When Apple moved along in its progression of operating systems, from Systems 6, 7, 8, & 9 to System 10 (OS X), there was one major improvement: On the occasion that an application would crash, it wouldn’t take down the entire system with it, causing a reboot!

In OS X, when an application “crashes”, it simply stops responding and usually “closes” or quits. You can then restart that application and continue where you left off. Sometimes, though, an application will stop responding, but will fail to “quit”. You may even get what is called the Spinning Beach Ball of Death, the rotating rainbow colored ball. This icon shows up when the computer is really busy or an application is locked-up. This is where a “force-quit” comes in handy.

There are several ways of dealing with stuck and hanging applications.

Use the “Force Quit…” menu item from the Apple menu.

• This brings up a dialog box, listing all active applications (Or, in this case, the in-active ones too). Just scroll through the list and select the one that is being stubborn, then click the “Force Quit” button. The troublesome application SHOULD close/quit. It sometimes takes a couple of tries to get it to work using this method.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you found this post informative or interesting, won't you consider making a small donation or other contribution?

Sometimes, CDs and DVDs (removeable media) can be stubborn and refuse to eject via the normal Mac OS X methods

– pressing the eject key on the keyboard; using the Command-E keyboard combination; clicking the eject button next to the item in a finder window; dragging the icon on the desktop to the trash; or pressing the F12 key (usually on laptops).

There are a number of ways to help coax media out of an optical drive in such a situation.

Before applying these methods, however, note that busy discs (either startup disks or disks with an open file) should not be ejected. Using any of the aforementioned methods on a busy disc will get you nothing. Be patient with a disk that will not eject immediately. Sometimes a disk continues to be “busy” for several seconds even after you’ve closed open files or applications on the disc. Waiting a few moments, then re-attempting the ejection usually works in these situations.

If all the normal methods fail, there ARE a few more tricks you can use to help oust the troubling disc:

Hold down the mouse button at startup. Holding down the mouse button or trackpad button during startup will usually cause a misbehaving optical drive to eject its media.

Read the rest of this entry »