Easy Guidelines For Frequent Mac Freezes

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.

Some call it the Beach Ball. Some call it the Wheel of Death. When a Mac freezes, the "spinning wait cursor", or the dreaded spinning rainbow wheel, is the first thing to appear. The Macintosh experience, however, will resume quickly, if Mac owners utilize available tools. Macs may be famous for being dependable, but even the most dependable machines may be brought down by an errant application.

Macs usually freeze when an application goes awry. Some applications are simply resource-intensive, and will cause a computer to slow down. Other applications may have a bug, which causes them to consume too many resources. Sometimes, too many applications are running at once, or too many applications are trying to use the same disk. Or, the computer may not have enough memory to support the needs of the user.

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.

If the machine is semi-responsive, and menus are still appearing, Activity Monitor is the right choice. Users start by clicking on "Applications", then clicking on "Utilities", and then clicking on "Activity Monitor". The Activity Monitor will show how much processor capacity and memory each running application is using. To stop the errant program, highlight it, and then click the "Quit Process" button in the top left corner of the window.

Under the Apple menu, users will see the Force Quit function. On the other hand, if users cannot get to the Apple menu, they may push Command-Alt-Escape. The Force Quit window will show the main applications, but the window will not show how much capacity the programs are using. The words "not responding" are usually shown next to the errant application. To end the application, users simply highlight the program name and click "Force Quit".

When machines are completely non-responsive, users have no choice but to power down. Powering down is a solution of last resort, because, if the disk is being heavily used, then data may only be partially-written to the disk. Users should not pull out the power cord; instead, they should hold down the "Power" button for a few seconds. When the computer has been shut down for a few seconds, users may push "Power" again, to restart it.

Macs have so many resources that freezes are rare. As long as the machine has more than 1 GB of memory, and utilizes a dual-core processor, then most problems will be with the applications themselves. However, if less multi-tasking, and shutting down programs, make the machine run faster, then users may have no choice but to upgrade capacity.

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.

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