Urgent help needed - Unable to shutdown MBP 13"

[macquekers]

I have no idea whats going wrong. Everytime i try to do a shutdown via the apple menu, the process will go ahead as per normal and then my MBP will restart itself...

I have no way to shut it down unless I hold down the power button to force shutdown... which is not acceptable...

what has happened to my software shutdown????

I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.2...

 

[madog]

Happened to me in my later days of Leopard. If my MBP was on for a few weeks and was only put to sleep during that time and never shut down or restarted, apps would lock up when I ever I tried to shut down or restart.

Under the same usage with SL installed now, it hasn't happened. I think it had to do with all of the apps I had running constantly, and it always being put to sleep, and something else making an odd combination of failure.

It pained me to force power off my MBP, but in the end it was all I could do.

Never thought of this before, but maybe there are some terminal commands that can assist in this.

 

[macquekers]

thanks madog

could the 10GB windows xp partition be causing the problem?

i just tried to reboot in XP and to my horror, it won't boot.. keeps giving me the dreaded BSOD everytime... had to restart and hold COMMAND-OPTION-P-R to reset my memory so OS X could boot again... seems like my windows partition is dead?

however, the problem of restarting still persists... can never shutdown my mbp unless its a force hardware shutdown...

anyone?

 

[Zyniker]

"Repair Disk Permissions..."

 

[samh]

thanks madog

could the 10GB windows xp partition be causing the problem?

i just tried to reboot in XP and to my horror, it won't boot.. keeps giving me the dreaded BSOD everytime... had to restart and hold COMMAND-OPTION-P-R to reset my memory so OS X could boot again... seems like my windows partition is dead?

however, the problem of restarting still persists... can never shutdown my mbp unless its a force hardware shutdown...

anyone?

Run hardware diagnostics.

 

[macquekers]

"Repair Disk Permissions..."

i've tried that already.. still no go...

will try hardware diagnostics later... but where do i go to do hardware diagnostics?

 

[madog]

i've tried that already.. still no go...

will try hardware diagnostics later... but where do i go to do hardware diagnostics?

For beginners, the best way would be to boot up to a system installer (the original that came with your machine or any you have later purchased), and then access Disk Utility from the Utilities menu before you actually install anything. That will let you verify permissions and the drive itself. A quicker way would be to boot up in single-user mode and running the fsck command (you can find info in a sticky in the "Mac OS X" forum here at MR).

Further hardware tests can be run by inserting the original system disk that came with your Mac, and boot it up while holding down the "D" key.

 

[Theclamshell]

my old coreduo mbp had the random shutdown issue, i tried everything i could to stop it and nothing worked until i deleted my windows partition.................. so try something like that

 

[macquekers]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I will try to remove my win xp partition later.

by the way, does having a windows partition really cause such problems? I was so looking forward to be able to do everything (including running windows) with a mac until this happened..

as a backup plan, would it be better (if possible) to run win xp off a usb portable HDD ?

 

[macquekers]

it just gets weirder and weirder...

for the past 2 days, before I leave for work (about 7.30am) i will turn on my computer and do a quick check of my email.. each time, my MBP managed to shutdown properly without auto restarting...

but at any other time of the day or after long usage, the old problem will come back again...

issit due to some temperature thing? or SMC fan control?

 

[madog]

I used to have smcFanControl installed as well. Still do, but when I had a similar problem it only happened after long periods of time as well. When I would try to restart/shutdown an app would fail to quit and would prevent log out. If I force quit the app (typically the Finder), another would do the same, and so on until eventually I quit every app I could in the Activity Monitor, and the machine would seemingly logout but never proceed further.

It's possible that there is some combination of software failures/glitches happening after the machine is put to sleep several times that is causing this. As for the XP partition: maybe? I still have the same XP partition installed from Leopard, and I haven't had the same issue since upgrading to SL, but then again you said your was having problems anyway.

For starters you can try creating a new user (smc wouldn't open at login, and the preferences and settings would all be fresh and "clean"). Use that new user for a few days and try to get the same problem to happen again.

If the problem doesn't happen with that new user it's a good sign. If the problem does happen it isn't necessarily a bad sign. Either way, your end result might be performing a clean install, or at the very least an Archive and Install from a system disk. One of those methods would give you a better idea of whether or not it is software related.

The only reason I mention all of these methods is that you may end up spending as much time creating a new user and transferring over all of your data to it than just backing up and starting over fresh.

I'm assuming that you updated to SL or did a clean install but migrated your apps over. It's possible that some incompatible or outdated app transferred from your previous system caused this. If you end up starting over, I would suggest not migrating applications over, but instead redownloading and reinstalling whatever you can, and installing those other apps (that you can't dl) fresh only if there is confirmation that they work with SL or have an update that will allow them to.

 

[macquekers]

I used to have smcFanControl installed as well. Still do, but when I had a similar problem it only happened after long periods of time as well. When I would try to restart/shutdown an app would fail to quit and would prevent log out. If I force quit the app (typically the Finder), another would do the same, and so on until eventually I quit every app I could in the Activity Monitor, and the machine would seemingly logout but never proceed further.

It's possible that there is some combination of software failures/glitches happening after the machine is put to sleep several times that is causing this. As for the XP partition: maybe? I still have the same XP partition installed from Leopard, and I haven't had the same issue since upgrading to SL, but then again you said your was having problems anyway.

For starters you can try creating a new user (smc wouldn't open at login, and the preferences and settings would all be fresh and "clean"). Use that new user for a few days and try to get the same problem to happen again.

If the problem doesn't happen with that new user it's a good sign. If the problem does happen it isn't necessarily a bad sign. Either way, your end result might be performing a clean install, or at the very least an Archive and Install from a system disk. One of those methods would give you a better idea of whether or not it is software related.

The only reason I mention all of these methods is that you may end up spending as much time creating a new user and transferring over all of your data to it than just backing up and starting over fresh.

I'm assuming that you updated to SL or did a clean install but migrated your apps over. It's possible that some incompatible or outdated app transferred from your previous system caused this. If you end up starting over, I would suggest not migrating applications over, but instead redownloading and reinstalling whatever you can, and installing those other apps (that you can't dl) fresh only if there is confirmation that they work with SL or have an update that will allow them to.

madog ur the man! i'll heed ur advice, hopefully i got some free time over the weekend!

thanks dude!!

 

[macquekers]

some updates..

i created a new user.. standard access or admin access.. same problem..

finally got sometime over the weekend, did a format of my hdd and did a clean install of OS X SL... as i expected... same problem!!! shutdown does not work.. always does an auto restart...

i did notice something though.. when the macbook is "cold" as in early morning i boot it up, and use it for like 5 mins, it will shut down properly.. but when i use it for longer periods, like watch a movie, etc... (my guess is more than 10 mins) the problem will show...

right now i am thinking its definitely a hardware problem since i have already did a fresh install of OS X.. i am suspecting the power management system is screwing up.. is that what is known as the SMC module?

i'm calling apple tomorrow and see what they can do.. lucky for me, Apple's HQ (i'm in Singapore by the way) is just beside my office!!

 

[MacFever]

I have a late June 2009 13" MBP. 2.53ghz , 8gb ddr3 ram, 256gb ssd with Leopard 10.5.8 and all updates.

I've recently noticed that once in a while it will seem to get stuck during shutdown (NOT FROZEN) just in an endless wait of shutting down.....you can see the mouse moving around but no desktop and you hear the sound that it makes when you log in with mistakes...bump bump...

I suspect it's a thirdparty software that doesn't want to let go...but unfortunately you can't pull up a task bar like in windows at that point to force quit the stuck (Not Responding) application.

 

[macquekers]

all right, some updates.

fixed the problem already... just as i suspected, hardware problem. the apple service engineer replaced the entire logic board for me, he said that was some problem with the power mgmt module which is causing the screwups.

now everything works fine. even my windows partition was able to work problem.. no re-formatted needed!! yay~~

3 cheers for the apple authorized service center...

 

[madog]

all right, some updates.

fixed the problem already... just as i suspected, hardware problem. the apple service engineer replaced the entire logic board for me, he said that was some problem with the power mgmt module which is causing the screwups.

now everything works fine. even my windows partition was able to work problem.. no re-formatted needed!! yay~~

3 cheers for the apple authorized service center...

Thanks for the update, glad you got it fixed. I don't think I've ever seen that issue turn out to be a MLB problem before, but that's good to know.