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There's lots of common OS X problems and situations that can be overcome with out a single reboot required. Here's how.

There are those who simply never shut down — people who are so adverse to rebooting their machines they do everything in their power to avoid it. But energy concerns aside, there are tons of valid reasons for doing so. Some prefer a persistent workspace, while others might run home servers. For these people, continuous uptime is an must. But driver updates or stubborn apps are all it takes to bring your system to a reboot-worthy halt.

License to Kill Tasks

OS X is a relatively stable operating system, but isn't without its faults. On occasion, the Dock may freeze, or your menubar might crash — and there's simply no way to force close these processes like normal apps. Terminal, however, makes it easy to regain control.

Dock or virtual desktop type...

killall -KILL Dock

If the menubar disappears or stops responding...

killall -KILL SystemUIServer

And finally, to force close Finder (should the usual GUI approach fail)...

killall -KILL Finder

Depending on how your Mac is setup, you may require administrator privileges. If that's the case, simply include "sudo" before each of the above commands, and type in your password when asked.

Force Close Unruly Apps

Command + Option + Escape. However, it only applies to those applications that run from the Dock, excluding the likes of Dropbox or Last.FM that choose to live in the menubar instead. Should any of your background apps freeze, you'll need to take a different approach to shut them down.

Activity Monitor is found in your Utilities folder, and lists all of your Mac's currently running processes — including those missing from the force close GUI. From here, it's a simpler matter of identifying problem processes and killing them as needed, minus the usual reboot.