OT: G5 will not Restart or Shut Down

[Chris Black]

My almost 3 yr. old Quad G5 recently decided that it will not allow me to Restart it, or Shut Down normally, without holding down the front button (a forced Shut Down). (I can Sleep it and Wake it with no problem.) Running latest OSX 10.4.11 with all Apple updates. Have tried unplugging all peripherals except keyboard and mouse. Same problem.

I have another internal drive with latest OSX 10.5.4 (totally clean, no 3rd party stuff installed). Restarts and Shuts Down fine, even with all peripherals plugged in. Therefore do not think it is a problem with hardware, or RAM, etc.

Any thoughts/suggestions. Thanks

[PaulH]

Have you tried a "safe restart" by holding down the shift key first? Resetting pram, running permissions from installation CD, etc. ?

[raleighross]

I used to see this a lot. Now not so much. But never have figured it out. My best current guess is that it has to do with mounted AFP shares. I have one user at a client who manages to have this happen to him a lot no mater what machine he uses when everyone else in the office has no problem. And this is an office where we clone systems so the software setup is the same. At least initially.

Using AFP shares off a server?

David

[poolvibe]

Ummmm... why would you run Tiger when you have Leo???

[rjpotter]

As raleighross says, Sharing can be the culprit. We use a G5 as a simple file server using Sharepoints, and need to quit Sharepoints and then go to System preferences and Stop File Sharing every time we want to restart or shut down.

[raleighross]

[raleighross]

Something else. USB devices that act as storage can cause some G5s, especially G5 iMacs, to hang on startup and shutdown. Try unplugging any extra USB devices and do a few startup and shutdown cycles and see how things work.

David

[Chris Black]

Thanks to all for suggestions here. Still cannot normally restart my Quad G5 (via OSX 10.4.11) after trying all manner of things, from suggestions here and other help sites. Tried OnyX, Applejack, zapping Pram, removing RAM, you name it, I've tried it. No luck. I can live with manually crashing the machine and then restarting and then repairing permissions, etc., et al. But what a pain. Soon I will transition my main setup to 10.5.x. (I would probably need to upgrade Adobe Creative Suite from CS1 to CS3, but I rarely use any of those apps except occasionally Acrobat Pro, and slightly less often Photoshop, and am not looking forward to the $400 upgrade cost.)

The only reason I have stuck with 10.4.x is I need one ancient Desk Accessory running in Classic that I access many times each and every day, "Easy Envelopes+ 2.6," which has been my PDA since 1992 and has several thousand names, addresses, phone numbers and personal contact info that I dread transposing into the Address Book app. There is no easy and graceful migration scheme that I am aware of. The currently resurrected "Easy Envelopes" Dashboard widget by Ambrosia is a sorry half baked reflection of its former glory, and is only slightly good at printing envelopes...the least important thing I use the ancient version for. (I suppose I could prune out perhaps 75% of my legacy contact data to lessen the pain.)

I still have a (Classic capable) G4 Mini running 10.4.11 that is only used for running a front door/alcove security webcam (Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000) via SecuritySpy (tis really a neat little setup for both Time Lapse and Motion Detection purposes, but the whole system ceases to function properly via 10.5.x).

I also have an ancient G3 (upgraded several times) PowerComputing PowerTower sitting in the closet running MacOS 9.2.2...at one point I had $6200 wrapped up in that box with all the add ons I had stuck in it. Might resurrect it just to run EE+ 2.6, but the sucker is so loud will probably keep it in the closet, perhaps headless, and access via Timbuktu. Gawd, all this just to run one ancient OS9 Desk Accessory.

[CJH]

Back in the day, I had created structural calculations using Clarisworks 1.0: it enabled me to integrate graphics and 'tear off' spreadsheet cells within a single page, so that, for example, a retaining wall drawing has dimensions on it which are actually spreadsheet cells which can be changed and re-calculate the wall design. I've never found anything else like this, so once I moved into the Intel world with PC8 I found a used G4 mini to run Classic to run this program (I had a G5 quad liquid cooled but got tired of the amount of heat it put out). It still works just fine, so I figure I'll just keep this going.
PC8 runs great on Intel Macbook Pro, I also have a Intel Mac Pro (8 core) but almost never use it as the laptop much more comfortable. I only use the Pro when I need to spread a project out over several monitors.