Loop Stopper?

[Oldmanmac]

It seemed like it was System5 or 7 or ? in which you could press cmd-. or cmd-shift-. or some such combination that would stop/interrupt the processes to get your compter back.
Does ML have anything like that? I've been having crashes here lately quite frequently. Have to hold the power button for a moment, the restart. Only to have to do it again....

 

[blueroom]

Something is causing your machine to crash, it should be very stable. I'd start with the RAM you added.

 

[SpetsnaZ99]

wild stab in the dark, but are you talking about 'Cmd + Alt + Escape' ?
This will force an application to quit.

 

[Satori]

It seemed like it was System5 or 7 or ? in which you could press cmd-. or cmd-shift-. or some such combination that would stop/interrupt the processes to get your compter back.
Does ML have anything like that? I've been having crashes here lately quite frequently. Have to hold the power button for a moment, the restart. Only to have to do it again....

In classic Mac OS, cmd-. would halt a process. This shortcut did not make the transition into OSX (although I still do it sometimes out of ancient habit!).

Nowadays:

Command-Option-esc brings up the force quit menu
Command-Shift-Option-Esc (for 3 seconds) quits the front-most application

 

[benwiggy]

There are massive differences between System 7 and OS X.

System 7 did "co-operative" multi-tasking. A process used the CPU until it decided to let someone else have a go.
OS X does "pre-emptive" multi-tasking. Processes get to have a go on the CPU when they are allowed.

Command . would not stop a process that had got stuck. It was used to do things like cancel printing, which would tie up the whole system -- and it would only work if the app was responding to keyboard events.

On OS X, a process that is not responding should not affect anything else. You should still be able to switch to other apps and carry on regardless.
You should not need to hold down the power button and restart if an application crashes.

If you get a "kernel panic" (grey writing in many languages), then that is a major problem, and you need to investigate why that is happening. It's usually always some low-level third-party software, like a device driver or something that patches the system in some way, which is incompatible; or it's a sign of hardware failure.