Random Freezing

Alright, I installed and have been running smcFanControl since yesterday, with the fan minimum set to 3000rpm.

The system ran and idled cooler as a result, however, I still had a freeze up a few moments ago while watching a YouTube video.

Not sure what else to try. I rebooted into Vista. I will try to run Vista for a few days and see if I still freeze up.

I had the same problem and so I took my mac to the Genius Bar and also spoke with Technical Support at AppleCare. The AppleCare guy had me reset my PRAM and NVRAM which so far seems to have done the trick:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

It may be a bit on the risker side but so far I haven't seen a single freeze.

"I'm not seeing nearly that level of freeze-ups. Once every other day, maybe. And I don't use this machine lightly: all day at work, and then all night at home."

Can I just say, HOLY COW a freeze every other day? That is totally unacceptable, I don't care if you live on your machine. I am new to the Intel mac world, most of my experience is with an old g4 550 pismo. I haven't had a freeze in, well, I can't remember when. I think it was last year some time when I was hooked to a flaky firewire drive.
Granted, I ran Tiger instead of Leopard so maybe the newer OS is just more unstable. But if I had a unit that froze every other day I think I'd downgrade to Tiger and see if it would get better.

Sorry about the tirade from an old timer.

John

Ha, no need to apologize. A freeze every other day is unacceptable. I'm working on finding the issue and solving it.

I just meant that I'm not seeing the 10 lock-ups a day that some people are seeing.

I'm curious, what's risky about resetting PRAM and NVRAM?

Also, and this is a more general question, has anyone used the discs that came with their Macs to run the Apple Hardware test?

I've meant to, but have been really busy while at home most of the time.

Hi George,

There is nothing risky about resetting your PRAM. Also, when I took my first MBP to the Apple Store, they run a diagnostic and didn't find anything.

My second MBP is working perfectly for a couple of days now. I'm starting to believe, that the problem is solved. Even with the initial problems with the machine, I really, really like it.

Hey George,
Any freezing with Vista?

The only risk that I read about was reseting timezones possibly. But it wasn't an issue for me.

Either way, its a moot point since the freezing returned.

As I wrote earlier, I also had freezes several times a day.

Because it was mostly happening while watching youtube videos, I suspected the (second) graphics card causing the trouble. I then switched off the second graphics card in the energy settings and since then (for two days) have not experience a single freeze.

Did anybody get a frozen system with the fast graphics turned off?

Well I don't think it's a heating issue.

I ran from Tuesday morning to Wednesday with Fan Control on, the lappy on a cooling plate, etc. And still had a freeze up on Wed.

Wednesday evening I turned off fan control, didn't use the cooling plate, watched videos all day yesterday and really heated the thing up. It didn't freeze.

I think that whatever is making it freeze is unrelated to the system temp.

Mine freezes up while using it on my lap and it gets extremely hot. And yes, while using discreet video too. Didn't freeze on me yet while using integrated video to date. Was on Safari running some flash games when it froze up.

I agree, it isn't a heating issue, I have a Fractal program (Power Fractal) which really increases the temperatures and with the 2GB the machine came with there was no issue.

2 sets of RAM later at 4GB I still have a problem.

Interestingly running in safe mode or running boot camp XP (NOT Vista) there is no crash, this leads me to suspect a possible software problem (something which is NOT 4GB compatible) and which isn't loaded in Safe Mode.

Interestingly the panic logs shows - com.apple.driver.AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement - I wonder if it is a problem with regard to power management with an Intel piece of software?

Another possibility - 1GB SODIMM's come with 8 chips per DIMM, but the replacement 2GB have 16, it is possible that the current drawn from the 9400M chip set (which is always used even if you have selected to use 9600) may be overloading that chipset, back to a possible NVIDIA problem.

It is always possible Apple has a hardware issue - in the UK there are limited/NO supplied of MacBook Pro's - leading me to a possible conclusion that the hardware is faulty and rectification activity is under way.

One final thing , I run Hardware Monitor, if you select System Information/Management Info/System Board (tab) shows the Board to be "PROTO" which IMHO means that the machine is using a prototype motherboard rather than a production model!

Comments and further info would be most useful;

- Number of chips per DIMM
- Which graphics processor in use
- Panic logs which don't indicate AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement (I have a few but less than 50% of crashes)

I'm agreeing with this. I'm not sure what the solution will be. My original Hynix 2X1GB of RAM works fine. My 2X2GB from OWC plus their replacement cause freezes. With this new replacement set from OWC I'm seeing graphics artifacts during freezes. I'm hoping a logic board replacement will fix this. I guess I can also try Apple branded RAM.

Can I suggest that everyone tries to run with 1GB in lower DIMM and 2GB in upper DIMM slot.

I am currently running this way without a crash or hang so far but it has only been 45 minutes so far.

Based on previous work I am confident that the system will not cause an issue - I was running XP in Boot Camp and this limits memory to 3GB. I wonder ...

Post results would be useful.

I told OWC I would try exactly that. I'll post back with results and a bit of use.