It may require you to "kill" several processes to kil off a User. Not sure
but seems reasonable.

Do we assume that you have done a "ps -ax" to look at All the System
processes and All the User processes?

When an app has crashed and you have the "Pizza Wheel of Death" hanging the
User up, there is a way to log in as another user. I have done it but forget
how. SOrry.

I would try either a "-9" to kill the hung app or a "-13" if necessary if a
"-9" doesn't work.

Killing the finder will not work. A "Finder" must be running at all times.

One thing I would do and most people do not think of this; periodically and
certainly before you preform ANY System Patch or Upgrade run the "disk
Utility" repair. Because of sloppy programmers and developers not resetting
File & Folder permissions.as their programs get installed.
This is one of the main reasons why things Hang, Crash or Slow Down. I know
that not running the "Disk Repair Utility" is one of the main reasons why
many people have problems after a System Upgrade.

Anyway, I hope some of this may help.

Al
"Michael Levin" <mlevin77@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:BC8F802E.13270%mlevin77@comcast.net...
> A related question to my postings on my G5/OSX crashing. Today, while
> working on some stuff, I got the rotating beach ball. The Reto Player I
had
> in background kept playing, and I could move the cursor, but I couldn't
> click on anything, and the force-quit keys didn't do anything. So I went
to
> another machine, and used SSH to log in to OSX. It worked fine. Clearly
the
> OS was still up. So, I figured, maybe I can force a reset of the GUI
> (finder, whatever else) and get things back without having to reboot the
> machine by pushing the power button. I did "top", and discovered the
process
> id's of stuff running. I killed (kill -9) photoshop (the app I was using
> which stuck), and also the finder. But the screen of my machine didn't
> change. Clearly I didn't get the right process. Finally I gave up and
> issued a reboot, which at least let me avoid a cold-reset. Does anyone
know
> which process I should kill from the command line to log out the user and
> restart the gui interface from a clean state when this kind of hang
happens?
>
> --
>
> Mike Levin
> mlevin77@comcast.net
>