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Application Troubleshooting
Macintosh
OS X

Application Troubleshooting Steps

Application Troubleshooting Network Troubleshooting Does the computer boot up? Printing Troubleshooting

Frozen Applications

Applications quit

Adding Memory

Rebuild Desktop

Disk Utility

Keychain Access

OS X Applications

Frozen Applications.

If the mouse pointer turns into a beach ball for an extended period of time, the application maybe frozen. If an application is frozen, use the Force Quit command.

  1. Go to Apple Menu > Force Quit.
  2. Select the frozen application
  3. Click Force Quit.
  4. Restart the application.

NOTE: If this is a classic application, you will probably need to stop the Classic Environment as well.

Native Application Quits Unexpectedly

If an application quits unexpectedly,

  1. Restart the application and see if that fixes the problem
  2. If the application continues to crash or freeze, log out by going to Apple Menu > Log Out and log back in.
  3. If the application still continues to crash or freeze, restart the computer by going to Apple Menu > Restart.

Classic Application Quits Unexpectedly

If the classic application quits, try restarting the application and see if that fixes the problem.

If the application is frozen, force quit the application, and stop the classic environment

To stop the classic environment:

  1. Apple Menu > System Preferences.
  2. Double click on Classic.
  3. Click on the Stop button.
  4. You may need to click on Force Quit if clicking the stop button does not quit the classic environment
  5. Relaunch the application.

Adding more Memory

If an application seems to consistently freeze or crash, you may want to allocate more memory to the application.

To increase a classic application memory:

  1. Browse to the application (most Classic applications will be located in the Applications (OS 9) directory),
  2. Go to File > Get Info, click on the Memory arrow,
  3. Do not increase the Minimum Size.
  4. Increase the Preferred Size value by small increments.
  5. Relaunch the application to see if the application is more stable.

Rebuilding the Desktop

If the Classic application is still experiencing problems, rebuild the desktop. You can rebuild the desktop by

  1. Apple Menu > System Preferences > Classic
  2. Click on the Advanced tab.
  3. Click on Rebuild Desktop.

Disk Utility

The Disk Utility is an application that is installed on every OS X machine. The Disk Utility can be located from the GO menu > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. If applications seem to continuously crash or freeze or the computer seems to be running slowly, running a Repair Disk Permissions may help.

  1. Go to the Go menu > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utilities
  2. Click on the First Aid tab
  3. Select the Macintosh HD
  4. Click on Repair Permissions
  5. Close Disk Utility after it finishes running.

Keychain Access

Keychain Access is an OS X utility that's meant to be used to keep passwords saved and it is not supported by Wellesley College. If a user calls up, has never used Keychain Access before and the computer keeps asking them for a Keychain password (usually while working in Safari), do the following.
  1. Go to Go menu> Applications > Utilities - Keychain Access.
  2. From there go to File > Delete "infoserv".
  3. When it asks you to delete the References or References and Files, click References and Files.
  4. Log out and Log back into the computer.

 

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  • Han Su Kim
  • Information Services
  • Date Created: April 14, 2003
  • Last Modified: January 3, 2006
  • Page Expires: January 1, 2004