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Level 4

2,305 points

Freezes when idle

I've been having an issue since installing Leopard. When I leave it idle, it will freeze. Sometimes, the mouse will bring the display out of sleep but it will be frozen; other times, the display won't even wake up. It's never happened while I have been on the computer but it's happened every single time I've left it for several hours unattended. Everything else works fine (except Logic Node crashes at startup).

I installed Leopard as an archive and install so there shouldn't be any issues with improperly upgraded files. Should I try booting up in safe mode and see what happens? Anyone haven any suggestions? I don't exactly want to put it to sleep every time I'm gone for any length of time.

Octa-core Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5), 250+500GB hd, 3GB ram, AE, BT

Posted on Nov 5, 2007 6:29 AM

26 replies

Nov 11, 2007 4:14 PM in response to The Innovator

Here's another one for this great pile of software...

Since Leopard, I have an 60% chance at a successful wakeup. 20% of the time it never comes out of sleep.

I believe it has to do with having USB devices connected *that are powered off*. My iPod plugged in, works no problem. But with a powered-down HD or digicam, I get routine lockups.

Anyone see similar behaviour?

The Innovator Author

Level 4

2,305 points

Nov 11, 2007 7:34 PM in response to The Innovator

I've been reading the "graphics glitches" thread that Mac Pro users who have the X1900 graphics cards are having. I thought this might be the issue but I'm becoming less convinced. I do think it's graphics related but not due to the card overheating. Nearly all my freezes have occurred while I was away from the computer while the monitor was sleeping. The graphics card isn't even doing anything at these times. I can play an HD movie or run the graphics card at 100% without freezing. The only thing I've found that will cure the freezing is rebooting is safe mode. I'm pretty sure safe mode disables things like quartz extreme and core image as graphics performance is not great but I don't get any freezes. I'd like to contact Apple about this issue but I'm pretty far past my 90 day Applecare.

Redarm

Level 4

2,593 points

Nov 11, 2007 11:33 PM in response to The Innovator

A new theory (for everyone who has "CleanApp" installed):
So far the display froze every time I left it on overnight - hard restart with Kernel Panic. Only after taking out CleanApp's Library items (AppSupport>CleanApp>CleanApp Daemon.app and Startup Items>CleanAppDaemon {the whole folder}) it didn't freeze. But I've only tested it twice so far.

Message was edited by: Redarm

Nov 12, 2007 4:45 AM in response to The Innovator

I have the same issues - PBook G4, 1.33 ghz, 1.25 gig ram, no peripherals. Apps slow or spinning beachball of death, hard restart comes up with blue screen. Sometimes I can zap PRAM, but mostly have to run Disk Utility to repair and it works fine for a day or two. I originally ran an upgrade install which had these problems, then did a clean install.

This is very frustrating - I keep the Leopard disk in the computer at all times to fix this because it happens so frequently. BTW, I try to run Repair Disk Permissions and all I get is the spinning barber pole for several minutes. It has never indicated permissions were repaired. Any suggestions?

Nov 12, 2007 5:37 AM in response to Neone

i have exactly the same issues as urs, what is even worse is that my macbook just invalidates my 3Com access point sometimes, making my room-mates who share the same access point can't log onto the internet! i never expect Leopard would have a bug which would affect not only my machine, is it very embarressing that i dare not to turn on my macbook all the time, because i am afraid that i would crash the access point again.

hope that apple would fix it soon, it is very annoying.

CFW-YVR

Level 1

0 points

Nov 14, 2007 3:23 PM in response to CFW-YVR

... but the frequency of this event has really died down. This morning I had an odd variation in which the keyboard failed to respond until I rebooted. That happened another time as well, but eventually it came back.

Nov 22, 2007 11:44 PM in response to Gregory Gathright

{quote:title=Gregory Gathright wrote:}

BTW, I try to run Repair Disk Permissions and all I get is the spinning barber pole for several minutes. It has never indicated permissions were repaired. Any suggestions?{quote}

Just let it run. Probably will take 30min or so. The process is launching an external process that takes all the time, when this completed the repair moves along quickly.

But permissions have nothing to do with the freezing issue. -FYI

-Alan

Nov 22, 2007 11:53 PM in response to The Innovator

Yep same problem here on a Powerbook 1.25g. 1.5meg

I think it may be related to one of the new screen savers. When I change to one of the Tiger screen savers I haven't seen the problem. But I'm still testing.

The problem is that it takes soo long with the system in idle, that I haven't been able to catch it yet. Also, sometimes there is the kernel panic screen, and sometimes it is just plain black. Even though the error log lists both as a panic error.

-Alan

Nov 25, 2007 3:25 PM in response to The Innovator

OK,

I've finally isolated it, based on reviewing all the panic logs.

As I previously stated I thought I could isolate it to the new screens savers. Initially this was the apparent issue and the system froze just like clockwork. But I was able to create a situation that made the system freeze apart from my initial experiments.

I have found on my Powerbook 1.25g the system will avoid all freezes if the system preference for power conservation is set to NOT "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible"

So uncheck that option and see if that fixes the problem for you. It has for me.

-Alan

CFW-YVR

Level 1

0 points

Dec 5, 2007 8:53 PM in response to Alan Edinger

I tried your suggestion, but continued to encounter the problem. However, I accidentally discovered -- and have confirmed this with about 10 days of experience -- that the problem seems to be related to the AirPort.

I discovered that when I turn the Airport Off before putting the machine to sleep, the wake-up freeze does not occur. I do this consistently now, and have been able to avoid the problem. The one or two times that I forgot to turn the AirPort off brought the wake-up freeze, followed by the jittery and uncontrollable mouse (requires rebooting).

Redarm

Level 4

2,593 points

Dec 6, 2007 1:57 AM in response to CFW-YVR

Spamerator wrote:
I discovered that when I turn the Airport Off before putting the machine to sleep, the wake-up freeze does not occur.

I think you might be right. The Panic log mentions the airport too:

Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.driver.AirPort.Atheros(300.22)@0x35131000->0x351bbfff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IO80211Family(200.7)@0x34695000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.4)@0x2e244000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily(1.6.0)@0x3466c000

Freezes when idle