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mileslong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 29, 2005
491
4
Newport Beach, CA
grrrrr, i really hate this stuff. is anyone else having this problem? i have repaired permissions etc but still no luck. also i tunes is acting funny, it wont shut down sometimes.

help!
 

mileslong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 29, 2005
491
4
Newport Beach, CA
help!

thanks krimson,

i dont have usb's plugged in, i use a bluetooth mouse even. i am bummed out, plus itunes keeps acting up as well when i use firefox. not all the time but once its opened it wont stay closed.
 

jdo

macrumors newbie
Apr 29, 2005
4
0
same problem

I have a PB G4 1 GHz. It also won't shut down under Tiger. It clears all icons and goes to the background screen. The mouse pointer is still present and works. Keys can be pressed but nothing happens, and after about 10 keys are pressed, the computer beeps with each additional keypress. I can't call up the task manager (option-apple-esc) (or anything else for that matter). Rather annoying.

I don't have anything plugged into it at all (devices), and I did a complete clean install when I installed it. It has never shut down properly, even when I installed and had to reboot during the install.

I just hard-shutdown by holding down the power key and then restart.
 

mileslong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 29, 2005
491
4
Newport Beach, CA
jdo

jdo,

i also have a powerbook g4 1.67 ghz, 17".

that is exactly what mine is doing. i fixed my annoying itunes problem by uninstalling foxy tunes from firefox. it worked perfectly in panther but now now so its gone.

i have got to figure out how to fix this problem, i dont want to have hold down the power button everytime i shut down or restart.
 

jdo

macrumors newbie
Apr 29, 2005
4
0
tried it by command line too - here's a weird one - workaround

Tried it by command line too. I ran

sudo shutdown -r now

which began properly, eventually reaching

Stopping network time synchronization
Starting...
Done.

then nothing happened. No shutdown. I could keep using my other applications no problem.

THEN I did a shutdown from the Apple menu. Much to my surprise it worked and shut down properly! This is repeatable; I've done it twice now. Weird.

It didn't solve the overall problem though; when I rebooted and tried just Apple-shutdown again without the command-line-shutdown, it hung on the background screen again.

My "workaround", then, will be to command-line-shutdown then Apple-shutdown.
 

Pismo

macrumors 6502a
Apr 30, 2002
528
48
NH
How did you guys install Tiger on your PowerBooks? Did you do an Archive and Install, Upgrade, or Clean install? I'm going to do a clean install after I format the hard drive and I'm kind of worried that I'll have the same problem.
 

Pismo

macrumors 6502a
Apr 30, 2002
528
48
NH
jdo said:
Tried it by command line too. I ran

sudo shutdown -r now

which began properly, eventually reaching

Stopping network time synchronization
Starting...
Done.

then nothing happened. No shutdown. I could keep using my other applications no problem.

THEN I did a shutdown from the Apple menu. Much to my surprise it worked and shut down properly! This is repeatable; I've done it twice now. Weird.

It didn't solve the overall problem though; when I rebooted and tried just Apple-shutdown again without the command-line-shutdown, it hung on the background screen again.

My "workaround", then, will be to command-line-shutdown then Apple-shutdown.
I think the problem is that another process/program is not quiting after the shutdown command is executed. Some services have precedence over shutting down or logging out and won't continue until that program/service is finished running. You might want to check Activity Monitor to see what is running and start quitting things until the computer shuts down.
 

jdo

macrumors newbie
Apr 29, 2005
4
0
all good now

Did a little more exploring ... as the previous poster suggested, I had a hanging process. I had a startup script that started a tunnel to my mail server. In Panther this shut down just fine; in Tiger, it didn't. I rewrote the script to stop itself properly when sent the "stop" signal and all is good. Shuts down and starts up A-OK now (thanks for the suggestion).
 

mileslong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 29, 2005
491
4
Newport Beach, CA
help jdo!

hey jdo,

please let us know here or email the process you wrote to fix this. i have looked on some other forums and others are having the same problem. this would help a lot of people worldwide who arent as advanced in this as you are.

thanks!

miles
mwarnold@gmail.com
 

mileslong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 29, 2005
491
4
Newport Beach, CA
hey jdo!

jdo,

i tried your little experiment with the command line and it does work but doesnt fix it permanently of course. please check your email, i would love to know what script command you used to fix our problem. thanks bro!

miles
mwarnold@gmail.com
 

jdo

macrumors newbie
Apr 29, 2005
4
0
how i fixed this

I'm afraid that my problem was not one that will apply to many more people, but basically, I had a script in /Library/StartupItems that did not take the "stop" command (that is run during shutdown) and thus would not die (it was inside a while() loop actually). Once I rewrote this script to properly stop, that fixed my problem.

What helped me find this was the syslog (from Terminal, "syslog"), and I recommend it to others as well.
 
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