Solving problems with launching applications after updating OS X. Solving problems launching applications after updating OS X Mac has become slower

When updating the system, there is always a small chance that errors may occur in the operation of a particular application. Fortunately, this chance is really small, and problems in the operation of programs are often so insignificant that sometimes they can go unnoticed altogether. However, it may also happen that one or another program suddenly begins to freeze, close, or even refuse to start. In these cases, there are several general approaches to solving the problem that are worth trying.

Checking compatibility

First of all, you should visit the website of the developer of the problematic software and see if it is compatible with your new version of the system. Although many programs can run smoothly on different versions of the system, it often happens that developers do not keep up with updates and need some time to optimize their product. Therefore, in order to avoid possible problems, it is very advisable to check compatibility before updating (although it won’t hurt after it either).

It can also be very useful to explore the support forums on the developer's website. There you can find valuable information about possible problems and errors that other users have encountered, as well as possible solutions, which can be extremely useful (especially if your version of the system is not yet officially supported).

Checking for updates

Despite the fact that, as mentioned above, some developers do not have time to optimize their product for the new version of the system on time, most still succeed. Moreover, software and system updates are usually released almost simultaneously or with a slight difference (about a day or two). Therefore, you should definitely make sure that you have the latest version of the program with which you are having problems. If this is not the case, it is very likely that installing an update will help you.

Reinstalling the application

Often the most correct solution to a problem with the launch or operation of an application is to reinstall it. During the system update process, some program components may be considered incompatible or faulty and, as a result, may be removed or moved to another location (for example, to the “Incompatible Software” folder that we mentioned). Uninstalling and reinstalling the program will allow you to put all the components necessary for the application to work correctly in their place.

Deleting temporary application files

Most programs, as well as the system itself, store temporary files on your computer. These could be different settings, cache, appearance options and much more. What these files have in common is the fact that they all affect the operation of the programs they belong to, and the presence of errors in them can cause failures. In this case, there are several options to try.

  1. Boot your computer in safe mode (holding the ⇧Shift key while turning it on) and try to run the problematic application in it.
  2. Launch the application and immediately hold down the ⇧Shift key to reset the previous window settings.
  3. In the Finder, open the Go menu, hold down the ⌥Alt/Option key and select the Library option that appears. In the window that opens, find the “Preferences” folder, which contains files like “com.COMPANY.APPNAME.plist”, where COMPANY is the developer, and APPNAME is the name of the application (for example, for the built-in text editor TextEdit, the file will be called “com.apple. textedit.plist", and for Adobe Illustrator- “com.adobe.illustrator.plist”). Find and delete files corresponding to the problematic software.
  4. Return to the “Library” folder and find the “Containers” folder, which will contain files like “com.COMPANY.APPNAME”, named according to the same principle as in the previous paragraph. Also remove files corresponding to the problematic software.
  5. Find the “Cache” folder in the library and delete the corresponding files, named according to the same principle as in the previous paragraphs (there may also be folders containing the name of the program or developer in the name, they should also be deleted).
  6. From the “Application Support” folder, move the folders containing the names of the problematic programs or their developers to a convenient location on your disk. These folders may contain user data, which, if this method does not solve the problem, should be returned.
  7. Run Terminal from the “Utilities” folder and enter the command open $TMPDIR../ This will open the folder that is assigned to your user account for storing temporary application files (temporary settings, downloads and other files). In the “C” folder (from the word “Caches”), delete the files and folders that correspond to the problematic software (they are named according to the same principle as in the previous paragraphs). The same should be done with the “T” folder (from “Temporary items”). In principle, you can safely delete the entire contents of this folder. However, it is better to start with those files that relate to the problematic software.
  8. Try running the application again. It is worth considering that as a result, you may need to re-activate the programs.

Finally

If the steps described above do not help, you should look for a more specific approach to your problem. The technical support service or the user community can help you with this, not only on official ones, but also on third-party, thematic forums, which can be accessed through search services. And you can read about how to use these resources most effectively in one of our

Hung programs stop responding to user commands and cannot be terminated in the normal way. In Windows, the task manager is used to force them to end. UNIX-like operating systems, which include the Apple operating system, use the kill command and its graphical interface. Today we will talk about how to force close a program on Mac.

The workspace in macOS is organized using virtual desktops. Using this function allows you not only to rationally distribute windows, but also to easily terminate any hung program.

  1. Call Mission Control by pressing the F3 key or the Control + combination. We go to another desktop, free from the frozen program, and click on the apple logo in the menu bar.

  1. Select the marked item. If the additional space is not used, and the spinning “umbrella” indicating freezing prevents you from getting to the system menu, you can use hot keys. Press + Command + Esc together.

  1. Any of the described actions will open a window with a list of running applications. The required one is highlighted in red and accompanied by the inscription “not responding”. Select it and click the “Finish” button.

  1. The OS will ask for confirmation to perform this operation.

When the focus is on a window that has stopped responding, you can close it without using the system menu. Press the Command ++ Shift + Esc keys simultaneously. In this case, no notifications are shown and no confirmation is required.

Dock

Every program running on a Mac places its own icon in the Dock. In normal mode, the control context menu contains the “Finish” item. By pressing the key, we open its extended version. It appears an option that allows you to force quit an application that has decided to freeze.

Finder Feature

Finder starts when the OS starts and runs continuously. On Mac, this is the only application that cannot be closed. When selected, the shutdown command changes to restart.

In the Dock, to open advanced options with the item marked in the screenshot, press Option before calling the context menu on the Finder icon.

System monitoring

The System Monitor application allows you to study various parameters of the interaction of software and OS processes with MacBook hardware resources. In addition to viewing data, you can also terminate a frozen program.

  1. Open a Finder window and go to the Utilities folder. We start monitoring.

  1. Using the search field marked with a frame, you can find the desired process by name. Applications that are not responding to system requests will be highlighted in red, similar to the force quit menu. Select the one you need and press the button indicated by the arrow.

  1. An additional menu will open in which you can choose normal or forced completion.

In addition to programs, System Monitor allows you to work with system processes that do not have their own GUI, but may also stop responding to OS or user requests.

If for some reason a frozen application cannot be removed in the graphical interface, you can resort to the command line.

  1. We open the “Utilities” folder that is already familiar to us. Launch "Terminal".

  1. The top command allows you to display a list of processes running on the system. To terminate the application in Terminal, you need to pay attention to the first two columns. PID is the current process ID on the system, and Command is its name. The screenshot shows these options for the Notes app. Having found the data we need, we complete the work of top by pressing the Q button.

  1. Now, to remove this task, you need to execute one of two commands. We use the process name or its PID. Enter “killall Notes” or “kill -9 19580” into the Terminal. The result of their execution is the same. The selected application is forced to quit. Killall is more convenient when we know exactly the name of the process. PID is not a constant value and must be determined every time.

Both commands do not require additional confirmation, so working in the Terminal requires precision.

Finally

Applications on macOS do not freeze often, and the GUI capabilities are enough to complete them in most cases. It is likely that you will never have to use the command line, but knowledge of its capabilities can come in handy at the most unexpected moment.

Video instruction

You can see how the described actions are performed in real time in the training video below.

The vast majority of Mac owners have upgraded to the new version of OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 without any problems. But there are also those who have encountered serious errors. Among the most common errors of the latest update: unexpected freezes of the OS, inaccessibility of applications and errors about their damage, disappearance of icons. MacDigger looked at the most pressing problems that users face after upgrading to OS X 10.11.4.

1. Mac apps won't launch or are corrupted after updating to OS X 10.11.4

In most cases, clearing temporary files in the /private/var/ folders and then restarting the computer helps, however, some users note that clearing the cache does not work properly and the error recurs.

If the problem cannot be resolved, there is another way. Before you begin, make sure you have an up-to-date backup of your system.

  • Restart your Mac, enter Safe Mode, and launch Terminal. If Terminal.app does not launch, create a separate administrator account, log in and follow the steps.
  • Type at the command line: cd /private/var/folders/
  • Determine the directories within this directory that relate to the problematic user using the ls –al command
  • Once you have found the problematic folder, delete the folder(s) using the rm command

After this, restart your Mac. The problem with application startup errors after updating the OS should be resolved.

2. Application icons appear as an unknown file

Some users, after updating to OS X 10.11.4, found that application icons appear as standard icons in both the Dock and Finder. You can fix this failure using the command in the Terminal:

rm ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.finder/Cache.db

This command clears the Finder cache. Once completed, restart your Mac as usual.

3. Mac is running slower

In this case, we can only advise not to do anything. Yes, you heard right. For some time after the update, various internal processes take place in the bowels of OS X, file indexing and so on. It may take the system a few minutes to a few hours to complete these steps, so just wait.

4. Mac randomly freezes

The problem of random OS X freezing is very annoying. With a high degree of probability, the origins lie in the Safari browser, so we can recommend temporarily using Google Chrome instead. Let's hope that the next OS X update will fix this annoying error.

If you are used to Safari, then try to force quit the browser and related services. To do this, open System Monitoring, find the “Safari Web Content” process in the list, next to which will be the inscription “Not responding”, or the most resource-intensive ones in the list.

Other troubleshooting options

If none of the above methods help, you can try the following:

  • Reinstall OS X in recovery mode. This will reset all system software.
  • Restore a Time Machine backup if you created one before upgrading to OS X 10.11.4.

Have you encountered problems after updating OS X El Capitan? Have you noticed changes in how your Mac works? If problems arose, how were they resolved? We are waiting for your feedback in the comments.

Technical level: Average

Summary

Many novice users encounter this problem:

"The program has stopped working...."

And this problem irritates many people.

Now I will tell you how to deal with this problem.


Details

First, let's look at the possible options that cause this trouble to arise:

1. A lot of third-party software is installed that “eats” system resources.

2. The program does not have enough RAM.

3. The system does not have the necessary software installed for the “correct” operation of the program.

5. The problem is in the program itself.

6. When starting, the program accesses some system file that may be damaged.

Now let's go through each of these options:

1. See if the program will crash in the “clean” boot mode, if everything works fine in this mode, then we will try to identify the culprit among all the installed software using the “halving” method.

Go to System Configuration -> Services and enable half of the services and reboot. If the problem does not appear, the reason is the remaining disabled services. If the problem is reproducible, the reason is the enabled services - disable half of them and reboot again. The same goes for software in Startup.

2. Make sure that you have the swap file enabled, to do this:

a) Click Start -> Control Panel -> System -> All Control Panel Items -> Advanced system settings -> Advanced:

b) In the Performance section, click Option, open the Advanced tab and click Change;

c) And make sure that there is a checkmark next to the inscription “Automatically select the size of the paging file.”

3. Make sure you have the following software installed:

Then after installing them, install All updates that will be in Windows Update!

4. Check the system for malware using Dr.Web CureIt.

5. The problem may be in the program itself:

a) If you have a pirated version of the program installed (hacked, RePack), then contact the person from whom you downloaded it;

b) If you have a Beta version of the program installed, remove it and find the finished version of the program from the developer:

c) If you have a licensed version of the program, then contact technical support. manufacturer support.

6. Let's determine who is to blame for the crash of the program, for this:

a) Download the ProcDump program and unpack it into the C:\ProcDump folder;

b) Open a command prompt on behalf of administrator and do:

  • C:\ProcDump\procdump.exe -accepteula -e -w [failed application name] C:\ProcDump\

c) How to determine the name of the failed application:

1) go to Control Panel -> All Control Panel Items -> Action Center -> System Stability Monitor -> Problem Reports.

2) Find the event when the problematic application crashed, double-click on it with the left mouse button and there you will see the inscription “Application name:

c) Launch this application and wait for it to crash.

d) After this you will have a file with the extension .dmp in C:\ProcDump

e) Now let's look into this (you can look into it the same way as into blue screen dumps Analysis of the causes of BSOD using Debugging Tools for Windows (only the command will look differently: Kdfe -v [path to dump]).

f) How to determine what kind of file is at fault - determine whether it is a system file or belongs to a third-party program (to do this, just google it), if it is a third-party program, then determine which one and delete it.

If the file is system, then run the command line on behalf of administrator and run the command:

  • sfc /scannow

Wait until the check is completed and:

If at the end of the check it says that all files have been restored, then reboot to fully restore them.
If at the end of the check it says that not all files were recovered, then:

If you have Windows 8/8.1, then you just need to run the command in the command line, launched as administrator, with the Internet connected:

  • DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

If you have Windows 7, then let's turn to another article (being written) for help.

P.S. Thanks to Dmitry Kulakov for giving me the idea for this article.

If you have already done so, you have probably experienced problems launching some applications. Many programs have not yet acquired support for the new operating system, since it is in beta testing and may undergo major changes before the official release. But what if you urgently need to open an application that is not supported by OS X Yosemite? Luckily, there is an easy way to do this.

For example, one of the most famous applications that refuses to launch on OS X Yosemite is the cross-platform Viber messenger. When I try to open it, the system gives the following error.


One of our readers suggested his own way to launch such programs. We decided to check it out and were pleasantly surprised: Viber actually launched.

The sequence of actions is simple: go to the “Programs” section, then look for the application that needs to be launched. Right-click and click “Show package contents”.


We go to the Contents folder, after that - to the MacOS folder, where the “Terminal” file with the name of your application is located. Launch it and enjoy your favorite program! The terminal window can be minimized.


In the same way you can run