Comments on: How do you recover an unresponsive desktop under Mac OSX?

Question: How do you recover an unresponsive desktop under Mac OSX?

stevanl — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:28:40 -0800

Is there any way to salvage a frozen/unresponsive desktop under Mac OSX?

I've just been trying out Boxee and for some reason the desktop froze up and the mouse was unresponsive, and Command-Tab didn't work.

However, some keys worked, like the iTunes control buttons on the keyboard (play, pause, volume, etc). It seems as if the computer was responding in the background and just the windows stopped responding.

Is there any way to recover from this? Is there a command, or actionscript that can reset the desktop somehow?

By: santaliqueur

santaliqueur — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:54:14 -0800

Can you cmd-opt-esc? If so, quit Finder (relaunch actually, which makes it quit and startup again).

By: fourcheesemac

fourcheesemac — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:05:07 -0800

You may be able to force quit the finder -- option click on the Finder icon on the far left or top of the dock.

By: nicwolff

nicwolff — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:11:45 -0800

Guys, he can't move the mouse!

If you have the SSH daemon running and port 22 open, you can SSH in from another machine and start killing the processes owned by your username, which might unwedge the box.

By: al_fresco

al_fresco — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:20:08 -0800

If you don't have anything important (unsaved documents) open, just hold down the power button until the machine shuts off, then restart. Not the best thing to do all the time, but good when all else fails.

Also, if you're using a notebook, try closing the lid to put the machine to sleep, wait until the sleep light comes on for a few seconds, and then open the lid again. Sometimes this works. If not, do the power button thing noted above.

By: stevanl

stevanl — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 02:33:06 -0800

Much appreciate your input guys!

I forgot to try cmd-opt-esc at the time, so I'm wondering if that would have worked.

I might whip up an actionscript to restart the finder and bind it to a keyboard shortcut to see if it helps next time.

Thanks again for the help guys!

By: fourcheesemac

fourcheesemac — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:50:49 -0800

I have also found that plugging a USB mouse into the laptop will sometimes free up a frozen cursor.

By: dragontail

dragontail — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:05:22 -0800

al_fresco: Yes, but not if the HDD is spinning, you are likely to corrupt your data on the drive.