Random Freezing

I'm actually kind of amazed, but so far so good. I have the original 1GB chip in the bottom slot and the replacement OWC 2GB chip in the top slot. I haven't had a single freeze in 5 hours. I'm going to restart and then see how it does tomorrow.

So what does this tell us? The assumption that OWC doesn't have proper memory management?

I am wondering if this is the same issue I am having. The problem I am having is not a kernel panic, but rather just a complete freezing of my system. Sometimes it happens after the displays (15" Late MBP and 24" Dell external) have gone to sleep, other times before the display sleep timer activates. Each time I have to hold the power button to do a hard shutdown. Everything on the machine is frozen - clock shows the time the freeze happened, and no response to keyboard or mouse. Many mornings I find the computer in a locked up state which seems to occur randomly during the course of the night.

Does this sound like the same issue that you are all experiencing?

Yep, that's the issue. No Kernel Panic, just complete non-response.

I've been fine for the past few days, since trying the PRAM/NVRAM reset on friday. I spent most of Saturday and Sunday using the machine to encode video with Handbrake and VisualHub, and had no issues. I was using the discrete GPU at the time. I turned of smc and my cooling plate as well, just to see what would happen. Not only that, I was able to watch HD podcasts while transcoding a large video file without any hit on system performance.

The thing is a beast when it wants to be. Really, I can't seem to force the machine into freezing, it's seemingly completely random.

If it happens again, I will trying running Vista natively for a few days (yuuuuucckk) and maybe see if it's a hardware issue or an OSX issue.

As I said earlier I was running with 3GB.

I dropped back to a single 2GB DIMM to see if the system crashed (which it should have done if DIMM faulty). I can say that there is NO problem with one DIMM of 2GB and I intend to swap this evening (UK) and continue all day tomorrow with other DIMM.

If both work independently then it has to be power related re the 9400M.

Can I ask if anyone has Apple supplied and installed DIMM's - how many chips on each DIMM, 8 or 16?

Well, I reset the PRAM, and inadvertently opened the gates of ****. After the reset, my MBP froze immediately. I did a hard shutdown and reboot and it happened again - within 2 minutes of bootup. Hard shutdown and reboot two more times - each time the computer crashing within 2 - 3 minutes of booting. Reset PRAM again (thinking maybe it didn't "take" the first time) - no help.

It's worse now then it was before. The only difference is that I was running on battery power during the events above. I had always used my MBP while plugged in before tonight. Freezes were only happening about once a day before now. I don't know if there is any correlation between the frequency of issues now and the fact that I am on battery power.

For the record, I am using the 9400M both on AC and battery power.

Update: A few days ago I turned the discrete graphics on again. Besides that I didn't change anything, still watched videos etc. but for 4 days didn't experience a freeze again.

Weird all that.

BTW, I ordered the 4 GB memory right away at the Apple Store, so I assume that I do have the "authentic" Apple Memory.

What if I'm not running the machine with the 9400M?

Regardless, had another freeze up today. While watching a podcast. No real strain on the machine.

Maybe it's because I've ran on the discrete the whole time? I honestly wish it froze more often because then I'd have an easier time isolating the problem. I'm going to try running only on the integrated video to see what effect that has. (Still don't want to run Vista for a week.) Then maybe I'll try an archive and re-install of OSX. Then maybe I'll try a clean install of OSX and reinstall all of my software.

Regardless, I'm at about the limit of my patience. I spent almost 3000 because I didn't want to deal with problems. Now I spend more time trying to figure out what's wrong with this thing, expecting it to freeze at any minute than with any other computer I've owned. And that's unacceptable even for a crap company. I expect better of a premium company like Apple.

I don't claim to be a Mac Genius, but I figured if I could take a look at the logs maybe there was some kind of pattern. Right now, I can't get the machine to run long enough before freezing to look at the logs.

Has anyone looked for any kind of pattern?

See my problem is the opposite, it goes just long enough without a freeze to make me think I've got the problem solved.

How do I look at the logs you are referring to?

I want to isolate the issue before going to the Apple store. A friend of mine had video issues with his iMac and they jut kept telling him that it was fine. I won't be able to duplicate the issue at the store, and I can't leave the product with them for weeks of testing.

I usually open Terminal, then issue the following commands:

cd Desktop
cp /var/log/system.log .

(the above command will copy the log from /var/log/ to your desktop (notice the "." at the end of the command, which means copy to current directory)

Now the log is located on your desktop and you can double click to open in Console Viewer. From memory, I can't remember where I was looking - something like Console Messages, or something like that. I was looking for the last messages that were generated before the freeze. Looking for a pattern.

I am running 4GB of Crucial memory, and I wonder if that is going to be the easy "reason" if I take my MBP into the Apple Store. Seems that others are having the issue with all different types of memory, so I don't think we all have bad RAM. I've read before that some older Macs were finicky when it came to RAM, and that Apple recommended only their RAM. I don't think it's acceptable if there is an issue where the RAM works in a PC, but causes issues on my Mac.

I hope some of you can post some of your logs (at least the parts right before a freeze) so we can compare. Again, there are many people who are more technical than myslef - I'm open to other ideas.

I don't have the new model macbook pro, but I have the early 2008 model that has been crashing like crazy. Sigh. I guess I have to take it to a genius. This is totally unacceptable. I bought this laptop thinking it would not cause me problems.
I also installed ram from OWC. Makes me wonder...

As I said before, I have Apple memory. My machine came with 4GB installed.

I found the log. It was late, and I restarted the computer a few times last night. Is a string I can search for to look for a "boot up" or "hard restart" so I can see what happened before the freeze?

Can you tell me how many discrete integrated circuits are on the DIMM, 8 or 16?

What is the make?

Thanks

You need to look at the logs knowing what has happened, was it a hang or a kernel panic?

If it is a kernel panic then you need to look for the PanicReporter logs in the Console (NOT Terminal), its in Utilities folder.

For my part my machine panics and reports an issue with AppleIntelCPUPowerMangement.

The 9400M is always used, the chip set which is used for memory management etc is part of the 9400.

I would suggest that regardless of the 9400/9600 used for graphics then hangs etc will occur.