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

Looks like I join the masses with this problem. Brand new out of the mac store. I am a windows geek, and this was my big move over to the Mac world ... should have waited huh? Mine freezes up in nearly every application, usually when I have one open and I try to use a second? I find it crazy that Apple support have had this issue out in the wilds for 3 months and have not found an fix yet. I have read this whole thread and have seen a lot of fixes suggested, but I am not really sure in which order to try them in? I am going to keep looking in to this and as with everyone else will post back.

The issues reported here could be all sorts of things. Bad hardware, plug ins, incompatible applications, not installing the Performance Update, or OS updates......could be anything. Not necessarily a Snow Leopard problem in itself, but is happening for other reasons.

Many of our seasoned helpers here are using Snow with no issues what so ever. But they have dotted all the i's and crossed the t's. I will be installing this week after doing so.

If you just got a new Mac at an Apple store, I would take it back and let them figure it out. It's brand new.....why mess with it?

Dale

I've experienced the problem where my iMac freezes, first with one app, then the others as I try to switch to them, until nothing responds but the mouse pointer still moves. Other times, the screen saver is just stuck and nothing responds. In both cases a ping from another machine sometimes works, though any attempt to connect (eg via SSH or AppleShare) fails. I have to power off and on. The log seems to consistently show the "INSERT-HANG" message for Mail at about the time the computer died.

I did not have these problems with 10.5 through 10.5.8, but started having them with 10.6.x (most recently with 10.6.2). The freeze was happening an average of once per day and had been getting worse over several weeks.

I tried the following which didn't help:

1. Rebuilt Mail data from scratch. I use an IMAP server, so I deleted my mail prefs and mail and configured mail all over again, let it cache my 500,000+ messages spread across 40 mailboxes etc. I even switched mail servers (from Communigate to Postfix/Dovecot).

2. Checked disk permissions, fix.

3. Checked for disk errors: none. Several times over a few weeks.

4. Erased disk partition. Installed 10.6 and 10.6.1 and 10.6.2 updates from scratch.

5. Tried installing and booting from a different disk partition.

6. Removed one of the RAM modules.

In the end, there was (finally) an error with the hard disk. Disk First Aid reported that it couldn't fix it but I was able to copy files off it (I had Time Machine backups too, anyway). Instead of simply erasing the disk partition, as I had before, I repartitioned the hard disk. I installed Mac OS 10.6, then 10.6.2 combo update (instead of 10.6.1 and 10.6.2 updates as I had before).

It's all running fine now and has for a couple of weeks.

So, in my case at least, the solution was either repartitioning the hard disk, or using the 10.6.2 combo update instead of the 10.6.1 and 10.6.2 delta updates.

I hope this helps others,
Tom
BareFeet

I've reinstalled SL 2x and I used the combo update as well. One thing that seemed to calm things down was to install Tech Tool Pro. I ran the optimizers etc, but the freezing continued. Last thing I tried was to turn off journaling. No freezing, no weird pauses. I left it off for days and everything is working as expected. Last night I re-enabled journaling. Within 5 minutes, bam, froze again! Hard reset, and left it running for a few hours. Same freeze, again. Disabled journaling again, and no freezes since.

YMMV, but this seems to be the culprit for me.

I disabled jounaling for mac hd, and there is no frezes for about 2 hours.
Try this:

sudo diskutil disableJournal disk0s2

disk0s2 - is my mac hd location
You can check your location with
diskutil -list

YES! It worked, no freezing all day long. Disable journaling for filesystem !

Have you tried turning off journaling as others have suggested and have been successful? For me it was a Clean Install of SL. If I failed to mention, I also erased the drive or partitioned it from the SL installer before installing SL clean.

I also turned off "Better battery life" as it was causing the MBP to blink or flash a black screen randomly. It wasn't causing a major problem, it was just annoying.

I think I may actually Dale. I will post results.

Thanks

Hello all!!!

My macbook pro (Mac OS X 10.6.2) was also showing the same symptoms (random freezes, showing the spinning wheel, that lasted for 30 seconds to 2 minutes),,,
After I read the posts here, I was sure that it was Spotlight that was causing the problem...

I have a Windows 7 partition installed (via Boot Camp), which Mac OS X 10.6.2 can see and read, and when I disabled that in Spotlight (in the Privacy option), everything was perfect! By the way, I also have Paragon NTFS installed!

I am running my computer for almost 12 hour now and hadn't a single freeze! Can anybody in the same conditions try these solution?

Best regards,
Leandro

This seemed to have fixed the random freezing problems. I've tried everything on this thread.

That said, I'll get random restarts and shut downs...

----
"I disabled jounaling for mac hd, and there is no frezes for about 2 hours.
Try this:

sudo diskutil disableJournal disk0s2

disk0s2 - is my mac hd location
You can check your location with
diskutil -list "
----

I had the same symptoms and turning journaling off solved the problem. It's almost like getting a brand new computer.

Sorry to be the one to break the bad news however I disabled Journalling and reset my machine, opened the console and watched the system log as I opened and used Safari. Within 30 seconds I saw another INSERT-HANG-DETECTED msg. I did not observe a long hang although there was a small one of 10-15 seconds. Gutted. For me, at least, the search continues.

OK INSERT-HANG-DETECTED Is related to a plugin or UI mod for Safari. So either your installing soemthing from a old Leopard profile (as you upgraded or migrated your profile). Look back at my other posts and go through the list of locations. you need to clean and make sure your running the proper versions of the parent software related to each profile.

Been having this problem ever since I upgraded to SL.Interesting thing to note: I run VirusBarrier5 realtime scan in the background. It is supposed to examine a file every time its either new, or rewritten. I've got 782,000+ files on my iMac and another 394,000 files on a WD external drive running WD Backup.

I noticed a few weeks ago that after visiting a client and returning to the office, with no work done that day, VB5's realtime scanner had scanned over 4,800,000 files in the course of about 4-1/2 hours. Before I upgraded to SL, it would scan maybe 375,000 in the course of a day. I contacted Intego and after some testing, they blamed it on SL.

After following this thread for a while, I decided last week to disable journaling on the main HD. I left it running on the WD backup drive. On Saturday, I left the system on but stayed out of the office for about 5 hours. When i returned, I check the VB5 realtime scanner. It had scanned approx 1,835,000 files, about 60% less.

Since I've made this change, the number of random freezes have been cut by at least half. Where before i had to force quit programs and restart the system 3-5 times a day, I now generally have to do it only once.

I'm not tech-savvy enough to know if the problem lies within the journaling app; I'm just reporting on what i see here.

Thoughts anyone?

I'm also new to the iMac OS X world, and have had a number of freezes with only the mouse pointer moving -- hard power reset needed to recover. There is no pattern. Apple support had me correct "permissions" and about 15 got updated. The disk utility check found no problems. They told me that these actions should solve the problem 80% of the time, but they never had me look at any logs or the console or anything else -- sort of a shot in the dark approach. I've had one more freeze part way through shut-down since then, so things are still unstable. Not having a very positive experince with my iMac I7 quad, 27" system.

Message was edited by: allan_vancouver