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

I gravitated to this thread because I am experiencing the same symptoms of sluggish performance, hanging and 30-sec beachballs. However, I am running OS X 10.5.8 on a White Macbook (late 2008) and this problem only started happening since upgrading my HDD to a WD 500GB Scorpio Blue (WD5000BEVT).

Reading through this thread, I notice that some of you mention having this HDD installed so for what it's worth, I feel that this issue is not limited to SL but is a general issue with certain HDD management by OS X.

I have ordered a replacement HDD now but I won't hold my breath that a new drive will be any smoother. The search continues.

Bzzz, that (repartitioning the drive) failed too. After a couple of weeks (with the drive repartitioned) the same problem emerged. But I think I found the solution. Read on.

So, I had tried all of the following, without success:

1. Rebuilt Mail data files from scratch.

2. Checked disk permissions, fixed.

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.

7. Disabled Spotlight indexing.

8. Disabled Time Machine backups.

9. Disabled Journaling.

10. Reformatted and repartitioned entire hard drive. Installed 10.6 and 10.6.2 combo update. Worked for a couple of weeks, then freezing problems returned.

11. Installed fresh copy of Leopard (10.5.8) on another partition. Freezing problems emerged.

After all this, Disk Utility still did not show any bad sectors and the SMART status was "verified". But when the freezing problems became worst each time, Disk Utility (and sometimes the Finder after booting) reported that the drive could not be used properly and would be mounted as read only so I could copy files from it. A couple of times, the disk would not show up at all, even when booted from an external drive and tested with Disk Utility. Thankfully, it eventually reappeared after a few boots from the external drive, long enough for me to recover files. Yes, I had backed up using Time Machine as well, whew!

So, I concluded that the drive was faulty in some way, despite Disk Utility not showing sector or SMART problems. I tested booting from an external drive successfully for a couple of days, but couldn't wait around for a couple of weeks for a thorough test. So I bit the bullet and replaced the internal drive. It's a 24" Aluminium iMac, so accessing the physical drive is ridiculously daunting (what were the hardware engineers thinking? Why does Jonny Ive cry "no disassemble"?). So I forked out for an Apple technician to do it. I grabbed a 1TB drive since I was replacing the old 320GB anyway.

I partitioned the drive, installed 10.6 and 10.6.2 combo update, restored my files and have been running with zero freezes now for one week. And the iMac in general seems far more responsive.

Along the way, I investigated the "INSERT-HANG-DETECTED" errors. I noticed that they seems to coincide with accessing a database file, such as the cache files in Library/Caches for Mail.app and Safari, or Mail.app's "Envelope Index". These are all SQLite database files. The "INSERT-HANG-DETECTED" (and similar errors) seem to describe an error with the system accessing these database files. This appears to be a symptom of the hard disk freeze, but the database errors are not the cause. All our collective attempts to point the problem at Mail or Safari etc seem to be misguided. They are just reporting a system level problem.

I only saw the "INSERT-HANG-DETECTED" errors in system.log when running 10.6.x, not 10.5.x. Perhaps 10.5.x doesn't log errors accessing database files like 10.6 does. In blaming Snow Leopard, it seems we've shot the messenger. In my case at least, Snow Leopard seems OK, though perhaps a little less tolerant of the mystery disk level problem.

If you are experiencing problems still, I suggest booting and running all files off another hard disk. Perhaps an external drive for a while if replacing your internal disk is difficult.

I for one am glad to have my Mac once again running smoothly. I couldn't bear the freezing anymore.

I hope this helps,
Tom
BareFeet

I bought the same hard drive a few days ago, hopefully receiving it tomorrow, but I hope I don't experience these spinning beach balls anymore. But, I needed the extra hard drive space anyways.

Please see this post:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10817293#10817293

In short -- I found that the DivX plugin in /Library/Internet Plug-Ins was causing the problem (specifically, the INSERT-HANG-DETECTED flavor of the problem).

Note that in your case it might be some other plugin which is causing the issue. See the referenced post.

Spidey!!!

I tried removing the DivX plug in. In fact, I did a few clean installs and never put the Divx or other plug-ins back in. Since the problems started again without those plug-ins, they weren't the culprit.

I've even installed the Divx plug-in again now that I have a new hard drive. No problems are occurring.

The INSERT-HANG-DETECTED messages in system.log are not causing the problem, they are just showing that a problem exists accessing the hard disk. Disabling symptoms such as the Divx plug-in or disk journaling might temporarily solves the problem, but only until some other process tries to access the problem area of the disk.

Tom
BareFeet

I agree - INSERT-HANG-DETECTED is a symptom, not the cause.

That said, in my case, it was closer to the cause -- I think there was some kind of threading issue in the plugins leading to a deadlock condition.

As for the issue being on a disk - I find this unlikely in my case, as I am running a RAID-5 array using the Apple RAID Card...

Spidey!!!

*This is important* - can anyone confirm what they are doing when the lock up happens? More importantly, can anyone re-create it? I've been contacting Apple about this, but I need to know this.

Sort of annoyingly at this stage I haven't had the problem for a week or so, although I haven't changed anything on my laptop...

Here's when it locks up:

You are running Safari and Mail together on wifi. When you go to connect to iChat..Mail will unexpectedly quit and then the Finder locks up!

Hi Spidey,

Since Disk Utility showed no disk errors (volume bit map, catalog etc) not SMART errors on my disk, I presume that in my case it wasn't the physical part of the drive that was faulty. I suspect it was the controller board or something else at that level that would get stuck for 30s or indefinitely. In your case, perhaps it's the RAID card that has some fault. I am just speculating.

A fairly sure method of diagnosis is to boot from another disk (and controller) for a while. Are you able to do that and disconnect the RAID card? If that works without error, perhaps you can try replacing the card but using the same disks.

I spent months avoiding the above because it just didn't seem to be a disk related issue (no error s reported by Disk Utility). But it the end it does seem to have disk related. So I suggest trying what may seem illogical.

Tom
BareFeet

Given the nature of a Raid-5 array, it is pretty unlikely that the disk array is the source of the problem. Multiple tests of the array have shown no problems (both internal tests in Raid Utility and external tests from Disk Utility).

It seems that at least in my case the DivX plugin is the source of the problem -- if add it back in, the problem comes back immediately.

Of course, this may not be the root cause for others. The plugin architecture is used for many functions, many of them embedded either directly or indirectly in the Finder. If this is encountering problems with a plugin (e.g. DivX in my case) or the disk that a plugin accesses (as may be the case for you or others), the symptom will be the same: INSERT-HANG-DETECTED, and a 30 second wait...

Since my last post, I've tried a few things, but it seems the freezes are back.

I first tried a clean install, it's fun re-installing EVERYTHING. Went a few days but freezes happened again. I left it alone to see if would get worse. It would happen at least once a day.

I tried checking the drive using both Disk Utility and Techtool Pro's utility. Both said the drive was good. I tried SMART Utility from http://www.volitans-software.com and this said the drive need to be replaced. I first tried multiple repairs and fixes. I finally broke down about replaced the hard drive. Everything seemed to be OK for the past 3 days, but today; two back to back freezes. Now I don't know what to think. System log is NOW packed with errors like these:

SystemUIServer[689]: SystemUIServer(689,0xa063e500) malloc: * error for object 0x152fc0: pointer being freed was not allocated\n* set a breakpoint in mallocerrorbreak to debug

and these:

Test[793]: * __NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x10e9d0 of class NSCFString autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking

Researching these leads to a lot of suggestion, none of which have any affect.

IS my RAM bad? memtest passed them, so I don't know.

Frustrated.

I have a hypothesis about what is happening here, and why there seems to be so much disagreement within this thread on what works solving the problem, etc.

Specifically: The 30 second freezes happen when the plugin framework used by many different apps runs into difficulty. Since the Finder, Firefox, Safari, and many other apps use this framework, there are lots of opportunities for freezing if something goes wrong there.

The reason we cannot find commonality is because it appears that almost any fault in that framework can cause the 30 sec. freeze. Disk problems, threading / deadlock issues in plugin implementation, misconfiguration, buggy code -- all could cause some plugin to hang, blocking the world until it gets past the issue. Given the 30 sec. thing, I am guessing that there is a 30 sec. timeout in there somewhere...

Spidey!!!

To complete my previous post:

It's been a week now since the shop returned my iMac 21.5" with a new disk in it. Strangely enough, they managed to backup my profile from the (almost) broken disk and restored it on the new disk.

Up until now, I haven't had any beach ball freezes. And even the old, restored firefox profile, which immediately made my iMac freeze before, now works like a charm.


Best of luck to you all

I've been following this thread for a while and will throw in my experience. I've got a new Mac Pro single Xeon quad with a fresh install of Snow Leopard Server up to date as of today. It's driving me crazy. It will lock up several times a day with the only solution being holding down the power button to shutdown then restart. When it locks up it will not accept any connections. At the console, the mouse cursor moves ok, but no apps work and it won't shutdown. The odd time when terminal is open I type "w" and after about 3 - 5 minutes it responds showing the cpu at almost zero activity. There is no third party software on the machine, it's just an Open Directory Master and AFP server. I have an identical machine as my desktop computer with SL and it runs with no problems.

Here is a list of things I've tried:
-- two fresh installs of SLS
-- disconnect all USB and Firewire external drives
-- reset SMC (This seems to have reduced the number of freezes to 1 or 2 a day)
-- moved hard drive to different bay
-- searched through log files but found no sign of an error around the times the lockups happen

I plan on trying:
-- 32 bit kernel
-- New SATA HD with fresh SLS install

I'll continue following the thread and trying to solve the problem. Any success I will report here.

Hello Ted,
When you say your going to try 32bit kernal, I think you are miss-understood as Snow-leopard on all mac pros boots 32bit kernal by default, Unless you change it. I'm running snow leopard on all my machines at home and Work without any problems. I did have a few issues with old programs which when un-instaled left behind crap. I've also helped several people fix their issues on there systems.
Also Going full time 64-bit, is great! I've been talking with several plugin and haxie writers and I've seen more and more get fully updated to the point that my primary 2 machines are full time running 64-bit kernals. Here is a list of my systems I directly work with & I'm running software like "Steermouse", Synergy, SafariStand plugins, Toast, & much much more.

My Systems:
1. 2008 Mac Pro 2xQuadcore 2.8Ghz with 12gb RAM (64-Bit Kernal) --Home
2. 13" 2009 MBP C2D, 2.53Ghz, 4Gb RAM, (64-bit Kernal) --Home-&-Work
3. 17" 2007 MBP C2D, SantaRosa 2.4Ghz, 4Gb RAM High Res Screen --Home
4. 15" 2006 MBP CoreDuo, 2.16Ghz, 2Gb RAM. --Home
5. 2009 Mac Mini 2.53Ghz, 4Gb RAM with Mini Display-Port --Work

I'm also one of the main tech support people for our group so I'm often helping many other people with fixing their issues.

Also this thread is a meeting point for this resulting issue, which is being caused by many different sources which has been pointed out before. But Thinking Apple could fix all these problems with one patch is just dumb.

Once Again, If anyone is interested in a little help trouble shooting their system & Fixing It, I'm in San Jose, Drop me a line, I can also work with standard screen sharing through iChat.

Happy 2010 all of you!

Message was edited by: z1ross