iMac Won't Auto Shut Down

[ayeplussjr]

I have my iMac scheduled to shut down everyday at 12:30 am. Sometimes it will shut down and sometimes it won't. I've only had my iMac for about a month, but am I missing something here? Why won't it shut down automatically.

I had it scheduled to shut down at 12:30am, and I was already asleep. I woke up about 3am to get a glass of water and I checked my iMac and I was able to wake it up. What am I doing wrong, why won't it auto shut down?

 

[BlueRevolution]

Maybe shutdown was cancelled because an app failed to quit. Try setting the shutdown time to some time when you're up but not using the computer and watch it to see what happens.

 

[ayeplussjr]

Maybe shutdown was cancelled because an app failed to quit. Try setting the shutdown time to some time when you're up but not using the computer and watch it to see what happens.

Okay...I scheduled a time for the computer to shut down while I'm still awake, and nothing happened. My mac was already sleeping when the auto shut-down was scheduled to happen. When I woke up my iMac 30 min. later from the time it was scheduled to shut down I did not have any error messages letting me know that an app failed to quit.

Do you think it's not shutting down automatically because I have the "Put the hard disk to sleep whenever possible" checked? Shouldn't my iMac shut down automatically anyway regardless if I have that option checked?

 

[ayeplussjr]

Okay...I tested it out further and I got a message saying something like "There are two tabs open in this window. Do you want to close this window anyway?" I guess the auto shut down will not work unless I clicked Close on the message window for safari to close out the two tabs. If I don't click anything by the time shut down is scheduled to occur than I'll get a message saying something like, shut down did not go through because safari failed to quit (something like that).

So...I made sure that all my app's were closed and I tried to schedule a shut down time again. This time it did shut down automatically but there was about a 35-40 min. lag before it actually shut down. I scheduled it about 12:15pm this afternoon but did not finally shut down until 12:50pm.

Any ideas why there was a lag?

 

[dmm219]

...something that tends to be ignored in OSX is how poor its energy setting actually work. Sleep and Wake work pretty well, Shutdown and Restart do not work nearly as well. Buried on Apple's website, you'll notice that they mention that auto shutdown will not work IF YOUR MAC IS SLEEPING.

This is just dumb, because most people would want to auto shut down their Mac when they are no around which means the mac will most likely BE IN SLEEP MODE WHEN THEY WANT IT TO SHUT DOWN.

The only fix to this is to use the "Wake" setting, to make sure the mac is awake before it tries to auto shut down. This has the big disadvantage that now you do not have the option to Auto wake the mac at some other (normal) time.

Basically, if you'd like your mac to shut down, long after you've left it, and then power on again before you arrive, you are out of luck. There is generally no way to do this unless you never sleep your mac.

 

[molex]

Basically, if you'd like your mac to shut down, long after you've left it, and then power on again before you arrive, you are out of luck. There is generally no way to do this unless you never sleep your mac.

Not true. It can't be done natively, granted, since the Energy Saver scheduler is so pitifully limited. But there are lots of lightweight third party apps that will schedule your mac for various wake/sleep events such as waking up so that the mac will shutdown on schedule.

For instance I use PowerController to wake up my Mac at 1:50am for shutdown via Energy Saver schedule at 2am, then it boots at 7:30am.

As an added benefit I have PowerController set to run an automator action when my mac wakes up at 1:50am that opens Mail, which is set to automatically download all new messages from my gMail account, and then the automator action closes Mail.

This way I have a full local backup of my gmail account and also my mac will shut down at the scheduled time whether it was asleep or not. Voila