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cslewis

cslewis

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
My eMac is evil. Whenever my eight-year-old kid brother goes on it, it freezes and cannot logout. I tried 'force quit' but there is nothing listed. I press the buttons for logout and press 'log out'. NOTHING HAPPENS! His desktop and dock just sit there, and the 'beachball' spins and spins.... 😡

Can you help me out???? 😕
 
Try to reboot (unplug it then replug it to turn it off), and if it cannot start up after that I would reinstall Mac OS X (boot from CD).
 
Is it only his user account you have problems logging out of?

If that's the case, I'd create a new user account for him, transfer his files/email over to the new account and have him use that. Then if everything seems to be working delete the old account.
 
is there anything in particular your brother is trying to do on the computer? it's kinda odd that you say it only does this when he tries you use it. it's possible that there is something wrong with a program he uses and either it needs to be reinstalled or the prefs need to be baleeted (deleted).
 
It was just Safari... he said he didn't know what a keychain password was. I entered it, and it froze. But it may be that I was running Safari, Sherlock, iTunes, IE, GarageBand, iMovie, and MSN messenger. My mom was running Acrobat, Safari, iTunes, and AppleWorks... maybe my computer wasn't powerful enough for all of those apps to run at once? 😕
 
at least I can still access all of my iTunes on my mac via our home network and play them on my PeeCee.... 😀

U2, anyone?
 
If the machine is still responsive over the network then log in remotly (ssh for example) and try and work out what's wrong. It's probably the window server.
 
Oh, crap.... his desktop is set to change every five seconds, like mine....
it just tried to change, and there are bits of each desktop picture on his screen- the mouse stopped working... but it is still acessible from the network.
 
robbieduncan said:
If the machine is still responsive over the network then log in remotly (ssh for example) and try and work out what's wrong. It's probably the window server.
Click to expand...

I'm such a newb... how do you do it? Ive never had to log in remotely before. 🙁 In fact, this freezing, non responsive stuff only happened once, six months ago....

Under 'my network places' and 'andrew on mac osx' are the contents of my finder....
 
mac_head101 said:
It was just Safari... he said he didn't know what a keychain password was. I entered it, and it froze. But it may be that I was running Safari, Sherlock, iTunes, IE, GarageBand, iMovie, and MSN messenger. My mom was running Acrobat, Safari, iTunes, and AppleWorks... maybe my computer wasn't powerful enough for all of those apps to run at once? 😕
Click to expand...
I hate to say, that might be the problem. Do you only have 256 megs of ram? Garageband and iMovie open at the same time... ouch. 😱 My iMac hangs for a bit (but not like what you're experiencing) when I have half of those programs open, and I know its because I need more ram.
 
mac_head101 said:
I'm such a newb... how do you do it? Ive never had to log in remotely before. 🙁 In fact, this freezing, non responsive stuff only happened once, six months ago....

Under 'my network places' and 'andrew on mac osx' are the contents of my finder....
Click to expand...

First off you need to enable remote logins. It's on the Sharing panel in System Preferences iirc. If you have the firewall turned on the you need to ensure that it's configured for this as well. If you've done that then you need to get a ssh client on the other computer. If it's running Unix/Linux you should be OK, otherwise check out Google. Once you've done all that: ssh <IP of your Mac> type in your Mac short username and password and you're at a command prompt just like if you open Terminal on your mac.
 
Before we go any further, here's a tip. Every time you need to "hard reboot" your Mac by unplugging it or holding down the power button for 6 seconds while it's running, when you reboot it, do this:

[1] Hold down Apple - S upon bootup until your screen turns black with white text coming from the upper left hand corner.
[2] When you see a prompt and a small filled white vertical rectangle at the bottom of all the text, type in the command: fsck -y or [/I]fsck -y -f[/I] (if one doesn't work, then always use the other). Then hit Return. A one to two minute process will commence.
[3] After the process has finished, you'll return back to a prompt line and the white rectangle. Look for the following text: The Macintosh HD appears to be OK.. ("Macintosh HD" should be the name of your Hard Drive, but it can vary.) If you don't see that exact text between the line of text where you entered the command and where you got another prompt line, repeat step [2]. Otherwise, go to step [4].
[4] Type in: reboot.

That above process corrects some of your files so that you will avoid a few additional problems in the future. Every time your Mac needs a hard reboot, or if it shuts itself off unnecessarily while it's running, run fsck -y.
 
bluebull said:
I hate to say, that might be the problem. Do you only have 256 megs of ram? Garageband and iMovie open at the same time... ouch. 😱 My iMac hangs for a bit (but not like what you're experiencing) when I have half of those programs open, and I know its because I need more ram.
Click to expand...

I have 512 MB of RAM. We were thinking of updating to 1 GB because of Virtual PC... 😛

This is odd, though. This sort of freeze-up is a rare occurence.
 
It's fixed! 😀 It 'unlocked' by itself! I left it alone for awhile, and now it is back to life! Maybe I should block my kid brother's account 🙄
 
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