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Level 1

0 points

Snow Leopard freezes constantly

Hi
Lot's of people seem to have similar problems with Snow Leopard. I'm feeling a fool for upgrading to Snow Leopard so quickly, but Leopard worked from first installation with no problems and the Mac had been so stable for so long I just thought maybe they'd cracked it!

I'm hoping someone might have a suggestion to solve a pretty painful problem with the Mac. I installed Snow Leopard, but it has started freezing as soon as the Mac screensaver / disk sleep / display sleep happens.

In line with other suggestions I've updated the printer driver (that did solve one problem) and I've checked the permissions and run the repair programme (one permission was repaired). I've also installed the 10.6.1 software update. Notwithstanding this it still freezes and the report says that it is a kernel panic.

These are problems I've never had before with the Mac running Leopard. It never froze, never crashed. To be honest, I've never had an error report before (maybe I've been very lucky?) All of the problems seem directly related to the installation of Snow Leopard.

I am contemplating reinstalling Snow Leopard, but will that make a difference?

It'd be great if anyone has any suggestions.

Thanks

Matthew

iMac 2.4Ghz / 2GB 667 MHz DDR SDRAM, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Sep 12, 2009 4:10 AM

68 replies

Sep 19, 2009 1:16 AM in response to Haugan

I'm also seeing frequent hangs after the screen saver engages or the display sleeps. When I hit a key to resume the display, instead of my password dialogue I get the beach ball .. and I hear the fan spinning (MacBook Pro, 2008).

I've just changed the setting so that the screen saver never engages and, instead of the display sleeping, the entire computer sleeps after 25 minutes. We'll see if that helps.

I also noticed that the first time I tried to change the screen saver settings, System Preferences froze and I had to force-quit it. Another finger pointing to some problem in the screen saver.

hillboy

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2009 4:05 AM in response to jsml

Hmm,
Actually, I just restored from my time machine.
Sorry about that!!!

But again, I'm using SL and it's working fine. I think it's because I upgraded it. Before I had a clean install and it freezes most of the time when I use Safari but now after I upgraded it from Leopard to SL, it has been working very nicely, without any problem, but they do have some problems with skype, some time it closes unexpectedly.

SL is the winner over leopard now...

hillboy

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2009 4:07 AM in response to lenn5

I had clean and complete new install and i had the problem, but now I restored Leopard back and upgraded and have no problem at all. it's working so good that i don't want to stop using my mac.

Sep 21, 2009 4:35 AM in response to lenn5

i have some other problems (a lot of crashes) and i checked a lot of forums. what i learned by reading is: i am pretty sure there is no correlation between the type of install (upgrade or fresh) and the occurrence of problems. i myself did a fresh install, i have a lot of problems. a frind of mine upgraded a very buggy leopard-10.5.8, and he has no problems.

Sep 21, 2009 1:12 PM in response to Fivehatters

Hi! I did a clean install of snow leopard and updated to 10.6.1 and I'm getting tons of computers freezes.. specially when using safari for sometime... I didn't have any of those problems when I had Leopard!! I've also had an iChat crash (out of one use since i've used it just once for now....) and some Safari crashes... i'm going to try firefox to see if it gets better..

Hope they release an update fixing this.. caused by? I have no idea... maybe a hard drive problem... maybe a safari problem... have no idea.. any idea let me know!!

PLEASE UPDATE (again...)

Sep 21, 2009 1:16 PM in response to drdrei

I agree with you... same problems... Maybe it's safari when running a flash pluggin that causes the problem.. i don't know.. Because 90% of my spinning wheels come when using safari...

Ivan_ua

Level 2

234 points

Sep 21, 2009 1:54 PM in response to Fivehatters

Had same problem, for me it was solved by switching off Stealth mode in Firewall settings... Hope it will help for you as well. At least for the moment almost 20 minutes and no freezes...

drdrei

Level 1

9 points

Sep 21, 2009 3:26 PM in response to K T

Hi K T, and forum readers,
I also want this freezing issue resolved, very much so. Thank you for pointing out the incompleteness of my posting. Let me add then, that I have two MBPs with the issue, both acquired one month ago. One of them with only the original software shipped with the machine. The other loaded with MS Office, Skype, Firefox, VMware. I upgraded them both with SL 10.6 and soon thereafter with 10.6.1, and I also upgraded both to iTunes 9. Both MBPs present similar behavior: the spinning beach ball appears (at random times) without particular warning while I am working on any of the programs. Sometimes the freeze is just temporary (often, in my experience thus far, when I am working with safari) and it goes away after 10 seconds or so. Other times, the freeze is permanent and the program becomes completely irresponsive (often when I have been working with iphoto). I am sincerely hoping that this is a known problem to Apple and that it will be resolved soon. Peace.

Sep 21, 2009 4:38 PM in response to drdrei

Whilst I'd love it to be resolved, I've given up and am going back to 10.5.8. After watching it completely lock up for the 10th time in a day and a half, I decided to roll back cos I'd had enough of being scared to use my mac incase it did it again, unsurprisingly it locked up during the restore, complete system crash. I then attempted to reinstall SL as the hdd was wiped from the aborted restore... locked up again, with less than 5% to go. I felt like crying at that point. I've since managed to erase and install 10.5 with no issue, and it's now restoring to 10.5.8, not counting my chickens yet, but here's hoping I'll have a stable mac back in my life tomorrow.

Gonna wait a while before trying SL again, at least until apple sort out these initial problems.

Sep 21, 2009 5:46 PM in response to Fivehatters

Hi!

I've downloaded and switched to Firefox 3.5.3 and the situation is much better.... in fact.. I've had in about 2 hours only one freeze and Firefox warned me "a Flash 10 script was causing my computer to run slow" and gave me the option to stop the script, I did and the situation went back to normal.

Try Firefox on your computers and let me know if the situation is better and if you get a similar message referring to the Flash plugin.

Other slowdowns are probably related to the hard drive...

Sep 21, 2009 6:09 PM in response to Fivehatters

I've been using OSX since 2001 and never had the issues I'm having with Snow Leopard. My computer freezes way way too often (3+ times a day). It's gotten so bad that I'm replying to this topic on my old Powerbook G4 with Leopard. The newer equipment is not stable anymore.

I hate to admit this but upgrading or the clean installs (attempting to fix the problem) was a bad decision. I should have waited at least a couple months before using Snow Leopard; Normally, I upgrade as soon as a new OS is available but given this experience, I'll wait before upgrading the OS.

Rebuilding my system over and over sounds too much like the XP days..

Apple, any ETA for 10.6.2 that will fix these freezes.

Sep 21, 2009 6:22 PM in response to Fivehatters

For iMac
Try resetting the SMC

1. Unplug everything (power too) for about five minutes, then plug everything back in and turn on.

2. Also, try unplugging any peripherals and see if that helps.

Message was edited by: Mulderscully

Sweepin

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2009 6:40 PM in response to Haugan

I'm also having constant freezing and significant slowness since upgrading my Mac Mini. Can someone tell me how to downgrade back to Leopard without losing the information on my hard drive? It's so nice to see my Apple now behaving like the Gateway garbage I have in the shop now. I'm so happy. =(

Thanks.

teemujin

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2009 7:28 PM in response to Fivehatters

Im having same issues --

we should get everyone whos having these issues to post their Console Logs from a fresh reboot.

I notice that I hang just as the login is completing - and the menu bar items at top are about to show up... it freezes for the first time ( 1:30 seconds ) then I notice that the Console gives me a disk02 i/o error... thats where it seems to start.

Ill post my Console logs shortly - the rest of you should do the same to see if theres some correlation of issues.

teemujin

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2009 9:57 PM in response to teemujin

heres what seems to be the start point of my freeze ups from the log:

9/21/09 9:42:55 PM 9:42:55 PM thomas--macbook-pro kernel kernel 0 kern Debug disk0s2: I/O error.
9/21/09 9:42:55 PM 9:42:55 PM thomas--macbook-pro kernel kernel 0 com.apple.system.fs Error
9/21/09 9:42:55 PM 9:42:55 PM thomas--macbook-pro kernel kernel 0 com.apple.system.fs Error

Ive also noticed that since I turned OFF sudden motion sensor that the number of hangs is less... but its still there.

Snow Leopard freezes constantly