Q: Mac keeps randomly freezing

Apple Support Communities contributor etresoft wrote a very useful app to quickly gather certain system information that may help point to a cause of this problem. Go to his website, download and run EtreCheck:

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Etrecheck will be in your Downloads folder. Open it from there. You may see the following dialog box:

Click Open - etresoft contributes to this forum frequently and can be considered a trustworthy developer.

It will take a moment to run as it collects its data.

Copy and paste its output in a reply.

Do not be concerned about anything that says "Problem" or "failed".

EtreCheck was designed to remove any personal information (such as your computer's name and serial numbers) but if you see anything that looks like an email address or any other personal information that should not be divulged to others, please delete or obscure that information when you post the reply.

When you are finished with EtreCheck, quit the program. It occupies very little space, and you can keep it or drag it to the Trash as you wish.

Back up your hard disk, not necessarily that there is any reason to suspect it is failing, but the slowdowns you describe can presage an impending disk failure and you should have backups anyway.

There are way too many third party system modifications, Internet plugins, and User startup items in your report to implicate any particular one, but a heavily modified system such as yours will be difficult to maintain. It is also possible for one third party modification to interfere with another, so that either one may work on its own but the combination of both can cause problems.

To isolate the problem consider these suggestions:

• Creating a temporary account to isolate user-specific problems: Isolating an issue by using another user account

Log out of your usual account and log in to the temporary one. If the problems subside they are caused by one or more of your Login Items. Disable them in System Preferences > Users and Groups > select your account > Login Items.

Delete the temporary account when you are finished with it.

• Safe Mode or "Safe Boot" is a troubleshooting mode that bypasses all third party system extensions and loads only required system components. Read about it: Starting up in Safe Mode

Safe Mode is for troubleshooting only. Startup will take a long time and some programs (iTunes for example) will not work in Safe Mode. Restarting your Mac normally will restore its previous state. If the Mac works in Safe Mode without the frequent "wait cursor" and freezing, then your problems are due to one or more of the system modifications you installed. They will affect all users so the behaviour will be affect the temporary user account as well.

For a general purpose troubleshooting read Isolating issues in Mac OS X and OS X Mountain Lion: If your Mac runs slowly. The article is very cursory, but be sure to read through to the end. Unfortunately the link to Disk Utility at the end points to nothing useful, so use this one: Disk Utility. Use Disk Utility to repair your startup disk, and report any errors it finds.

More links you may find helpful:

• Memory limitations: Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used

You have plenty of RAM but poorly written apps or system modifications can use all of it, resulting in slowdowns. Read the above to determine if excessive amounts of virtual memory are required.

• Identifying resource hogs and other tips: Runaway applications can shorten battery runtime, affect performance, and increase heat and fan activity. Use Activity Monitor to correlate the slowdowns to one or more active processes.

• To identify potential hardware problems: Apple Hardware Test

Lastly: though it will not fix your problems, update to OS X 10.8.4. Check the App Store. It was released today.

The next time you have the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.

Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar.

Scroll back in the log to the time you noted above. Select any messages timestamped from then until the end of the episode. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).

When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.

Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Hi,

I have been using and occasionally fixing Apple OS's since OS 7.0 and I do get bit irritated with all the replies from all the "know alls" on this topic. AND I have searched Hi and Lo for a reasonable answer.

I have NEVER had such a frustrating experience with a Apple OS until OSX 10.8.4, randomly giving me processes (not responding).

There is NO consistency and happens with all apps Apple and others and has nothing to do with mode. It is an OS bug and leaves me wondering why.

Any solutions out there? Please.

Alternately where can I get a beta version of "Mavericks" that I can install?

Thanks

Hi Gamermjs,

Sorry but I don't buy it.

If you Google "Mountain Lion, not responding". You will see that there is every concieveable problem with this "freeze" being posted with as many "solutions".

To brush it off by saying it was a cable (your solution) or using a different mode or doing a hardware test is not good enough. I have Activity monitor open on my desktop permanently and can see exactly which apps (from Finder to Skype to Firefox to Safari to Pages to etc etc) that goes on a "beachball freeze" for anything from a few seconds to - well let me go and make a coffee while the ball goes round and round - and then its gone with NO way of getting a diagnosis of what is happening deep down. It is also not a malware as I also have virus checking apps and Little Snitch running to try and find out what it is.

Frustrating

MyEyEMac wrote:

 

I have been using and occasionally fixing Apple OS's since OS 7.0 ...

Then you should know enough to ask a new question so that your specific circumstance can be addressed.

It is also not a malware as I also have virus checking apps

Your virus checking apps may very well be malware, but there may be additional reasons for your frustrations that no one is in position to address without more information regarding your system. Please post a new question with the results of EtreCheck as instructed to the OP above, or Linc Davis's instructions, or at least some information with which to start.

OK No problem. I will d/l EtreCheck and then post the results as requested.

I hate to be negative but I don't think anyone will find anything.

BTW since the last post Pages beachballed twice and Safari once each one for approx 20-30 secs

Hey Guys,

Just a heads-up on what I did. The short story

After much clearing caches and zapping Pram etc etc. I re-installed back to ML 10.8.1.

Problem Solved!

Running like a dream, back to where I was.

It was not a hardware or a malware etc problem.

Apologies to Apple but it was an update problem ... do not update above 10.8.1 ...wait for Mavericks.

EtreCheck won't help any now. 

MyEyEMac wrote:

 

... Problem Solved!

Problem deferred.

Downgrading OS X is not the way to address third party system modifications that break with system updates. Since you won't divulge what that is we'll never know the reason, but the problematic code remains on your Mac.

FIx the problem, not the symptom. That's what the OP did.

I'm having freezing problems myself. Wondering if anyone can deduce anything from my log...

Hardware Information:

          MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011)

          MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro8,2

          1 2 GHz Intel Core i7 CPU: 4 cores

          4 GB RAM

Video Information:

          Intel HD Graphics 3000 - VRAM: 384 MB

          AMD Radeon HD 6490M - VRAM: 256 MB

Startup Items:

          VirtualBox - Path: /Library/StartupItems/VirtualBox

System Software:

          OS X 10.8.4 (12E55) - Uptime: 0 days 0:23:9

Disk Information:

          TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF disk0 : (500.11 GB)

          S.M.A.R.T. Status: Failing

                    disk0s1 (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

                    Macintosh HD (disk0s2) /: 499.25 GB (89.68 GB free)

                    Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB

          MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-8A8 

USB Information:

          Apple Inc. BRCM2070 Hub

                    Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

          Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

          Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)

          Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver

FireWire Information:

Thunderbolt Information:

          Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Kernel Extensions:

          com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverInt          (0.0.68)

          com.parallels.kext.prl_usb_connect          (7.0

          com.parallels.kext.prl_hypervisor          (7.0

          com.parallels.kext.prl_hid_hook          (7.0

          com.parallels.kext.prl_netbridge          (7.0

          com.parallels.kext.prl_vnic          (7.0

          org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv          (4.1.6)

          org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB          (4.1.6)

          org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetFlt          (4.1.6)

          org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetAdp          (4.1.6)

Problem System Launch Daemons:

Problem System Launch Agents:

Launch Daemons:

          [loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist

          [loaded] com.disc-soft.DAEMONTools.PrivilegedHelper.plist

          [loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist

          [loaded] com.parallels.desktop.launchdaemon.plist

          [loaded] com.prosofteng.DriveGenius.locum.plist

          [loaded] com.rim.BBDaemon.plist

Launch Agents:

          [loaded] com.parallels.desktop.launch.plist

          [loaded] com.parallels.DesktopControlAgent.plist

          [loaded] com.parallels.vm.prl_pcproxy.plist

          [loaded] com.rim.BBAlbumArtCacher.plist

          [loaded] com.rim.BBLaunchAgent.plist

User Launch Agents:

          [loaded] com.adobe.ARM.202f4087f2bbde52e3ac2df389f53a4f123223c9cc56a8fd83a6f7ae.plist

          [failed] com.apple.CSConfigDotMacCert-[redacted]@me.com-SharedServices.Agent.plist

          [loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist

          [failed] com.mlbam.nexdef.core.NexdefLoader.plist

          [failed] com.prosofteng.DGMonitor.plist

          [not loaded] org.virtualbox.vboxwebsrv.plist

User Login Items:

          Flux

          iTunesHelper

          Caffeine

          Dropbox

          BlackBerry Device Manager

3rd Party Preference Panes:

          Flash Player

          Perian

Internet Plug-ins:

          AdobePDFViewer.plugin

          AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin

          Flash Player.plugin

          FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin

          GameFacePlugin.plugin

          GarminGpsControl.plugin

          iPhotoPhotocast.plugin

          JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

          QuickTime Plugin.plugin

          SharePointBrowserPlugin.plugin

          Silverlight.plugin

          Unity Web Player.plugin

User Internet Plug-ins:

Bad Fonts:

          None

Top Processes by CPU:

              15%          WindowServer

              11%          Google Chrome

               3%          hidd

               1%          EtreCheck

               0%          fontd

               0%          BBLaunchAgent

               0%          prl_disp_service

               0%          Flux

               0%          Dock

               0%          mds

Top Processes by Memory:

          160 MB             Google Chrome

          108 MB             Google Chrome Helper

          86 MB              AdobeReader

          78 MB              Dropbox

          66 MB              WindowServer

          61 MB              mds

          57 MB              Dock

          53 MB              Finder

          29 MB              coreservicesd

          25 MB              RimAlbumArtDaemon

Virtual Memory Statistics

          1.16 GB            Free RAM

          1.65 GB            Active RAM

          153 MB             Inactive RAM

          1.04 GB            Wired RAM

          690 MB             Page-ins

          0 B                Page-outs

cobbs87 wrote:

 

Disk Information:

          TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF disk0 : (500.11 GB)

          S.M.A.R.T. Status: Failing

You have an impending hard disk drive failure. Consider yourself fortunate in that you now have an opportunity to back up your important information if you have not done so already.

Replacing the hard disk itself is not unreasonably expensive, and is easily accomplished yourself if you are so inclined. Having a verified and operational backup turns a potential disaster into a non-event.

Wow thank you. Good to know. Luckily I believe I still have Apple Car. Aside from being a nuisance this should be a non-issue. I am a bit alarmed to see this is my second hard drive in a 2 year span.