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

I am having random freezes like the authors of many recent topics on this forum. From the number of 'views' on their threads, it seems that many other users have the same problem.

These are not like any other freezes I have ever had - usually when the beach ball shows, it still allows me to show the dock, move windows etc... but these freezes bring everything to a halt.

Since this problem first started for me the say I upgraded, and seems to be the same (from what I can tell) for other users who reported this, does anyone know if there is something about snow leopard that uses the hardware differently? So that whereas under leopard (32-bit) there may not have been a fault, but on switching to 10.6 a problem could reveal itself?

Mac Pro 1,1 2007, 2x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core, Mac OS X (10.6), 4 x 1Gb Apple RAM, 1x 500Gb WD Caviar, 2x Optiarc Superdrive, GeForce 7300 256Mb, Dual monitors

Posted on Sep 3, 2009 2:38 AM

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525 replies

Sep 3, 2009 5:42 PM in response to direwolf8

I am having this same issue, and it's very frustrating.

It's happened while on Safari, also using iTunes and Toast.

Periodically, everything will freeze and the spinning wheel comes on the screen. It typically lasts about 30 seconds. There is nothing particular that sets this off. If I leave iTunes on playing music, the music will stop until it comes back on.

This is problematic for me because i use my mac for DJing and i have a gig next week. I really need to get this fixed, else i won't be able to use this machine because there will be gaps in the music.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sep 4, 2009 4:38 AM in response to Dale Weisshaar

+*Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”*+
+Performing live verification.+
+Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.+
+Checking extents overflow file.+
+Checking catalog file.+
+Checking multi-linked files.+
+Checking catalog hierarchy.+
+Checking extended attributes file.+
+Checking volume bitmap.+
+Checking volume information.+
+*The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK.*+

I notice that the lockups seem to be happening less frequently. I didn't had one yesterday and haven't today, so far.

I believe the free space on my drive at the time of install was probably highly fragmented. If Snow Leopard installed onto that free space, it could be that the access times for certain system files have been distended by that fragmentation. Just a theory.

Sep 6, 2009 7:46 PM in response to gulfsidebo

Ok, after rebooting to disk utilities off the snow leopard disk I tried repairing the drive- no problems, did the repair permissions, found one minor thing and it fixed it. That was yesterday, today I had it freeze up 3 times just like before, same symptoms: Spinning wheel, no response, after 30 seconds it goes away.

I hope there's a fix for this because I really can't have this happening in the middle of a presentation or something. "Oh wait, while I make up 30 seconds of stuff to say while my Mac that never crashes stops being stupid..."

Sep 10, 2009 10:46 PM in response to robrecord

I am having all the same issues as above. Clean install does not fix it or disk utility repairs..............Happens alot during safari, word, switching between tasks too. A force quit does not work.........everytime it happens I have to do a hard reset pressing the power button down to re-boot. Not sure what is casuing it, I can tell you it happens alot surfing the internet.

Sep 11, 2009 2:30 PM in response to Dale Weisshaar

Dale, I did exactly that: repair permissions, update to 10.6.1, then repair permissions again. Unfortunately my issue, which others have described before me (random freezes, hangs, lock-ups for about 30 seconds or so, beginning right after an upgrade to Snow Leopard from Leopard), has not gone away.

I also discovered this related thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2146412&tstart=0

In that thread, some suggestions include updating to the latest version of SIMBL and triple-checking any Safari plugins like PithHelmet (and, I'll add the Safari Microformats Plugin) which use SIMBL. This seems to make a lot of sense to me since the freezing is very noticeably tied to using Safari, at least in my case.

My workaround in the mean time is simply not to launch Safari, which works, but is very annoying. I'm going to update SIMBL and do the recommended repair permissions/repair disk/etc. tasks and report back to see if the issue is resolved.

Good luck, everyone.

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

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