It's always a smart move to reboot using Disk Drill's Data Recovery Boot Drive and proceed from the minimal OS X boot from USB. Make sure the drive with lost data is completely disconnected. Get to any Mac, and download free Disk Drill. Install and launch it. Choose 'Create Boot Drive' from the main list of available tools and follow the. Oct 10, 2017 Mac unable to restart; Can you move the cursor? If yes, try this. Before you force restart a Mac, it’s always recommended to first try a software solution. Go to the Apple menu Choose Restart Click Restart in the menu that appears. Two ways to force restart a Mac. The simplest method: hold down the Power button till your Mac shuts down.
Before we get our hands dirty, here’s a word of warning. If you’re wondering how to reboot a MacBook Pro, bear in mind it’s the last resort when all other methods to unfreeze your Mac had failed. Don’t try it too often as it may harm your system. No question, your Mac can handle rapid power losses and your hardware most likely won’t be hurt. What’s at risk though, is your data because each time you force reboot a Mac it affects the consistency of the file system. Now that you’ve been warned, let’s go.
Symptoms your frozen Mac needs a force restart
- Applications are not responding
- Pointer is not responsive
- Loud fan noise
- The screen goes black
- Mac unable to restart
Can you move the cursor? If yes, try this
Before you force restart a Mac, it’s always recommended to first try a software solution.
Go to the Apple menu
Choose Restart
Click Restart in the menu that appears
Two ways to force restart a Mac
The simplest method: hold down the Power button till your Mac shuts down. Press the button again to restart it.
If your Mac hangs for good and the pointer is inactive:
Hold down Control + Command while pressing the Power button.
This is an alternative key combination to force restart a Mac. By the way, if you are on an iMac, the Power button is found on the back of your Mac. Voila!
Is Shut Down any different from Restart?
The difference between Shut Down and Restart is quite self-explanatory. When you perform a restart, your Mac will turn on again loading its previously active apps. As for shut down, your Mac won’t start until you press the Power button again. Interestingly, all new Macs have an automatic reboot feature built-in. So even if you sit and do nothing, your frozen Mac would eventually reboot by itself, though it takes a bit of patience.
How to force shut down a frozen Mac
If you need to force shut down a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, all you need is again to press a Power button on your Mac’s keyboard.
Press and hold Power button for 2 seconds
Choose Restart, Sleep or Shut Down in the menu that appears
If you don’t want to reload the baggage of your previously opened apps, tick off “Reopen windows when logging back in”. We do recommend you to deselect this option when your Mac is slow in order to lighten the weight on your RAM.
If your Mac won’t shut down:
Press and hold Power button for about 6 seconds
Hold the button until the Mac shuts down.
Needless to say that when you force restart a Mac all your unsaved projects may be lost. It’s unfair, we know.
Why does my Mac keep freezing?
The obvious explanation is your Mac lacks memory. Or to put another way, there are too many active processes running on your Mac. First off, go to Activity Monitor to check your memory usage.
Go to Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor
Click the Memory tab
Now, look into how heavily your Memory is loaded. Quit apps that eat up too much memory for no reason. While this may work as a temporary solution, it doesn’t stop your Mac from freezing up again. You can either force reboot your Mac each time or opt for a radical solution. Below are a few more ideas you can try.
More ways to fix a frozen Mac
Restart your Mac in the Diagnostics mode
Shut down your Mac and reboot while pressing D key. Within the menu that appears, launch the Apple Diagnostics tool. This will check your Mac’s drive for errors. From then, follow the prompts to finish the diagnostics.
Clean up your Mac
Remove old unused apps, system junk, and pervasive browser extensions. For this purpose, try running CleanMyMac application on your Mac.
It’s quite effective in removing all junk from your Mac and has a number of helpful utilities, like RAM free up or app uninstaller. Download it for free here .
Reinstall your macOS
This is the most radical of all methods, that’s why it’s so effective.
Check out how to clean install macOS Sierra
Instructions for macOS High Sierra
How to clean install macOS Mojave
How to clean install macOS Catalina
Hope this guide has helped you. Before you force shut down this article, feel free to share it, using the social buttons below. Cheers!
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Oct 13, 2020 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions
Recovery Mode in OS X provides a set of solutions for users to utilize when users need to repair and reinstall their operating system in an emergency. You can also reset the Mac password using recovery mode if needed. There are several ways to boot Mac into recovery mode. If you find one method overwhelming, there are several other alternatives you can use. We will walk you through the different ways on how to boot Mac into recovery mode so that they will become undoubtedly useful in a rare emergency.
Part 1: How to Boot Mac in Internet Recovery Mode
Along with the introduction of a locally stored recovery volume, Apple introduced its Internet Recovery service that allows your operating system to download contents of the recovery hard disk partition from the company's service. This option is great to use when your local drive is completely corrupted and you no longer can access locally-stored recovery tools.
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To launch Internet Recovery, make sure your Mac is connected to a WiFi network and follow the steps below:
- Reboot your Mac.
- Hold the 'Options', 'Command', and 'R' buttons until the boot chimes are triggered.
- Wait until the system finished downloading the recovery tools from Apple's website.
It is noted that you are unable to boot Mac into Recovery Mode if you are using devices older than the ones below:
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011)
- MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011)
- MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2011)
- iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2011)
- iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011)
- MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2010)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010)
- Mac mini (Mid 2010)
- MacBook Pro (15-inch and 17-inch, Mid 2010)
- iMac (21.5-inch and 27-inch, Mid 2010)
- MacBook Air (11-inch and 13-inch, Late 2010)
Part 2: How to Create a bootable drive into Recovery Mode
You can create a bootable drive to store an OS X Recovery Disk so that you can access recovery tools anytime, anywhere. It would be great if you could invest in a high-capacity USB 3.0 flash drive to store the required tools.
There are plenty of articles outlining how you can create a bootable OS X Recovery Disk, including ours. Once you have this established, you can follow these steps to get your Mac into Recovery Mode:
- Reboot your Mac.
- Hold down 'Option' on your keyboard once you hear the chime sound.
- Attach your bootable OS X Recovery Disk to your Mac and select it from the prompt list.
- Your Mac will launch into Recovery Mode and you can start fixing your Mac.
As you can see, there are plenty of methods you can use to boot Mac into Recovery Mode. There is no need to panic when you find yourself in trouble - just choose and master the method that seems least intimidating to you and you will be well on your way. After you boot Mac into Recovery Mode, you can also restore your data on Mac.
Part 3: How to Boot Mac with Installation Disk
If you are using an older Mac, it probably comes with a grey recovery DVD that you can use to run recovery routines. If you had bought a copy of a newer operating system, you can also use the installation disk to perform recovery.
It is the easiest way to go into Recovery Mode and here is how you can do it:
- Insert the grey DVD and reboot your Mac.
- Hold down 'C' on your keyboard until you hear the boot chimes.
The recovery tool will take some time to load. Follow the wizard that will put your Mac into Recovery Mode.
Part 4: How to Boot Mac into Recovery Mode with Local Recovery
- Reboot your Mac.
- Hold the 'Command' and 'R' buttons until the boot chimes are triggered.
- You will see the OS X utility window that will prompt you to choose one of the four options.
Part 5: How to Boot Mac into Recovery Mode from Time Machine
It is really important to keep backups of your machine and Apple facilitates this with its Time Machine feature. It would be best to store your backup on an external drive so that you can initiate Recovery Mode using this when your hard drive is wiped out.
Follow these steps to boot Mac into Recovery Mode:
- Reboot your Mac.
- Hold down the Option button when the startup chimes sound.
- Connect your Time Machine drive. It will take some time for the system to detect the drive. You might need to key in your password.
- Choose the drive to launch your Mac into Recovery Mode.
After all the above methods, you finally fail to boot your Mac into Recovery mode. Don't worry. We also provide further solutions for you - Fix 'Cannot boot into Recovery mode'. For those who need the data recovery solution, Recoverit would be a nice option. Free download and try it now.
Video Tutorial on How to Boot Mac into Recovery Mode
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