My OS X jaguar always freezes up when I run a slide show in iPhoto or the desktop. Its not completely frozen but a black screen with mouse movment sometimes.
Is there a way to kill the process from a PC connected to the network?
I have the same problem with iPhoto, some of the screensavers and most games. The system isn't hung, but even trying to kill things remotely, I couldn't get the screen to come alive again.
First, press command-option-escape. If the force quit window doesn't come to the front, try it again.
If that fails, then you can try killing it over the network as you suspected. You need to have had SSH (remote access) enabled in the System Preferences' Sharing pane before the supposed hang. You also need your Mac's IP address.
Go to your PC and open an SSH client. Connect to your Mac and use "ps" or "top" to get the process ID of the offending app. Then use the "kill" command on it.
If you are a osx/unix/linux newbie and are not familiar with these commands, just say so.
Cause its a "heavy" app.. How many items are in your slide show? Also how much RAM do you have? You could get a freeze while its shifting RAM from your real RAM to your swap space. Also check and make sure there are no other processes related to iPhoto and your slide show and kill those as well.
I`m not to familiar with iPhoto but I know some OS X apps have helper processes that could be the cause of the hang after the killing of iPhoto
EDIT: also I heard great things about escape pod, a force quit utility from ambrosia.
I only had about 12 pics and I have 1GB of ram. In my case, force quit never works and I've never had escape pod work for me. But I know my graphics card has issues with X (though it's the default ATi 128 Rage Pro that came with my sawtooth). I hope that's not the problem in your case, because otherwise many things won't work.
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If that fails, then you can try killing it over the network as you suspected. You need to have had SSH (remote access) enabled in the System Preferences' Sharing pane before the supposed hang. You also need your Mac's IP address.
Go to your PC and open an SSH client. Connect to your Mac and use "ps" or "top" to get the process ID of the offending app. Then use the "kill" command on it.
If you are a osx/unix/linux newbie and are not familiar with these commands, just say so.
Any idea why iPhoto gets hung like that?
I`m not to familiar with iPhoto but I know some OS X apps have helper processes that could be the cause of the hang after the killing of iPhoto
EDIT: also I heard great things about escape pod, a force quit utility from ambrosia.