Mac OS 10.5.8 Freezes on Log Out

[Randall S]

We are having this problem on quite a few of our Leopard machines.
When a user logs out, all the desktop items leave but not the dock.
You can click on the finder and all comes back, but not able to log out or restart or shutdown.
The only way out is to do a hard reboot. This is not at every log out, but every once in a while.
I have seen a lot of talk on the web about this, but no solution.
Any ideas?

Thanks.

[prepressguru]

Try to boot up in safe mode. By holding down the shift key while the Mac starts up. This should rebuild your caches. Once you log in and at the Finder level. Run disk utility on the startup disk and repair permissions.

The other thing might be some odd font loaded. Try removing any unnecessary fonts, basically back to bare system fonts.

Good luck, p

[Randall S]

Try to boot up in safe mode. By holding down the shift key while the Mac starts up. This should rebuild your caches. Once you log in and at the Finder level. Run disk utility on the startup disk and repair permissions.

The other thing might be some odd font loaded. Try removing any unnecessary fonts, basically back to bare system fonts.

Good luck, p

Hey, Thanks for responding.
I've tried the safe boot and disk permissions. Also, ran a font finagler that empties font caches. It would log out OK for a few times and then come back, like a bad neighbor.
I'm thinking one of the OS updates (security) must have started this. We have never had this before, it only started recently. It's affecting all the Leopard macs, power pc and intel. No problem on the Snow Leopard ones.

[JDuffy]

I have the same thing that happens on only a few machines. They eventually do power down ( +/-15 minutes) and seems to bee related to our network. We all log into a PC DOMAIN server (not running Extreme ZIP) and the network log off seems to lock up the mac for a time.

[graficworx]

Couple of things can cause this, either an application is trying to save or exit and fails/freezes, or there is some system call that isn't being "answered". I would try resetting the PRAM, NVRAM, and doing a disk repair from another computer while the subject machine is connected in target disk mode. If it continues to do this, try updating all applications (Adobe is notorious for updaters causing hangups), and download the complete update for 10.5.8 (about 400 mega) and install it. Sometimes the incremental updates from Software Update can cause a problem. Other than that, check the Console log under the Utilities folder. Basically it's an issue of the system waiting for something to happen and it doesn't.

[Phil R]

As I write this I have realised how old the post is, however the fix below is valid under Leopard and Snow Leopard and has on many occasions resolved this issue.

Either login as Admin or using Remote Desktop send these commands to the Mac that will not shut down correctly.

sudo rm -f /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist
sudo rm -f /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist

Cheers
Phil