OS X "Locks Up"...Can't switch apps and the force quit window is empty

I get that too, every few days. I never got it with Leopard or Tiger, so perhaps this is SL-specific.

Isn't there anything in Console.app which might hint as to what the underlying problem is? How about running Disk Utility and repairing permissions?

Were these installs of SL clean installs or upgrades? just curious...

Hi Ashicus,
I don't believe it is Snow Leopard specific, I had the problem (although, it was more rare) on my Macbook Pro (like Josh's) even while it ran Leopard.

Hi Josh,
This is most likely a sort of hardware fallacy in the Macbook Pro 2.8 GHz configuration. I have a system with the exact configuration as yours (a Macbook Pro 2.8 GHZ, 4 GB RAM), it would do this as well on occasions. The problem is out of my ability to answer as I am new to these forums, I just wanted to let you know that it is quite a coincidence that we both had this problem on (seemingly) identical machines. To further add to the oddity, my Mac Mini has been running Snow Leopard since release and I have never once had the problem on it. Again, I do not think it is Snow Leopard's problem, but a specific MBP model problem.

Good luck.

I had this same issue this morning on my MBP 😟 Everything was running but the window manager seems to have had crashed. I logged into the machine with another terminal and my ruby processes where still running and I let them finish before restarting. The weird thing I noticed was that I could use Dashboard and Spaces, but pretty much everything else was up and running but non-responsive to the mouse or keyboard.

I've been getting this as well, at first I thought it was cos I'd done an upgrade from Leopard, but after a clean install I'm still getting the lockups as well.

I remember once I suffered a partial lockup on Leopard and was able to resolve it by doing a killall Dock, or a killall Finder (can't remember which), and everything was back to normal again. But in this instance I can't even get a terminal up or switch to activity monitor.

I seem to remember that the Leopard problem was caused by something that puts an icon in the menubar having an issue (adium I think) but it stopped after an adium update. No idea what's causing this.

same for me with 10.6.2 randomly every 45mins to an hour. SL locks up and needs to be shut down by the power button and restarted it's really starting to get to me i have Lost more school and work Emails the last month this is killing me

I've got this exact same problem.

Anyone got any luck trying to find out what the problem is?

Not sure if it's related, but I'm seeing a lot of messages like this on my Console near the time of the crash:

__CFServiceControllerBeginPBSLoadForLocalizations timed out while talking to pbs

Also to note:

2/2/10 6:27:03 PM com.apple.Dock.agent[379] Tue Feb 2 18:27:03 paganini Dock[379] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowTransformsAtPlacement: Failed
2/2/10 6:27:03 PM com.apple.Dock.agent[379] Tue Feb 2 18:27:03 paganini Dock[379] <Error>: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.
2/2/10 6:27:03 PM com.apple.Dock.agent[379] Tue Feb 2 18:27:03 paganini Dock[379] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowTransformAtPlacement: Failed
2/2/10 6:27:03 PM com.apple.Dock.agent[379] Tue Feb 2 18:27:03 paganini Dock[379] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowListSystemAlpha: Failed
2/2/10 6:27:03 PM com.apple.Dock.agent[379] Tue Feb 2 18:27:03 paganini Dock[379] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowListSystemAlpha: Failed
2/2/10 6:27:03 PM com.apple.Dock.agent[379] Tue Feb 2 18:27:03 paganini Dock[379] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowTransformsAtPlacement: Failed
2/2/10 6:27:04 PM com.apple.Dock.agent[379] Tue Feb 2 18:27:04 paganini Dock[379] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowTransformAtPlacement: Failed
2/2/10 6:27:04 PM com.apple.Dock.agent[379] Tue Feb 2 18:27:04 paganini Dock[379] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowListSystemAlpha: Failed
2/2/10 6:27:04 PM com.apple.Dock.agent[379] Tue Feb 2 18:27:04 paganini Dock[379] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowListSystemAlpha: Failed
2/2/10 6:27:05 PM com.apple.Dock.agent[379] Tue Feb 2 18:27:05 paganini Dock[379] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowListSystemLevel: Failed
2/2/10 6:27:05 PM com.apple.Dock.agent[379] Tue Feb 2 18:27:05 paganini Dock[379] <Error>: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowListSystemLevel: Failed

*In short:* Try remove 2GB ram memory if you have 2x2GB, it worked for me, OS X stopped freezing and crashing.

I dont know if the ram memory i removed is bad or its because of this

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/09/new-macbooks-said-to-have-issues-with-maxed-o ut-ram-faulty-nvid/



*Long version:*

I had the same problems with lock ups, and when snow leopard arrived, it was impossible to install, "cant read dvd blabla" but it worked when i removed 2GB ram memory. So i installed and then put back the memory so i had 2x2GB again, but it started to freeze and be a real pain in the ***, macs are not supposed to be like this!

Eventually it completely broke down and i just had to make a clean install, with 2 GB memory again, and everything worked great, so i thought that maybe a clean install was the trick, but not long after i put the memory back in, it started to lock up and do other weird things. For example my keychain stopped working and was impossible to restore or create a new.

After a while restored from time machine(made just before i put the memory back in) and removed the memory again and snow leopard flows perfect.

Im going to try using only the other ram memory and see if its bad or if some macbooks **** up with 4GB memory.