Macbook running unattended long time = apps closing. Why?

[thebard]

I'm not sure why this is happening. Every time I leave my macbook open for a long period of time without touching it, it will try to close every application.

For example:

Last night I set my mac to format a new external hard drive. It was going to take about 9 hours so I set it to go while I was sleeping. I woke up and I got a couple of messages saying the application tried to close, and it was barely through the format process, I'm guessing about 10-15%. This means it tried to close everything maybe an hour in or so.

I wasn't surprised because this happens every time I leave my macbook open for a lengthy period of time. Sometimes it will successfully close everything, sometimes it wont. It really bugs me because I'm not able to do lengthy tasks without everything closing or it pausing the task because its trying to close.

I've tried the energy saver settings for use with power adapter:
-Unchecked put hard drives to sleep
-"Put computer to sleep when inactive for" is set to Never
-Display turns off after 25 minutes

Thanks for your help!

 

[Consultant]

Sounds like you are not connected to power adapter

 

[misterredman]

Check under the security pref panel that the "logout after ... minutes of inactivity" isn't checked.

 

[thebard]

It was the logout after in the security panel. Thank fixed it! However stopping in the middle of a format I think really messed up the HD as I'm having a tough time getting it to format w/the Mac and PC Partition Magic. I'll keep messing w/it. Thx!