Shut Down and the system would drop the Menu bar and everything on the desktop, but the Dock would hang and then I'd get a timeout from Finder itself.

A way round it that I found through frustrated experimentation is to make the computer to what I've called an "enforced shutdown" (it probably has a real name but I never found out) by hitting command+option+control+eject which closes all apps no matter whether they're running with unsaved work or not, and powers down the system.

This command seems similar to the actual Power key on old ADB-fitted Macs.

Dæmon
 
I am not using alarm clock. The only other programs I have installed are Word, Excel, Ppt.
 
This is whay I love MRs!
I am having the same issue with my four-month old black Macbook, but have been told by Apple Care that they are unaware of the problem.

I've called them twice about it, and we deleted the finder plist, plus a few other files, and emptied the trash, but again, it happened tonight.

The finder issue is only an intermittent problem, but a very annoying one, and now that I know other's are experiencing it, I will called Monday and make them solve this issue, in some manner, before my lappie turns a month older.
 
Please

YES! My macbook is shutting down fine the last few days but just waiting for it to happen again. It is intermittent, but always the same "Finder wont quit".
 
I am having the exact same problem with my mac mini..... the problem only started when i got a time capsule a few weeks ago. I have not started to do any kind of automatic back ups.... so i am at a lose as to the cause of its failure to shut down?
 
Me too.

Been having this problem with my 9 month old macbook for about two months. Only way to shut it down is by holding the power button down. And it's not just finder that becomes unresponsive. I've had it happen with iTunes, Mail, Safari [a lot], Garage Band and Word. Usually when waking. As soon as you try to minimize or quit the particular program, you get the spinning beach ball. You can't force quit it. The only alternative becomes shutting down with the power button. I've never lost anything that I can tell, but the restarts take forever.

I've even tried an erase and install. Still have the problem. I'm thinking now about taking it to the genius bar. This thing has had the top case replaced twice, the optical drive replaced twice, the logic board once. My hunch is that it's something to do with the last leopard update... but I just don't know what to try anymore. It's frustrating as hell.
 
I am having the same problem and have talked on the phone to tech support without any luck. I even did an archive reinstall of OS. Has anybody been successful in resolving the problem? Thanks.
 
How to shutdown a macbook through the "terminal" app.

go to spotlight and search for "terminal"
One the terminal is open acces root permissions by typing "su"
one you have root access you may enter:
For shutdown
shutdown -h now

For restart
shutdown -r now
 
Shutting down macbook

sivadnycerka said:
Have a friend who just bought a brand new MacBook (the black one). After just a week of use, it refuses to shut down. It will go into sleep when the lid is closed but it won't restart or shut down. When a shut down is attempted, it displays a message that the session has timed out and the program (usually the Finder) failed to quit.

Any ideas on what could be causing this???
Click to expand...

go to spotlight and search for "terminal"
One the terminal is open acces root permissions by typing "su"
one you have root access you may enter:
For shutdown
shutdown -h now

For restart
shutdown -r nowgo to spotlight and search for "terminal"
One the terminal is open acces root permissions by typing "su"
one you have root access you may enter:
For shutdown
shutdown -h now

For restart
shutdown -r now
 
ok, i can not shut my mac down. it wont restart or log out. safari and system preferences will not open. im freaking out. what do i do. also the volume, light, skip and play/pause buttons will not work.
 
cdazzzle said:
ok, i can not shut my mac down. it wont restart or log out. safari and system preferences will not open. im freaking out. what do i do. also the volume, light, skip and play/pause buttons will not work.
Click to expand...
If you can bring Terminal up, the following command typed at the prompt will force a complete restart:

sudo shutdown -r now

Hit enter after typing the command. You will be asked for an admin password and then it should shutdown and restart. If that doesn't work, hold down the power button for 5 secs. That will force the power to shut off. Then you can power up and reboot again.
 
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