Random freezing from Snow Leopard - total lock-up for about 30 seconds

MBP was dead again this morning... odd thing was, I even quit all programs last night, so it should have just gone to sleep. Instead, when I unplugged my iPhone, it too was dead! I figured the battery was drained down last night from the odd state the MBP gets into. When I plugged the iPhone back in as the MBP was coming up, it turned on (apple screen) and asked me for my PIN and passcode. Odd! The phone actually shut down during the time that the MBP was freaking out.

Not sure what to say here. It's a unibody MBP with 320GB stock drive. I made a genus bar appointment for later today. Hopefully they have some insight here, else I'll try a clean install.

I felt compelled to add my voice, albeit apparently insignificant, to the rather woeful proceedings.

Back in June, I spent over 1200 hard earned British Pounds on a 15inch MacBook Pro Unibody with the intention of replacing my over-sized Windows Vista Laptop which I used for work. I spent the first few weeks using it as a secondary machine until I had found the time to fully migrate all my data from the Windows machine. I was pretty thrilled with the new Mac until I finally started using it for work proper. Never have I regretted a tech purchase more.

I was presenting a slide show at work using Keynote and the mac froze for 30 seconds. This was embarrassing, the fact that it froze a further two times was mortifying. The machine froze for at total of ninety seconds during a fifteen minute presentation. Ninety seconds might not sound a lot, however, during a presentation to Windows Consultants, having your shiny new Mac freeze three times at thirty seconds a pop while simply running a slide show is career affecting.

After this desultorily first outing I promptly went home and reinstalled the OS, as I thought it might be a dicky install and this apparently seemed to sort things out. For a few days.

I had a 7200rpm drive knocking about so I fitted that and - JOY!!! - it appeared to fix the problem. For a few days.

Repair disk permissions. Nope.

Folders? Nope.

Prayer? Nope.

AppleCare. Nope.

Return to store? Nope.

I have been waiting for the Apple Store I bought this hunk of junk from to contact me as they are ordering me a new hard drive, because, apparently it's a conflict between the HD manufacturers disk protection utility and the inbuilt DP used by Apple. Sounds plausible, however, that was over a week ago. How shocking is that?!

I have now reverted back to my old laptop using Windows 7 and I must say, it's great. I can work without the machine randomly freezing for around thirty seconds at the most inopportune moments.

Apple. If you're listening, this is a real issue, for real people, with real jobs who need this stuff to work. The computer I bought for all that money is not fit for purpose and I am having no joy in getting it repaired. I want my money back but I apparently can't have it because I didn't return the machine within a month of buying it. Brilliant. So, now it's my fault.

My first Apple outing and I have to say, not impressed. My wife was jealous of my MacBook when I got it, she nearly bought one, however, after the issues I was having she bought a nice Sony Windows Vista machine, which hasn't given her a minutes trouble?!! I mean; what?!!!

Apple. Do something. This is getting silly.

Under the Sale of Goods Act in the UK you may well be entitled to a refund.

See here for more details.

http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/consumers/fact-sheets/page38311.html

Thanks, I might just take this approach, I'm definitely within the six months.

I've got to say, it's desperately disappointing. How can they release such an obviously floored machine? I've always been under the impression that Macs were the superior to any Windows machine and it was only their cost prohibiting a more widespread adoption. And, I must say at this point that the OS is great, I loved the Expose and Active Corners stuff. When it worked it worked a treat, but the freezing, it renders all the good work useless; sometimes ten times in an hour, then not at all for three or four hours. How do you troubleshoot that as a user, albeit a clued up one?!

Thanks for the reply.

Carl

Hmm, I also have a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500 GB (came with the machine) and having the freeze problems 😟

man, this is painful.... wish there were a way to find out whether the issue is the drive for sure. This is a pain to debug tho. I don't want to go to a slower drive.

EDIT: I did have the issue before Snow Leopard tho. I was hoping SL would fix it.

You are definitely right about this INSERT-HANG-DETECTED, I get it when using Safari but have seen it when using MAcParDeluxe:

Sep 12 08:24:29 device4 MacPAR deLuxe[2392]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:3.861181, # of Inserts: 1, # of bytes written: 288, Did shrink: NO
Sep 12 08:27:37 device4 Safari[534]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:3.001376, # of Inserts: 2, # of bytes written: 50, Did shrink: NO
Sep 12 08:30:33 device4 Safari[534]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:4.915309, # of Inserts: 2, # of bytes written: 50, Did shrink: NO
Sep 12 08:31:33 device4 Safari[534]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:4.388934, # of Inserts: 2, # of bytes written: 50, Did shrink: NO
Sep 12 14:09:33 device4 Safari[534]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:4.924807, # of Inserts: 1, # of bytes written: 25, Did shrink: NO
Sep 12 14:09:45 device4 Safari[534]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:7.040968, # of Inserts: 1, # of bytes written: 25, Did shrink: NO
Sep 12 14:37:57 device4 Safari[534]: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: Tx time:19.646211, # of Inserts: 0, # of bytes written: 0, Did shrink: YES

I guess it may be either a Webkit problem or it may have something to do with Flash Player. Interested to see whether APple pick this one up quickly, as I never had this with Leopard and my laptop is very new.

This is simply pathetic. The OS is nearly unusable; every hour after a system-wide freeze I sit, scared to hit anything that might make the **** thing freeze.

Are we using Windows? Sure what it feels like.

Simply unacceptable. Get your act together, Apple.

Just one more data point for this issue- I'm running an early 2006 Core Duo MBP, with an aftermarket Seagate Momentus 7200.3 320GB. I've never run Safari since my SL upgrade (just Firefox), and I see a number of INSERT-HANG-DETECTED in my system.log entries going back as far as the upgrade.

Repaired my permissions and not sure what else to do- fingers crossed for a patch soon...

Same here!

Big big random freezes... ****!

Well it seems disabling SMS has done it for me (unless I did something else around the same time)

I have not had any issues all day now
I'll update after a few days

Hate to throw water on everyones "7200 500GB" theories, which may still be valid, but I'm running a factory installed 5400 RPM 500GB Hitachi drive and having these INSERT-HANG-DETECTED: problems. I disabled sms hopefully it will fix it.

I, too, am seeing the hangs and they seem to correlate with the INSERT-HANG-DETECTED messages in /var/log/system.log. I've seen them for a range of applications: NetNewsWire, Safari, SoftwareUpdateCheck, Mail, iTunes, quicklookd, GrowlHelperApp. The common denominator seems to be 'network related', perhaps WebKit framework based - although I'm not sure about some of the apps in the list in that respect.

Switching off the sudden motion sensor of my hard disk did not stop the freezes from happening nor eliminate the system.log messages of INSERT-HANG-DETECTED.

Still looking for a solution...

-sas

This post will not help anyone fix the problem (unless it adds the critical straw to the Apple camel's back) but I have to vent. Ever since the "upgrade" to Snow Leopard I have suffered frequent 30 second freezes that are getting very annoying and embarrassing when they occur within view of my Windoze friends.

HELLO APPLE????

Frustrated

Having the same issues here with a MacBookPro 15" 320GB-disk ... hanging several times a day.

I'm having the impression it's happing more often after putting the Mac to sleep and wake it up again. But I cannot proof that ...

I can confirm that turning off the sudden motion sensor does not resolve the issue. It makes the clunking with every slightest move go away, but the maddening pauses still exist.