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

my disk also gave me a "failing"-warning, brought it the next asp. Hope the exchange of the hdd fixed the freezing-issue.

Has anyone considered that this could be the Snow Leopard Applescript bug?

http://db.tidbits.com/article/10643

Essentially, given enough time, SL will hang because an Applescript is timing out. Given that some people have had luck by restarting, or killing various apps, I wonder if this is the issue. Maybe the apps that have been killed were utilizing Applescript more frequently?

Just a thought.

I'd just like to add myself and my girlfriend to the list of people having this problem!

Macbook Pro 10.6.2 - Upgraded from Leopard.
Macbook 10.6.2 - Upgraded from Leopard.

Problem seems to be when working with applications such as Safari, Firefox, iTunes.

Does a Fresh Install solve this problem? I know how easy it is to do, could do it with my eyes shut, but quite frankly I really don't want to have to do that.

Factory install of SL 10.6.2 here.

To once again restate this very specific problem:

Freezes/hangs at seemingly random intervals, sometimes when doing nothing, sometimes occurring with a click, a scroll, or a command. Freezes seem to last exactly 30 or 60 seconds, indicating a timeout. More prevalent in Firefox but also occur in any application. Seems to have little/no correlation with system stress; the freeze will happen noticeably frequently (once or twice per hour) even with only one browser window open and nothing else.

Freezes not correlated to system running time. Will happen as soon as system is up and applications are running, and/or after days of running time, seemingly at the same interval of once or twice per hour.

During the freeze, the application in attention will not respond, and other applications, when accessed, exhibit either immediate non-responsiveness or rapid loss of responsiveness. All input during the freeze is buffered and then executed when the timeout occurs and the freeze is lifted.

This problem is definitely not solved by

- firmware downgrade
- turning off journaling
- deleting all Internet Plugins from either Library location (all other directories previously indicated were empty/non-existent)
- Performance Update 1.0 (not installable)
- modifying apps such as Paragon, Vmware Fusion, iStat, Boot Camp, etc because none of these have ever been installed
- repairing disk permissions

as I have tried all of these. The problem persists, full speed ahead.

I am skeptical of:

- SMC reset
- PRAM zap
- OS reinstall
- verifying/ repairing disk

as these are usually the first line of defense. While performing some or any of these might be good maintenance, the problem would have been solved by now if it was any of these.

So far the evidence seems to point at either

- Applescript bug
- 7200 RPM disk drive issue

Can anyone confirm the bug as it is laid out above with a 5400 RPM disk?

- If not, then the solution is to swap the 7200 RPM drive with another model, or
- If so, that would seem to disconfirm that it is specifically a 7200 RPM disk issue

Which leaves the Applescript bug. If it is indeed this bug, the only solution seems to be a downgrade to Leopard until this problem is identified in a bug fix update and proven to be solved by the community.

I agree with that description and I have a 500GB Hitachi running at 5400.

I Agree that the problem is more noticeable with Firefox.

I have the problem on a 7200 drive, my girlfriend has the same problem using a 5400 drive.

The specific problem is exactly the problem that we both experience, and we have too tried the list that you have provided of possible solutions that don't work.

Has everyone sent this bug to apple through the feedback page?
http://www.apple.com/support/feedback/

Does this problem affect all Snow Leopard users, or just some? I don't really understand...

Message was edited by: Jay27

I know many people (including myself) who had this problem on 5400RPM drives as well.

I was fortunate so far, since I made the changes I listed, I haven't had a single beachball.

Hi All,

I face exactly the same issue on my MBP. I have tried a lot of things described in this thread, but unfortunately, I still have the beachballs...
(I have remarked that it was more often when using 9600GT instead of 9400M... so I have now selected 9400M graphics card)
I really hope that Apple will solve this issue soon... I really wonder if I will not reverse back to Leopard.

Just wanted to remind everyone in this HUGE thread, to make sure you have downloaded and installed the Performance Update 1.0 (Snow Leopard).

This update addresses intermittent hard drive-related stalls reported by a small number of customers.


I know some of you put off +Software Updates+ (same here!) and may not have installed this one.

 

DALE

 

 

Hi,

I just wanted to say that I experienced this issue a lot until I turned my Kernel into 64 bits mode, using K64Enabler (search google).
Since then everything is fine or almost but I can't read NTFS external drives anymore (using Paragon) so I have to disable and reboot each time I want to read such a disk.

Hope it helps.

Message was edited by: Tignus

Hey, Why would this solve the problem, and how come the kernel isn't already 64bit?

Well just check with Activity Monitor and you'll see that kernel_task is not mentioned (64 bits)... Why would it solve the problem... I don't have the smallest clue.... maybe are some 32 bits extensions not loaded in this case...

Still it is that when I go back on 32 bits kernel mode for ntfs purpose, I can really feel the difference (32 is much more sluggish)...

Oh and about your "fresh install" question before, I did it before trying K64Enabler and it seemed to reduce the lenght and the frequency of the freezes but there were still many of them.

I wonder if there is a common 32 bit process that is causing the freezing, although this could suggest some sort of problem with the kernel.

An interesting fix (if it works!) and an interesting bit of software you have posted to change to 64 bit though! Might try it out.

I thought disabling journaling did the trick. Nope. I have a feeling this is all about the hard drive stalling. I've done numerous clean/fresh installs and have tried three different hard drives. The beach ball still shows up.

Also, Performance Update 1.0 (Snow Leopard) is only for certain computers.