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Jack Talon Author

Level 1

11 points

Mac will freeze every few seconds

About an hour ago I opened a video on Youtube in Firefox. About halfway through the video everything on my Mac froze. The video stopped playing, the dock animations froze, I couldn't click anything, etc. I could still move the cursor around, but it was in it's wonderful spinning beach ball form.

After about 10 seconds of this everything started working again, but about 10 seconds later everything froze again. This happened about 10 times before I decided to restart the computer. After the restart, everything was slow to load up, and once everything was loaded, it went right back to freezing every few seconds again. Any idea what the problem is or how to fix it?

iMac 27", Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Oct 5, 2010 4:10 AM

67 replies

Dec 20, 2010 2:34 PM in response to Jack Talon

I am experiencing something similar that began today. My MacBook Pro, 10.6.5, will freeze with the beachball or become even less responsive (the cursor moves around the screen, but the does not do anything when clicked) every minute or two, for 20-60 seconds at a time. Usually when it resumes functioning, it breezes through all the actions that were attempted before. It usually seems to be in response to taking some action, though I encountered it as well while playing movies through quicktime. Looking at the console, I see two errors repeating themselves: one is about fontd crashing, and the other is about Chrome failing to find a quicktime codex.

1.) (com.apple.fontd[237]) Job appears to have crashed: bus error

2.) Google Chrome Helper[397:107] Error loading /Library/QuickTime/DivX Decoder.component/Contents/MacOS/Divx Decoder: dlopen(/Library/QuickTime/DivX Decoder.component/Contents/MacOs/Divx Decoder, 262): no suitable image found. Did find:

Right now, I have chrome closed (typing this up on the old imac...) and haven't seen the second error since restarting; however; the console does show the fontd error about every 30 seconds, which is roughly the period of the freezing, and there was a more direct correlation between the time of the last freeze and the last timestamp on the fontd crash.

I'm running software update now, and I removed duplicates through fontbook so perhaps that will have a salutatory effect.

Dec 20, 2010 3:34 PM in response to Ben Dean0000000

I may have a fix-- I continue to believe this was a font issue:
After posting this, I noticed that while using the FontBook to remove duplicates, in certain cases it would crash the whole program to validate large blocks of fonts, and that the crash message was extremely similar to the fontd error I saw in the console. I did a little binary search on my library of 253 fonts and found the two which, when accessed, would crash the program. I removed these fonts (through the terminal, as FontBook would crash when attempting to bring up a preview of the font) and after restarting, have yet to experience a fontd crash, and have not had a global freeze like i'd been seeing.

However, I don't want to assert this is the cause of this problem yet, since as far as I know, I didn't modify the system fonts any time recently. It'd be good to know whether anyone else is still experiencing this problem, and if they see any fontd crashes in the console.

winkle74

Level 1

0 points

Jan 8, 2011 1:15 PM in response to Jack Talon

Has anyone found a solution? I noticed my iMac started doing this yesterday. I just did a system update and everything is updated as it should be. Restarted and it's still doing the same thing. I can't even work on it anymore.

winkle74

Level 1

0 points

Jan 9, 2011 11:11 AM in response to Jack Talon

Ok ... I finally found out what was causing mine to freak out ... it's either the graphic card or the Miniport adapter. When I unplug my secondary monitor, the problem goes away. My graphic card is ATI Radeon HD 4670.

napobu

Level 1

0 points

Jan 10, 2011 8:14 PM in response to winkle74

Mine too!!!
If i open activity monitor, when the problem happens i can see that is most of the time safari, if i force quit it from AM the problem goes away.. i also try switching the video cards with gfxCardStatus and didnt help much (i have 9400 and 9600 nvidia).
Its freaking me out since i work with my laptop live..
Anybody with new developments about the issue? Has apple reported?

winkle74

Level 1

0 points

Jan 24, 2011 10:52 AM in response to Jack Talon

I still haven't heard. I finally just unplugged my monitor. I posted a question and got no responses.

After much investigating ... here's what I have found:

my iMac started freezing every couple of seconds and then would unfreeze for about 5 seconds (it was a continuous cycle). After trying everything to fix it ... It finally dawned on me to unplug the secondary monitor. Presto! My iMac was working again. So, I then assume it's either my graphic card or the miniport adapter. Plugged in the same monitor again and back to the freezes. I then unplugged that monitor and got another one (just to make sure). Monitor 2 seemed to work fine. No freezes ... I even used the same cable and same miniport adapter. I plugged Monitor 1 into my PC to make sure it wasn't the monitor .... sure enough, Monitor 1 works perfectly fine. Confused yet? I know I am ....

Of course I then plug monitor 1 back to the iMac and it still freezes up. Any suggestions out there as to way monitor 1 is locking up the iMac? And just so you know both monitor 1 and the main display on the iMac lock up.

Why does Monitor 2 work with the iMac but monitor 1 freezes it up?

Monitor 1 is Dell s2409wb
Monitor 2 is Dell 1905FP
I'm running OS X 10.6.6
3.06 GHz Intel Core i3
4GB memory

I even used every resolution size possible with Monitor 1 and it still freezes up the iMac. Very strange ... I have nothing else open that would cause conflict. It has me baffled.

Mar 18, 2011 5:32 PM in response to winkle74

I have a similar problem, and would very much like an answer.
I have tried to narrow it down, but I am still clueless.

What it does: 2 or three times per hour, the computer will freeze for 2-3 seconds, un freeze for 5 seconds, and freeze again for 2-3 seconds. When it freezes, the mouse arrow turn into the spinning wheel, and sound is disabled.

It happened:
while browsing the internet (forum websites, video websites)
while listening to music and typing on Pages.
With Time Machine turned off, and MobileMe synchronization off.
with Airport off, and modem off. (no internet at all)
Under a different user with administrator privilege.

The only thing I am not sure yet, is if it happens right after a safeboot, since I lose sound after that.

for reference, this is my link on the matter.
I bought the computer in October, and I can't think it happened before the 10.6.6 update.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2771666&tstart=0

Oct 19, 2011 12:49 AM in response to Jean Robert Bourdage

OK, so i'm having very similar problems but different circumstances:

Macbook PRO 2008 model

OS X 10.5.8

Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT (I do not have any external monitors hooked up)

I have absolutely nothing hooked up.

So my freeze-up's usually lock up the whole computer but I can still move the swirling beach ball around and the music stops playing.

They mostly happen with browsers. (I always use chrome, but happens with Firefox, too)

99% of the time, the freeze occurs when I open up a new tab on chrome, and type a few letters.

Most of the time it lasts around 20-30 seconds.

The "new tab freeze" doesn't occur in cycles. It occurs once and it's done, but sometimes the lock ups start occuring one after the other over and over. Restarting the computer doesn't help. First thing I did is start up itunes and play a song to easily see the frequency of freezes. The song kept playing until I started chrome up, when the freezes started again. I force quit chrome, the freezes stop, the song plays without problems. I try firefox instead of chrome, same thing happens.

So in general, the computer lockups are caused by the browsers but affect the whole computer.

I did not install any new software that might have triggered the problem.

A hard restart does not solve the problem.

The lockups go away on their own after about 20 minutes with the browser open. I know this because the music finally starts playing without lockup interruptions.

I'm also sure that the problem has nothing to do with the battery as I replaced it recently with no effect.

I suspect that it might have to do with the RAMs but I cannot test that coz i dont have spare rams.

It might also have to do with excess heat.. Honestly I'm leaning towards hardware because I can't seem to find any software that triggers the problem other than the browsers and I've been using them forever.

Oct 19, 2011 2:34 AM in response to Jack Talon

Try this: Shutdown and Unplug everything from your iMAC including the power cord. Wait ten minutes, plug it all back in and restart. On start up, Hold down keys [P+R+Option+Command] let the start up chime ring three times then release the keys. I had a flaky disk problem that lasted 9 months, these procedures fixed it.

Jack Talon Author

Level 1

11 points

Oct 23, 2011 3:20 PM in response to Jack Talon

Just so everyone knows, I ended up having quite a long conversation with Applecare, and eventually, after trying nearly everything he knew to try, he told me to take it to an Apple Store. They did a few tests and determined that the only way to fix the issue was to replace the hard drive. So yeah, if you are having this issue, good luck. :<

Jan 7, 2012 8:35 AM in response to Jack Talon

Hum. This description matches what my Sept 2011 10.6.8 15" MBP experiences since Christmas (not the kind of present I like for Christmas). Whatever I do - type a text (this text) - watch a video - do an 'ls -als' under X11 - scroll through a long page - ... the display freezes 1 second every 3 seconds.

I did everything possible : Safe Boot; zapping PRAM; zapping SMC; permissions fix; Tech Tool Pro check; you name it. It happens with any account I've setup.

Only thing that was changed on the system in the few days before the problem arrives was Parallels upgrade and XQuartz upgrade. I've disabled Paralles kernel extensions and rolledback XQuartz ... still the same.

AppleCare Level one and two didn't help more (and started frowning because it's a "Snow Leopard downgraded" system.

Only thing I can do now it to drop it at my town's Apple Center.

It took me about 2 weeks to set up that machine when I got it. I'm NOT happy getting into that again. I've got some 350 Perl CPAN modules to compile, Sun MySQL setup ... yadi yada ... :-((

And I'm not sure that problem will not come again if it's software only and don't get a clue of what caused it.

Jan 7, 2012 10:38 AM in response to Thierry de Villeneuve

... Ooops ... forgot to mention that two times, Spotlight "decided" on its own to re-index the whole volume ! Bad omen 😟

Jan 15, 2012 5:36 PM in response to Jack Talon

My 2010 Macbook Pro had a widespread issue where the screen would turn black when using the discrete graphics card, requiring a reboot. Apple extended the warranty for the 2010 Macbook Pros with this issue to 2 years, and I got a logic board replacement.

Now I have this issue where everything freezes and the cursor moves only. I brought it to the Apple Store and he told be to reinstall the OS. I clean installed and when reinstalling a lot of programs at once, the computer froze. I'm guessing it's hardware and it seems to be the hard drive. It's so weird this is happening to so many different models. Even the Genius said that IF it were a hardware problem, he thinks it is the hard drive.

Alemarvi

Level 1

0 points

Jan 15, 2012 6:06 PM in response to Jack Talon

I am having the same problem. I thought that it is because OFFICE, because It happens at my office when using WORD or PPT. But now , after reading all this posts, I think it could be either (a) a "monitor 2" issue or (b) a hard drive problem. Tomorrow I will test the monitor 2 issue.

I am using CHROME but doesn't freeze when using it.

Alemarvi

Level 1

0 points

Jan 28, 2012 5:29 AM in response to Alemarvi

I updated MS OFFICE and may MBA is working fine, so far.

Mac will freeze every few seconds