Q: System Freezes Randomly after 10.6.3 Update

My model:

Modelo: iMac
Identificador de modelo: iMac8,1
Nome do processador: Intel Core 2 Duo
Velocidade do processador: 2,66 GHz
Número de processadores: 1
Número total de núcleos: 2
Cache L2: 6 MB
Memória: 4 GB
Velocidade do BUS: 1,07 GHz

1. Problem started happening after 10.6.3 update? Yes
2. Did you get any errors during 10.6.3 update process? No
3. Mouse cursor moves? No
4. Mouse clicking does nothing? Yes
5. Keyboard key presses do nothing? Yes
6. Only way to re-animate system is by holding down power button? Yes
7. Mouse/Keyboard Model? The same that came with the iMac

I don't really know what to do. I bought an external firewire WD drive slightly before i installed Snow Leopard, and quickly updated to 10.6.4 (using the combo installer). I also have connected an Mbox 2, and installed the latest drivers. During the first freezes, the screen turned white with a few vertical lines; now, it just freezes, and the mouse turns completely unresponsive. The console does not have any information about the system freeze.

Maybe i'll reinstall Leopard. Any suggestions?

Oh, and something you should know: right before one of the freezes, i was listening to some music being played through iTunes. After the system froze, iTunes played the song that was currently playing until the very end of it, stoping there and not skipping to the next one on the playlist. Just some info.

Ok. I downgraded to 10.6.2. Let's see what happens.

Ricardo A. wrote:
Ok. I downgraded to 10.6.2. Let's see what happens.

Hope it helps, but your symptoms are somewhat different than mine and many others in this thread. When my machine "freezes", I've always been able to move the mouse pointer around the screen. You reported earlier that your mouse pointer also freezes. You may have a different problem.

Hello!
@ Mert, this happened to me in many ways, the current system to raise the external disk to update 10.6.4.Just me once frozen in 2 days and a few more days left to see what would happen next.
By answering a few days. Best regards!

So far, so good.

Yeah. The system has not froze since I downgraded to 10.6.2. The problem seems to be with the 10.6.3 & 10.6.4 updates. How can we report this to Apple?

How can we report this to Apple?

Search this page for the word "feedback."

My problems seem to have disappeared after turning off filevault on 10.6.4. Do you have problems without filevault?

ITNurse wrote:
My problems seem to have disappeared after turning off filevault on 10.6.4. Do you have problems without filevault?

Yes, problem occurs without filevault. I've never used it under any version of OSX.

ITNurse wrote:
My problems seem to have disappeared after turning off filevault on 10.6.4. Do you have problems without filevault?

I've never used filevault. I have no idea what is causing my problems with 10.6.3, but fortunately, 10.6.2 is rock solid for me. I guess I'm stuck here forever, unless somebody comes up with a solution.

Hi!
I recently updated from Tiger, to v10.6.3 and then 10.6.4 almost immediately. I did a clean install, as the automatic install didn't work at all.

Your description of the fault most nearly matches my own experience, i.e. that of screen freezing, with unresponsive keyboard and mouse. Only the cursor can be seen to move, but it doesn't do anything. To improve matters, I have stopped Time Machine and reverted to MobileMe's Backup program, I have stopped all energy saving routines (computer sleep, disk sleep) and only the screen saver is still active. My reasoning was that the most likely time for a freeze to occur was in the first few minutes after a period of 'sleep', when almost all processes seemed to was the processor and usage would rapidly climb to 100% in Activity Monitor. I now get freezes just occasionally. Not a cure however.

Console reports the following errors frequently, especially after I login:



11/08/2010 14:34:50 com.apple.WindowServer[66] Wed Aug 11 14:34:50 Paul-Tricketts-iMac.local WindowServer[66] <Error>: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.

11/08/2010 14:35:00 com.apple.launchd.peruser.502[108] (com.apple.ReportCrash) Falling back to default Mach exception handler. Could not find: com.apple.ReportCrash.Self

11/08/2010 14:35:03 com.apple.launchd.peruser.502[108] (com.apple.Kerberos.renew.plist[135]) Exited with exit code: 1



I'm sorry it is all a mystery to me! but it does seem to point to a problem with com.apple.WindowServer(). As with yourself, the only thing to do is power off/on or a long press of the start button, which achieves the same thing. Oddly enough if I happen to be streaming music from a Radio station via the internet, this carries on uninterrupted, any other background process - same thing I suppose.

I can only revert to Tiger, or v10.6.3 which is on my install disk. So, I wouldn't be able to cure the fault that way. It's a very poor machine that can't keep running day after day, as mine used to under Tiger...

Paul T.

Hi again,

1. Problem started happening after 10.6.3 update? Yes
2. Did you get any errors during 10.6.3 update process? Yes
3. Mouse cursor moves? Yes
4. Mouse clicking does nothing? Yes
5. Keyboard key presses do nothing? Yes
6. Only way to re-animate system is by holding down power button? Yes
7. Mouse/Keyboard Model? Wireless keyboard and Magic mouse, also wireless

Error during install: 'Insecure startup item disabled'
/Library/StartupItems/HP trap monitor

It transpired that I needed to install a more recent version of HP printer software. This startup item now works, but the screen freezes still happen. I have eased the problem, though not cured it, by stopping Time Machine and using another backup method, and by disabling System preferences>Energy Saver>Computer sleep and System preferences>Energy Saver>Display sleep because it seemed to me that the freeze occurred most often after awakening from a sleep state when the processor was sometimes 100% for minutes on end.

I have also got repeated error messages in Console:

11/08/2010 14:34:50 com.apple.WindowServer[66] Wed Aug 11 14:34:50 Paul-Tricketts-iMac.local WindowServer[66] <Error>: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.

11/08/2010 14:35:00 com.apple.launchd.peruser.502[108] (com.apple.ReportCrash) Falling back to default Mach exception handler. Could not find: com.apple.ReportCrash.Self

11/08/2010 14:35:03 com.apple.launchd.peruser.502[108] (com.apple.Kerberos.renew.plist[135]) Exited with exit code:

Paul T.

paultageist wrote:
Hi!
I recently updated from Tiger, to v10.6.3 and then 10.6.4 almost immediately. I did a clean install, as the automatic install didn't work at all.

Your description of the fault most nearly matches my own experience, i.e. that of screen freezing, with unresponsive keyboard and mouse. Only the cursor can be seen to move, but it doesn't do anything. To improve matters, I have stopped Time Machine and reverted to MobileMe's Backup program, I have stopped all energy saving routines (computer sleep, disk sleep) and only the screen saver is still active. My reasoning was that the most likely time for a freeze to occur was in the first few minutes after a period of 'sleep', when almost all processes seemed to was the processor and usage would rapidly climb to 100% in Activity Monitor. I now get freezes just occasionally. Not a cure however.

...

As with yourself, the only thing to do is power off/on or a long press of the start button, which achieves the same thing. Oddly enough if I happen to be streaming music from a Radio station via the internet, this carries on uninterrupted, any other background process - same thing I suppose.

I can only revert to Tiger, or v10.6.3 which is on my install disk. So, I wouldn't be able to cure the fault that way. It's a very poor machine that can't keep running day after day, as mine used to under Tiger...

Paul T.

Hi Paul,
Yes, sounds very similar. I also tried without Time Machine (completely disconnected the drive), but the freezes still occurred. I did not notice much of a pattern with regards to freezes occurring close to when I would wake it from sleep, so I never tried disabling the energy saver options (not sure I could live that way - I'm a big fan of Mac's sleep feature). To get to 10.6.2 (since my retail DVD had 10.6.3), I had to ask around to some other Mac using friends. If you can't find someone with 10.6.0, you could try going to an Apple Store (if one's nearby) with your 10.6.3 DVD and maybe a blank dual-layer DVD and ask a staffer if they could burn you a copy - or just give you one with 10.6.0 on it. It's not like they are copy-protected - if you show them you bought 10.6.3 retail DVD, they should not really care about giving you another DVD with 10.6.0 on it.

I've been back on 10.6.2 since August 3rd and not a single freeze yet. I was planning to report back to this list after two weeks by responding to my own Aug. 3rd post (I still will), but since I'm here now, I can report so far, so good with 10.6.2. I don't miss anything from 10.6.3 or 10.6.4 yet, but I will if the new MobileMe Calendar features come out of beta with a requirement of 10.6.4 or newer. Hope 10.6.5 helps, but I'm already thinking I'll be stuck on 10.6.2 until I retire the machine, years from now

I have had a range of the problems discussed here since upgrading to 10.6.3 from Tiger (which ran flawlessly for 3+ years). I have also tried numerous clean installs.

These problems have rendered my computer unusable. It will operate for several minutes, perhaps up to twenty, before freezing.
Graphic artifacts (principally thin horizontal lines and stray bright pixels)are also a feature of the issues that arrived with the 'upgrade'.


1. Problem started happening after 10.6.3 update? Yes
2. Did you get any errors during 10.6.3 update process? No
3. Mouse cursor moves? No
4. Mouse clicking does nothing? Yes
5. Keyboard key presses do nothing? Yes
6. Only way to re-animate system is by holding down power button? Yes
7. Mouse/Keyboard Model? Apple Pro Keyboard, Apple Optical USB mouse