My MacBook Pro sometimes won't shut down

Hi all,

I have had my MacBook Pro since Christmas and twice within the last week when I shut it down using Apple sign and shut down the screen goes blank like it is going to shut down, but the little spinning circle appears and it just stays like this. I have to then shut it down by pressing the power button. Is this causing a problem to my macbook? I am new to macbook's so I really don't know what is happening to my machine.

If anybody could give me some advice as to what to do for the best to protect my macbook pro, I would be really grateful.

It is a Macbook Pro 13.3", I5 - 2.4ghz processor, 500gb harddrive, 4gb RAM.
Running os x Lion.

Thanking everybody in advance

Julie

Hi Julie. It sounds like there's a program hung in the background that is preventing the machine from sleeping. Have you installed any new software recently? It may just be a misbehaving app and the OS would eventually terminate it, but you're beating it to the punch.

Generally speaking, you don't want to forcibly power your machine down unless it's completely unresponsive for at least a few minutes. If you do, it can cause filesystem errors that can further exacerbate the problem.

Hi cwa107,

Thank you for the quick response. I have installed a few apps such as Bento 4 demo, Photoshop Elements 9, Microsoft Office, Nuance PDF Creator for Mac demo, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Burn for Mac and AppCleaner.

I don't know if any of these may have caused the problem. Is there a way I can check if all of the programs are closed before I shut down. Maybe that will prevent the problem from happening.

Thanks again

Julie

When you go to shut down, not sleep, and you go to the Apple Logo first click on Force Quit. Look for any programs other then Finder that are running and shut them down. You can do that in the Force Quit window or X out of that and do a Command+Tab to see if any programs are running. Tab (Command+Tab) to any program other then Finder that comes up in the box in the center of the screen then let go of Command+Tag and then do Command+Q (for Quit). Keep doing the Command+Tab and then Command+Q until the only thing that is left is Finder.
Then just to be on the safe side check the Force Quit window one more time. There shouldn't be anything in that windows other then Finder. If there is Force Quit it and take a note of what it is. Now do Apple Logo "Shut Down" and either click Shut Down or hit the enter/return key.

Another way to shut down, restart or sleep is to hit the power button once and briefly. That will bring up a dialog windows that has those 3 entries on it and a Cancel button. To shut down just hit the enter/return key, to Restart hit the R key and to Sleep hit the S key.
Post back with the name of any App that does not come up with Command+Tab but does show in the Force Quit window.
Hope this helps

Fudgebum said:

Hi cwa107,

Thank you for the quick response. I have installed a few apps such as Bento 4 demo, Photoshop Elements 9, Microsoft Office, Nuance PDF Creator for Mac demo, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Burn for Mac and AppCleaner.

I don't know if any of these may have caused the problem. Is there a way I can check if all of the programs are closed before I shut down. Maybe that will prevent the problem from happening.

Thanks again

Julie

Click to expand...

I would be willing to bet it's Kaspersky that is hanging you up. I would remove it. Uninstallation of Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 for Mac

If you feel the need to run an anti-virus application, there are better (and free) alternatives like ClamXAV. Read more here.

Shut down problem on MacBook pro

I had the exact same problem and it just got worse I was just messing about with it and then I thought that maybe it was the recovery Partion missing when I installed lion os. If you have lion installed and this is a problem all you have to do is reinstall it from the Mac app store purchases and then verify the disk using disk utility. That fixed my MacBook pro and I haven't had a problem since.

+1 to Reggie98, solved my problem as well. Never had an issue with Snow Leopard but with Lion it would refuse to shut down fairly consistently but not every time. For some reason I had no recovery partition.

I do now, all is well.

When this happened to me, I had to run repair disk from disk utility. It found some errors, made me restart in recovery mode and repair disk again, and then it fixed them and I was able to shut down normally again.