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OS X stuck, had to force shutdown

Hello

Yesterday, while using Safari, my MacBook Air got stuck. Nothing worked anymore, I couldn't even move the mouse. Other applications that were open were Mail, Text Editor and maybe some others. I had many tabs open in Safari in 3 different windows.

I left the MBA there for half an hour. It stayed as it was. Mouse stayed unmovable and screen stayed active. It didn't go into sleep either. After that I closed the lid and opened it again. Still the same. I closed it again and waited ten minutes. Then I had a black screen, when using the touchpad the mouse was visible after some seconds but the screen stayed black.

I waited again for 4 hours and nothing changed. Ten I did a force shutdown by holding the power button until the MBA was shutdown. I waited a few minutes and started the MBA. Some active applications opened automatically others, like Safari, I opened myself. In Safari I used the option to open all windows from the last session. This worked.

What could have gone wrong and why did the whole system got stuck instead of only the application?

What must I do after the force shutdown? Is there some maintenance to do?

Thanks!

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Most likely your system ran out of resources. I suspect your drive is quite full. I would start by cleaning out the old log files and caches. Here's a good app from the Apple App Store that can help you and see how much space these files where using and clean them out: Disk Doctor. I would also clear off any older files you don't need any more leaving 1/4 to 1/3 of your SSD free.

The other factor here is you had quite a few active screens each app needs work space within both RAM and on your drive (SSD here). Often people encounter issues with the smaller drives as they runout of space. If you need to run so much at the same time (and/or need to hold so much on your drive) you may want to think about upgrading to a larger SSD drive. Check out Transcend Jet Drives. Otherwise open fewer apps and/or docs & web sites.

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5 Comments:

My SSD drive is far from full (82GB free space of the 120GB). I also have 8GB ram.

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Try this run Activity Monitor, put it in just to the side and the next time the system freezes up see what your resources are and what is consuming them.

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Ok, but what do you mean with "just to the side"? That the window must always be busy?

There is no other way to get to know afterwards what happened or went wrong?

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Yes, it's visible on your desktop. Just enough so you can see the processes.

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This was the first and only time this happened. I can't imagine keeping that window open the whole time to know what will happen. I want to find out what happened, there's no log or something else?

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