My MacBook is frozen and it will not shut down. What's wrong?

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MacBook Unibody A1342

2.26 or 2.4 GHz / White plastic unibody enclosure

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dedej33

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Gepost: 22-03-12

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My MacBook is frozen and it will not shut down. What's wrong?

My MacBook has been frozen for two days now, and I can't turn it off. I have tried the power button as well as command, control, and power buttons simultaneously with no result. I can move the mouse, but I cannot do anything when I try to give a command. When I push the power button, the screen goes black. And when I turn it on again, it looks like it goes to sleep and wakes up on the same screen. Any suggestion?

P.S I haven't tried to take out the battery because I'm scared maybe something worse will happen.

Beantwoord! View the answer Dit probleem heb ik ook

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model nr----A1342

22-03-12 door dedej33

My kids got ahold to BOTH!! Macs! My IMac and MacPro....no telling what they pressed....please help! On the iMac the program's either take long to open or just doesn't open at all....the MacPro is froze the mouse pad works but can't click on anything or nothing will open but it's able to charge and sleep HELP!!!!

31-03-16 door Geneen

i had same the laptop and i got from someone as a gift . here is what i did first i cut down the power by press and hold the power button for 1 min and than remove all unwanted programs from my computer using apple care http://goo.gl/s0nW0b and after that i after that i have been told that i need to update the O.S once it ask for it and i will recommend everyone to restart the computer at least once in day .

02-09-16 door grishka sen

I can't exit my gmail.com account - nor can I shutdown my MacBook Pro

10-09-16 door Mary Katherine Brand

**** Solution which worked for me after months of a similar problem. When I tried to restart or shutdown the computer would hang. Programs would close and I could see teh desktop background but nothing else would happen. I had to use command line to restart and shutdown. Apple support couldnt help me. They said it was a software conflict. I was about to format and fresh install and add every program back individually until I tried this:

System Preferences >User & Groups (unlock with pass) > Login Items >then remove all the items in the list and restart computer.

Such a simple solution...let me know if this works for you guys

cheers

16-09-16 door Sean McGuire

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ABCellars

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Gepost: 22-03-12

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Start by resetting your PRAM and SMC. For instructions on how to do that click here and click here. If that doesn't resolve your problem, pull your RAM out of their slots and reseat them, then do the resets again. Please let us know the results of these things.

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Yeah I would like to do that but first I have to shut down the system. It is still frozen after have tried everything, I think.

22-03-12 door dedej33

He's not able to clear the hang so this won't help.

22-03-12 door Dan

Thanks for the down vote whoever and for what? Try unplugging the magsafe, first. The battery will eventually run out of power and the system will shut down. For some reason it never occurred to me that I would need to tell someone to unplug their computer if it won't power down.

23-03-12 door ABCellars

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! It's been frozen and ticking for an hour! It was kinda funny though - I was watching Tosh.0 w/ the Monster Satan Lady and as soon as Tosh drank the Tea Bag ice tea my mac froze and started ticking. I'm agnostic but !&&*....

06-03-15 door Vicki Dwyer

this happened to me except the the mouse wasn't moving at all. so just hold the power button for a minute or two, or until it turns off. once you have turned it back on hold shift until the apple sign shows up, safe booting. hope this helps

11-12-13 door Danielle

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My kids got ahold to BOTH!! Macs! My IMac and MacPro....no telling what they pressed....please help! On the iMac the program's either take long to open or just doesn't open at all....the MacPro is froze the mouse pad works but can't click on anything or nothing will open but it's able to charge and sleep HELP!!!! — Geneen
i had same the laptop and i got from someone as a gift . here is what i did first i cut down the power by press and hold the power button for 1 min and than remove all unwanted programs from my computer using apple care http://goo.gl/s0nW0b and after that i after that i have been told that i need to update the O.S once it ask for it and i will recommend everyone to restart the computer at least once in day . — grishka sen
I can't exit my gmail.com account - nor can I shutdown my MacBook Pro — Mary Katherine Brand
**** Solution which worked for me after months of a similar problem. When I tried to restart or shutdown the computer would hang. Programs would close and I could see teh desktop background but nothing else would happen. I had to use command line to restart and shutdown. Apple support couldnt help me. They said it was a software conflict. I was about to format and fresh install and add every program back individually until I tried this:

System Preferences >User & Groups (unlock with pass) > Login Items >then remove all the items in the list and restart computer.

Such a simple solution...let me know if this works for you guys

cheers — Sean McGuire
Yeah I would like to do that but first I have to shut down the system. It is still frozen after have tried everything, I think. — dedej33
Thanks for the down vote whoever and for what? Try unplugging the magsafe, first. The battery will eventually run out of power and the system will shut down. For some reason it never occurred to me that I would need to tell someone to unplug their computer if it won't power down. — ABCellars
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! It's been frozen and ticking for an hour! It was kinda funny though - I was watching Tosh.0 w/ the Monster Satan Lady and as soon as Tosh drank the Tea Bag ice tea my mac froze and started ticking. I'm agnostic but !&&*.... — Vicki Dwyer
this happened to me except the the mouse wasn't moving at all. so just hold the power button for a minute or two, or until it turns off. once you have turned it back on hold shift until the apple sign shows up, safe booting. hope this helps — Danielle

Dan @danj Rep: 379k Self employed contract worker 34 229 890 · Answer 1 · 2012-03-22T12:31:45-07:00

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Dan @danj

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Don't panic yet!

Did you press and hold the power button for a good minute? That should power down your system.

It sounds like you have an app or the OS in a locked state, and the only way to to get out of this is to completely power down the system and restart.

One thing you should do afterwards is to check any documents you may have had open at the time to see if they are OK.

You may want to run a virus program and a HD health check using Apple's Disk Utility program using your OS CD/DVD (or bootable USB thumb drive) to boot you system. If you can, I would also defrag the HD. You should also clean out the old Cache & Log files. Give this App a try: Disk Doctor. Make sure you have at least 1/4 of your drive free. If not, clean things up.

If it happens again, you may want to check the apps and any OS add-ons that are running at the time the system freezes up. Make sure you've got the latest and updated the OS.

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Yes I did to hold the power button and turns off(looks like go on sleep) and when it turns on again it just puts the screen at the same point frozen.

22-03-12 door dedej33

Try again holding the power button down longer. Sounds like you weren't able to get the system to do a power shutdown and go into a cold reboot only go in and out of sleep mode. With the built in Batt this is the only way (other than opening up the system to pull the battery power connector off the logic bd)

22-03-12 door Dan

I try to push the power button for long time but not luck. Just turn back at the same frozen screen.

22-03-12 door dedej33

Dedej - It's time to pull the plug!

You'll need to open the system to pull the battery connector. Haven't seen one so locked up like this, you may have other problems with the logic bd. For now try this and after a few minutes reconnect the batteries and see if it is able to restart.

If your not comfortable doing this and you have an Apple store nearby see if they can reset the system for you.

22-03-12 door Dan

They should not remove the battery with it powered on, that is very bad advice and risks damaging the battery and components on the motherboard.

23-03-12 door ABCellars

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charlidavid884 Rep: 25 1 · Answer 2 · 2015-04-01T22:58:38-07:00

charlidavid884

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Gepost: 01-04-15

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I think, after doing these steps you still have to fix the root problem. Unfortunately, this isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Cleaning out old files
Update your Apps and make sure you have updated the computers OS.
Upgrade your hardware if your drive is failing and/or add memory

I hope this helps

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You should repeat turning it on and off and it works hope it helps

11-01-16 door Alyssa stronach

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mac apps Rep: 13 1 · Answer 3 · 2015-07-21T10:03:55-07:00

mac apps

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-If OS X does not respond totally, the best solution is holding the power button to force it to turn off. And then open it again.

- Macbook gets laggy really?

You can either quit some running heavy app and other software solution such as cleaning up your Mac and decreasing the items in startup list as a temporary solution or upgrade hardware to speed up your mac for long-term smooth working.

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Tracey Rep: 1 · Answer 4 · 2014-09-26T00:08:51-07:00

Tracey

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Gepost: 26-09-14

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My MacBook froze and didn't work nothing worked while I was using iMovie, so I held the shut down button for like, a minute and restarted it, pretty slow though, should start working

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inurshasie Rep: 1 · Answer 5 · 2015-07-31T23:22:19-07:00

inurshasie

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Gepost: 31-07-15

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Hi, I have a similar problem too. I always relaunch Finder before I completely shut down my computer by pushing option + command + escape. It should be work.

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jms248 Rep: 1 · Answer 6 · 2016-02-08T20:37:12-07:00

jms248

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Gepost: 08-02-16

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Not sure if people are still reading this or not. But I have had this issue of the laptop not shutting down or logging off since I update to El Cap. After applying what I read online nothing worked. I decided to take a chance I delete everything out of the System Library Cache folder. IT WORKED. I can now restart, logoff and shutdown.

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oh does it really work? I had that same issue since i update to EI Capitan. Its really annoyed me for weeks and i couldn't work with my mac now

27-05-16 door teosugie

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josy @josyh Rep: 1 1 1 · Answer 7 · 2016-11-27T06:12:43-07:00

josy @josyh

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Gepost: 27-11-16

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when computer is freezing you may need to try this -

Mac OS X features a handy menu option for turning off the Mac. Just choose Apple > Shut Down and click Shut Down. You can snipe the confirmation message by holding down. Command while choosing Shut Down. Wait until all apps close, and the Mac shuts down. for more visit https://discussions.apple.com/thread/726... . this should fix it

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