Q: Macbook Pro Mid 2007 17 Inch - Mavericks hangs after starting.

I'm also having problems with my mid 2007 MBP (MacBookPro3,1) freezing after upgrading to Mavericks, and after reading this post I'm begining to suspect it might be related to using an ethernet cable...

I upgraded my MBP from Lion to Mavericks last weekend. I decided to do a clean install so I backed everything up my NAS (using an ethernet cable instead of WiFi because it was faster), created a bootable USB stick and wiped the hard drive.

Mavericks took almost 9 hours to install (most of it spent at the "about a second remaining" stage!). Once it had finally completed and rebooted it froze almost immediatly. I held the power button down and restarted it. A few minutes later it froze again. And then again, and then again. I tried resetting the NVRAM and SMC but still it kept freezing. At this point it was getting late and I was getting fed up so I put the laptop away (disconecting the ethernet cable) and went to bed.

The following day I started it back up (no ethernet cable attached, just WiFi) and it seemed to be fine. In fact it's been running fine for a couple of days in which time I've been able to to reinstall most of my software and install some updates.

Then last night I decided to try restoring my 40gb Aperture library from my NAS. So I plugged in the ehernet cable and within a minute the laptop froze! I restarted and it froze again, and then again, and again. In the end I decided to give up, unplugged the ethernet cable, and now it's running fine!

I don't particularly relish the thought of having to restore all my data over WiFi (especially knowing how unreliable my WiFi router can be at times!), but I'd also rather not spend another Sunday afternoon re-installing Lion.

Hi rajsayshai,

I've read the link you sent before, and as matter of fact, that's what I used to make a bootable install disk.

Lion DiskMaker 2 is now Disk Maker X, and does not support DVDs anymore.

My MacBook Pro 3.1 definitely does not boot from usb pendrives.  I have a newer MacBook Pro, and the pendrives that boot on the newer one do not on the Santa Rosa.

I can see the bootable pendrive in the System Preferences / Startup Disk, I can select it and boot the Mac, but it will not boot from it.

If I hit the Option key at boot to choose a startup disk, the pendrive will not show up.

So at least my MacBook Pro 3.1 cannot boot from a USB pendrive.

As per Spotlight, in my case it normally takes a while on the first run and after building its database, it's unnoticeable.  An SSD drive makes it a swifter Mac.

Regards,

Guido

Hi guys,

I've been thoroughly Super Duping my drives, and doing updates and clean installs almost all day yesterday.

It definitely seems right to assume that the Ethernet connection is freezing our Macs, and I can rule out my SSD.

To brief it up a little, 

1. I tried to update my good working 10.8.4 system to Mavericks 10.9 and succeeded, but did not try Ethernet yet.
2. I tried to update my good working 10.8.4 system to 10.8.5 with the Combo Update and it did not go thru, it hanged at startup. This without trying Ethernet.
3. I completely erased my SSD again and did a clean install with 10.8.1 and applied the Combo Update and it worked fine this time.  Still not touching Ethernet.  So a clean install did work instead of an update, go figure.  The SSD does not seem to be a problem. It now has a Recovery partition and it works.
4. I started 10.8.5 in Safe Mode (Command - S), AND plugged in Ethernet, disabled WiFi, and BOOM, it hanged after a while.
5. Right now the Mac is off and unplugged with the battery out.  Will try later to start up without Ethernet again and see if it works without Ethernet.

I think we can safely assume that we have to stay away from Ethernet hoping for a solution, or live with up to 10.8.4 Mountain Lion, or our last good version.

When I get the Mac going I will try to disable the Ethernet connection under the System Preferences /Network, that's just in case I accidentally plug the cable in.  Still it's a bummer not having Ethernet.

I have also hava a Super Duped Mavericks updated system with all my info, the one that workde fine in point 1.

I will test it without Ethernet, and evaluate if I keep it or stay with my last good known setup.

Regards to all,

Guido

Thanks to everyone for the updates.

Here's what I can confirm about how to get Mavericks behaving. (I have an MBP 3,1 2007 Santa Rosa 2.2 GHz 15-inch.)

1. Yes, it is very clearly (instantaneously for me) wifi/ethernet related. And as some of you know, there is another whole thread about this problem, which surfaced when 10.8.5 came out.

2. Be careful - you can freeze your Mac even without the Ethernet cable attached! The freeze is clearly triggered by turning off wifi (perhaps because the Mac then checks the ethernet port).

3. You need to keep wifi on the whole time - unless/until Apple creates a fix.

4. I have had a lot of overheating issues. I appreciated the tip from user Clicke here, about allowing the MBP to cool right down etc. before trying to quickly get the settings right. However, his/her advice about toggling wifi off then on simply crashed my mac all over again. Instead, I then followed a tip from user Nuflexion here. He/she points out that if you can boot from a usable OS, then you should get inside the Mavericks OS you are troubleshooting and delete the airport preferences file.

4. So... combining their advice works!

(a) boot from a different drive (and stable OS) and delete the airport prefs on the Mavericks installation

(b) now boot from a very cool MBP, zapping the pram on the way through

(c) join your wifi network manually - don't bump the 'off' option in the airport menu!
(d) restart
(e) never turn off wifi or plug in an ethernet cable

This is working for me!

NB - I have been running a free app called 'temperature monitor', and the two CPU cores get awfully close to their 100-degree limit. Weirdly, CPU1 often fluctuates a bit between offering no result (just a dashed line) and giving readings in the mid-high 90s. CPU2 is hovering around 95 degrees.

More oddly, as I type this, the fans have slowed right down to quiet. I will report back in a day or two and tell you whether my MBP survived, or whether it overheated and continued to do the whole random shutdown thin

P.S. Ironic that the Mac runs hot and wastes power using wifi. If I could turn the wifi off, it would arguably put less drain on the system. And Mavericks is a big energy saver, so it's a shame to cancel some of that out.

Thanks for the info unsuscriber.

I haven't been able to recover from my last freeze, and it's too late now to try your remedies since I'm Super Duping back my last known good system to the Mac.  I will live with 10.8.4 'till some solution comes out.

My last attempt to recover from the hang was to start in Single user mode (Cmd - S).  I tried the command fsck and then let the system go on and start.  This time it hanged again, but I took a screen shot, literally.

Here it is:

Hi guido p

If you want to try my solution again, all you need to do is as follows:

(Note: it is important to use the actual Macintosh (in this case, your 2007 MBP 3,1 or whatever Mac is at issue) as the machine driving the Mavericks installer in what follows.)

1 - Get an empty/erased external HD (USB or FW is fine) - make sure it's a GUID-partition table HFS+ drive.

(If you only have half a drive, just partition it - you'd probably get away with 25GB or so, but go a lot more if you have it.)

[NB - You could even partition your internal HD if necessary. I guess the install would be a fair bit slower, but if you have the space, it should work fine. However, only do this if you have nothing external, because after the clean install described below, you'll want to migrate everything, so your HD needs to be big. In fact without an external HD I reckon somewhere you'd get jammed - unless, for example, you have a custom very-large HD in your old MBP.]

2 - Boot from your 10.8.4 or any modern stable OS - even 10.6 is fine.

3 - Make a spare copy of the Mavericks installer somewhere (so that you have 2 copies - the first copy tends to delete itself at the end of the install process, unless you have moved/copied it somewhere)

4 - Run a clean install of Mavericks onto that external drive/partition. (Choose it as the destination by clicking 'show all hard drives' in the relevant installer screen.)

5 - If the install goes ok, boot from that Mavericks drive. Make sure that you don't have an ethernet cable connected!

6. You will probably get the Apple setup wizard now - i.e. iCloud account, wifi network password etc. Fill that in, but postpone the use of migration manager.

7. This is probably all you need to do to get Mavericks stable. (I made the mistake at this point of switching wifi off to test the bug - and the bug bit me again.)

8. Now (assuming you have a full SuperDuper/CCC backup of your stable OS and your user accounts) run Disk Utility and wipe your internal drive (or the main partition, anyway).

9. Clone from the external Mavericks drive to the Internal drive.

10. Reboot, holding down option key and selecting the internal drive.

11. If all OK, remember never to connect ethernet or turn off wifi.

12. Run migration manager and bring over your old apps and accounts from your SuperDuper clone (or Time Machine or CCC).

13. KEEP your old stable-version backup. Never erase it! You don't yet know how many overheating issues are still to come, and you might one day hang the system by mistake - even if just turning off wifi when in an unusual wifi area or to save battery.

14. Backup your new mavericks internal HD on a fresh partition/drive using SuperDuper.

You should be set to go. I would also suggest installing a thermometer monitor and keeping an eye on your CPU temperatures. They are very revealing.

NB - I won't be pushing my old MBP 3,1 very hard. I have several newer Macs. But I worry about those of you using it as your main/only laptop. I think the risk of overheating on anything above Snow Leopard is high. (Snow Leopard runs incredibly cool. No other OS goes near it.) But at least Mavericks has smart energy and CPU management software. See here for tips.

Also, resetting the SMC can be useful when we're talking about heating problems.

See here for a tip from user mkwilkie about how to do that.

Hi unsuscriber,

Thanks for your tips and advice.

I also have newer Macs around that have taken the lead.  The only reason right now to compel me to use Mavericks on the MacBook Pro 3.1 is the latest iWork suite and the iCloud documents that I share with the another Mac.  My workaround will be to save a copy to the prior version and keep that way some compatibility.

And of course wait to see if an update addresses and solves the problems that trouble our vintage Macs with Mavericks.

I double checked last night that I can boot from a couple of Mavericks external disks without thouching the network settings.  I also checked activity monitor and on both cases Spotlight has a heavy running at first, and finally finished indexing and the Mac kept as cool as with Mountain Lion.  I didn't try to work with it and see if it would heat much.  I just kept it idle for a while.

This morning I updated my TimeMachine backup, and thank goodness I could plug Ethernet because it was already taking eons...

So for me and for now, I'll just stick to my last good knonw set.

I have 2 SSDs both Intel 335s on a MacBook Pro 8.1, seems to be having issues with it. I ran a disk benchmark with Mountain Lion and it says 450MB write and 490MB read. With Mavericks, I only have 300 write and 400 read. Something must be wrong...

Hello to everyone,

I have the same issue with freezing Mavericks / Mountain Lion 10.8.5

It is also related to ethernet port. On wifi it works fine.

I just came to idea to test the possibility of using ethernet through usb adapter ( than you plag the cable through usb and not ethernet port ) . Tomorrow I should get the adapter and will share with you my experience on this field.

Maybe some of you allready has tried this - please advice.

And by the way - did any of you write to apple support and got any answer on this bug?

I will write to Apple formally when I confirm I am not the only one experiencing that SSD buffer or speed bug, so waiting for more replies...

Mavericks hosed my 2008 Macbook Pro. Was running fine, until I turned off wifi, five seconds later it froze, and would restart only to a locked cursor, a spinner icon and overheating fans. Had to partition my drive and do a clean install. This is a major bug, it's 100% reproducible, I have no idea how this os made it out of beta but I hope it is fixed soon.

Hi Guys,

I have a friend owner of a MBP 2007 that he ask me to upgrade to maverick.

First of all, we got all your issues :

• Freeze on Ethernet plug
• Freeze when we disable the WiFi
• Must clear the NVRAM (Right Command / P / R ) to be able to reinstall

Previously, he was on Snow Leopard and one day ask me to checkout his laptop because he was freezing only at his home. To make the story short, his Internet provider have installed a new box that support ipv6, and I got the idea to disable it to fix that. And guess what it was working!

Now with Maverick, I wasn't sure it was that until I try it out, and guess what... that is the issue !

It seems the guys of Apple really don't want we disable ipv6 since Lion to do that on Maverick you have to follow the following steps :

1. Use Finder to open the Applications folder
2. Select the "Utilities" folder
3. Select "Terminal"
4. A screen will open.  At the prompt, enter the following command to determine all of your Mac's network interfaces:  networksetup -listallnetworkservices
5. To disable IPv6 for wireless, enter the following command: networksetup -setv6off Wi-Fi
6. To disable IPv6 for Ethernet, enter the following command: networksetup -setv6off Ethernet
7. To exit the terminal window, open the "Terminal" menu next to the Apple menu at the top left of the screen and select "Quit Terminal"

I hardly advise to do that on ALL your interfaces... If you need ipv6... I have to say: Go to an apple store, explain that to them... and ask them : WHY?!

Hope that will help you guys and make you keep your old baby for several more years