Quick Guidelines For Fixing Occasional Mac Freezes

The Wheel of Death. The Beach Ball. It goes by many names, but the dreaded, rainbow-colored "spinning wait cursor" only appears when a Mac freezes. Although Macs are notoriously reliable, even the best machine may have trouble dealing with a runaway application. However, by utilizing some different tools and options, users will get their Macintosh experience going again.

Macs freeze when applications start to overrun available resources. Some applications, by their nature, simply gobble up resources. In other instances, applications may have a bug, causing them to swallow up processor and memory resources. When too many applications are running at the same time, or too many applications are utilizing the same disk, then problems may occur. Or, if the Mac has insufficient memory to support user demands, then the machine may freeze up.

When an application runs away with itself, the program must be closed. Users may try several different methods for closing errant applications, depending upon computer responsiveness. For slow Macs, either Activity Monitor or Force Quit will take care of closing programs. However, if the machine has stopped responding at all, powering down may be necessary.

Activity Monitor will work for semi-responsive machines, as long as menus will still pop up. Activity Monitor is found by clicking "Applications", the "Utilities", and the "Activity Monitor". The window of the Activity Monitor shows how much memory and processor capacity each open program is using. To close the errant application, use the mouse to highlight the application's name, and then click on "Quit Process".

Force Quit is a command found in the Apple menu. Force Quit may also be accessed by pushing Command-Alt-Escape, if users cannot access the Apple menu. The Force Quit menu will not show all processes running on the Mac, but will show the main applications. Many times, the words "not responding" will appear next to the troublesome application. Users simply highlight the item, and click the "Force Quit" button.

When the machine is non-responsive, the only solution is to power down. The best way to power down the computer is to hold down the "Power" button for a few seconds, rather than pulling the power cord out of the machine. After a few seconds of shutdown, users should restart their machine. Powering down is a last resort, because data may only be half-written to the disk, particularly if the disk is in heavy usage.

Newer Macs have tremendous resources, so freezes will be rare. In most cases, when machines have more than one gig of memory, and are using a dual-core processor, then the problem has to do with the application, not the machine. However, users may have to upgrade, if they notice that shutting down programs speeds up the machine significantly.

Even the reliable Macintosh has its problems every now and then. Users should close down applications that are gobbling up resources, by utilizing Force Quit or Activity monitor. However, if so many processor and disk resources are being used that the Mac freezes, then users may just have to power down, and then restart.

By: Allan Ryckman

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Apple Macintosh owners, have a look at our site for tips on what to do when your Mac freezes and more information about the MacKeeper program at www.macfreezes.com today.