Snow Leopard freezes over time

My MBP3.1 just froze! The screen actually gets checkered. But it seems something is running in the background because after re-boot it froze with the apple and the little rotating wheel but actually came to live and gave me a login window allowing me to go further including writing this post!

I'm only running Safari, Mail, Excel and such. On Snow Leopard!

After first freeze I was prompted to send info to Apple - but when I tried to it froze again...

This is the first time in about 2 weeks this happens. No software updates to be found.

Message was edited by: Tobias Ahl

Well thats not supposed to happen 😝

Try reinstalling the OS.

Weird.....

I'm having the exact same problems. I've tried everything in this thread and nothing seems to work. I'm working on the newest Macbook Pro and I can't cope with the fact it runs so miserable. That together with the fact Autodesk's Maya doesn't run so well under SL, I decided to downgrade back to Leopard.

This is my second Macbook Pro I've had nothing but problems with. I'm even wondering why I ever decided to switch to an Apple computer in the first place (bad thoughts, I know).

Snow Leopard freezes on my aluminum iMac (2.8 GHz) whenever I allow simultaneous downloads in iTunes, over AirPort: freezes solid, with "beachball" frozen and no response to attempts to move the pointer. Have to power-cycle to get it back. Running only basic Apple software, latest updates. This problem did not exist under Leopard. I've reported this to Apple several times. Clearly, Snow Leopard was not tested as thoroughly as it should have been, to have as gross and crippling a problem like this.

Hey tameyer,

I am having the same issues like you on my Core2Duo pre-aluminum iMac. After reading your post, I will try to let the spinning-ball-of-death cursor run for a while before resetting the system the next time and see if the iMac recovers somehow.

I believe that my iMac doesn't really crash, it just locks the screen or something. I will enable the SSHd and next time the iMac locks up, I'll try to connect to with from my MacBook and see if I can find any logfiles that might point out what is going on...

Thanks for you input, please continute to contribute to this thread. Acually I am quite happy that some people seem to have the same issues as I have. I was getting really miserable and I hope this gets fixed very soon.

Yep, same issues here. I hope Apple gets this solved before long. What a pain. I rolled my O.S. back to leopard also. Will re-install S.L. when issues are solved.
I have tried some of methods discussed here and had no good results. This is an apple issue and they are going to have to solve it.
😟

My screen was freezing all the time, even with a newly bought battery,
only!! when I was not connected to a wall outlet.

I inserted my SL10.6 disc again and reinstalled SL and upgraded to 10.6.1 again and now the screen doesn't freeze anymore.

I got the impression still, that there remains a problem with Safari plugins and Rosetta, Safari 32,64 bits, Firefox etc

Thanks. This fixed it for me. I have previously used launch2net and in spite of uninstalling I found a novamedia file in my LaunchAgents folder. Discarded it and have not experienced any freezes for 24 hours

Same problem here. I notice over 4000 people have read this thread to date. So it's obviously not an isolated issue. Apple: officially acknowledge this problem, and then GET IT FIXED! You owe it to your customers.

Hello,

I was thinking to open a new thread, but I think this fit perfectly for my case too. I'm a beginner with iMAC so I'm not sure to do the right thing.....

I also get some application freezing time to time, like iTunes or Safari..... than i force the application down by pressing command Optionesc, click on the not responsive application. Than i want to reboot the system for make that application work again, but the system do not reboot, just clean up the desktop from every icon and dock, leave my background image and the mouse pointer.... and nothing else.... for make it reboot i must keep the power button pressed.
After rebooting i normally find in my trash a folder with recovered files... why that? where are coming from? and why recovered?? before force the power off, my trash was empty....

Could you please help me to see if i'm makeing the right steps or what i should do?

thanks for your help

Marco

Folks I've been following this thread with interest. I've installed SL 10.6.1 on all three macs I have. My wife and I mainly use two iMacs near continuously. The Aluminum 20" iMac that I use does not freeze / works fine. The early 2006 17" iMac my wife uses freezes daily - clearly to save my marriage Apple needs to resolve this 🙂 Jokes aside, we essentially have the same software running (I in fact have much more) running. A key difference is that the Aluminum iMac uses an external 1TB WD for time-machine backups whereas the 17" iMac uses a 500GB Time Capsule to run its backups. Another difference is that the 17" has gone from Tiger (10.4.4) through Leopard (10.5.0 to 10.5.8) to SL 10.6.0 and 10.6.1, whereas the Aluminum iMac went from mid-Leopard (10.5.4 I think, through 10.5.8) to 10.6.0 and 10.6.1... Does anyone think that these differences might be relevant? It would be nice to hear from people who have multiple Macs and do and don't have freezing issues on their different systems.

I mention I've got a third - Macbook - I simply don't use it enough to draw any conclusions - though the CPU fan seems to be working harder but that's a different thread.

I have a macbook Pro 13"(mid 2009) that came with Snow Leopard and 1.7 EFI already installed and it freezes all the time.

It's my thir MacBook in one year and I a seriously furious.
This one is two weeks old.

I am not quite sure whether my problem comes from EFI or not but apparently tis is the issue everybody's talking about.

I really hope Apple will fix this problem really fast. It's getting on my nerves.

That's all I got to say.

I have had freezes on 10.6.1 as well. This doesn't sound like an isolated even to me. 10.5 never did this.

OK, I seem to have resolved this issue. I was finding it impossible to work on my machine as it was hanging so often, or running at a snail's pace. I lost patience with trying the usual trouble-shooting remedies (repairing disk permissions, reseting PRAM, etc.), and with the more exotic hocus-pocus (running in 32-bit mode, etc.), so I gave up and simply created another user account.

And everything is running fine so far ... (I'll post back if problems surface.)

• Creating a new user account is simple. I'd suggest renaming your current account first; that way you can use your current login details for the new account. (Takes two minutes).

• Getting most of your information over to the new account is breeze if you sync with MobileMe. If you don't, sign-up for a free trial. (Takes ten minutes tops.)

• You don't need to reinstall programs, they are all their in the Applications folder. Just launch them.

• You'll need to bring other folders and files over to your new account via the Shared folder, another drive, or, easier still, iDisk.

Altogether it wasn't as arduous as I assumed it would be, and took less time to do then I was loosing in a day re-starting my machine.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

In reply to my own post, I've now been crash and hang free for the longest period since upgrading -- nearly a whole day. Creating a new user account seems like the way to go. Also my MacBook runs sooooooo much faster, even Safari. After a shaky start, I'm beginning to love Snow Leopard

(But I've yet to try PS CS3.)

Message was edited by: G-W