Hard shut down after freeze: what to do?

[Tomovich]

Hello

This morning my iMac stopped working. I had Safari, Mail and uTorrent open. It was on for about 5 days already without going to sleep/snooze. Suddenly it freezes and all I saw was the Safari window but nothing on the keyboard worked, even not after unplugging and plugging back in. I could still move the mouse but when clicking on something it didn't do anything.

I waited a couple of hours and tried again but it didn't help. What was remarkable was that the screen wasn't locked. The screen was black and when I moved the mouse the Safari window appeared again but I didn't have to log on what I normally must do.

I tried different key combinations but nothing helped. So I kept on pushing the power button until it shut down. After a few seconds I started the iMac again and I got a message that the Mac was shut down in a wrong way and it asked me to restore the open applications which I did. Then I quit all applications and shut the iMac down as it should. Everything went normally this time.

What should I do now? Do I need to do some cleaning or maintenance on it? It's a fresh install from about two months ago, can there be something wrong with my system? How can I know what was the cause of the freeze?

EDIT: I installed a Samsung EVO 850 SSD two weeks ago but I haven't had any troubles up until now so I don't think this is the cause.

Thanks!

 

[Fishrrman]

If everything looks OK, I really wouldn't worry about it too much.

My opinion only follows:
The longer you leave the computer on, the more likely some random event could come along and muck things up (as it did in your case).

Unless I have some specific reason to leave it on (file transfer, etc.), I shut down the Mac at night and restart in the morning. Takes only a few seconds to reboot and there's just something about "a fresh start" that seems to make it run smoother...

 

[fisherking]

it's 2016, there's no need to shutdown every night; although every now & then, restarting is a good thing to do. but sleep..sleep your mac. obviously, with utorrent, you want your mac running, but sleep it when you're not downloading a file. meanwhile, i've had a crash or 2 like that (with transmission running). unless it reoccurs, you're probably fine. and just hold the power button to shut down if that happens.

 

[Tomovich]

So no cleaning or maintenance is necessary? Nothing will be wrong with the operating system?
Is there a way to find out what caused it?

The Mac hasn't been in sleep mode during these five days it's been on.
That's what I meant, I held the power button. I should've written that I kept the power button pushed in.

 

[fisherking]

you can look thru the Console logs (in your Utilities folder), but not simple to decipher that info. it's not uncommon for something to take down the whole OS (altho this should be rare, or less frequent in 10.11).

again, unless it re-occurs, you should be ok.

 

[Partron22]

Next time it happens check out System log in Console. See if you can find a useful message from the time of the crash.
I've had this happen a few times. Never found any useful message. Seems to like to happen when I have Firefox up, or am connected to another Mac over wifi.
Don't bother waiting two hours next time. Your Mac is not engaged in some elegant self repair dance. It is crashed, and only a reboot will fix it.

 

[Riwam]

So no cleaning or maintenance is necessary? Nothing will be wrong with the operating system?
Is there a way to find out what caused it?

The Mac hasn't been in sleep mode during these five days it's been on.
That's what I meant, I held the power button. I should've written that I kept the power button pushed in.

********
Titanium Software offers 3 nice free tools.
Deeper, Maintenance and Onyx.
Deeper lets you show system hidden fiies...when needed.
The other 2 are, well, for Maintenance.
I have never heard anything negative about them and use them from time to time.

Another free tool is Etrecheck.
It just checks your system and cannot cause sny harm.
Why don't you try those tools?
It will reassure you.

I believe that every computer from time to time freezes or needs a hard shut down.
If it happens on seldom occasions, then there is no need to be worried.

As to the opinion of shutting down the system when not needed, IMHO it is a good thing to do.
When restarting some inner parts of the system might be returned to a default state. At least I have heard that several times from people with much more knowledge I could ever get...
and it cannot possibly harm either.
Ed

 

[fisherking]

restarting is an excellent thing to do...especially if things start to seem sluggish, quirky. but hardly necessary every night. onyx is great, i've used it since...a million years ago, (but haven't yet run it in 10.11).

 

[Riwam]

restarting is an excellent thing to do...especially if things start to seem sluggish, quirky. but hardly necessary every night.
onyx is great, i've used it since...a million years ago, (but haven't yet run it in 10.11).

****
There is a Onyx for every recent OSX...including El Capitan
Ed

 

[fisherking]

****
There is a Onyx for every recent OSX...including El Capitan
Ed

i've long-since installed it, i just haven't run it...yet.

 

[Tomovich]

I haven't found what the cause was for the freeze. Up until now, everything is working fine again. I haven't done any cleaning or maintence. I'll see what happens next.

Not talking about the freeze now, just in general usage:
I've heard in the past that tools like Onyx and others don't do that much and that it's better to leave your system as it is. That's still the case or not? Are there studies/proof that it helps?

 

[Erdbeertorte]

You have to be careful with Onyx, if you don't know what it is exactly doing. It has some nice options to easily enable hidden features of OS X if you don't know the terminal commands for that. But it could also harm your system if you do something wrong with the repair/clean up stuff in it. I never had any issues with it and used all it's functions. But I read a lot of warnings about it in forums.

Maintenance and Deeper are not needed if you download Onyx. All functions of both are also integrated in Onyx.

I would recommend to run Etrecheck if another freeze happens. It just gives you a protocol of all events happening on your Mac and maybe shows what could have caused your problem if you post it in the forum and some experts can look over it.

Also harmless is TinkerTool as an alternative for Onyx to activated some hidden features.

All mentioned applications are freeware and you can just install them to see what they are able to do.

 

[Tomovich]

Thanks for the tip. I'll keep that in mind the next time such thing happens. I hope I won't need to but that's another matter.

 

[Partron22]

Every once in a while Onyx or TinkerTool etc. are great things to have around.
Using them regularly seems a bad habit to me. You should not have to use them regularly.

 

[fisherking]

Every once in a while Onyx or TinkerTool etc. are great things to have around.
Using them regularly seems a bad habit to me. You should not have to use them regularly.

onyx's 'automation' suite IS designed to be run regularly (i used to do this monthly). again, tho...haven't run it since installing 10.11... not sure if/when i will. but it's great for other things too (ie customization options, etc).

 

[Riwam]

Every once in a while Onyx or TinkerTool etc. are great things to have around.
Using them regularly seems a bad habit to me. You should not have to use them regularly.

******
I run often the 3 free tools of Titanium Software, Onyx or Maintenance for overall checking, repairing permissions and other minor tasks.
Deeper is an alternative to TinkerTool when temporarily needed to see normally hidden system files.
I never suffered any harm caused by any of those tools and am grateful to the developer who doesn't request money for any of them.
Harm can be caused by any user if he/she does things one shouldn't do like to modify system files (once seen thanks to Deeper), without knowing what should and what should not be done.
As long as one uses such tools in a reasonably way, there is no reason to say not to use them often.
The only true thing is that people tend to look for "repairing" tools when they have messed around their system.
That is however not the fault of those tools.
Truly serious system problems won't be "repaired" by any of them.
Ed