Mac will freeze every few seconds

I think everyone is just fishing. The common denominator here is Snow Leopard. I have 3 different Macs (2 MacPros and a MBP and I am experiencing the same issue. No matter what browser I am using and even if I shut the browser down. It's the system.

I kind of buy the whole Font issue as I have a lot of fonts running on my systems. But my newest MacPro I just got last year and this has been happening since shortly after I got it and I don't have near as many fonts on it as I do the other machines. Still, it could be related to a specific font. But even this is a stretch.

My guess is that it is related to an update on Snow Leopard that came out a while back. So we will probably have to deal with it until another update comes along. And with Lion out there, the updates are few and far between.

It is a pain in the ***, especially trying to watch videos. But like we all said, this is happening across the board. Not just in a browser or a specific browser.

Apple needs to get off their duffs and figure out what th problem is. As I am typing this, I am getting pauses all over the place. It's annoying typing and seeing nothing for about 5 seconds, and then it shows up all of a sudden.

Hope there is a fix to this soon.

Hello,

It's been a month now that this problem appeared on my "early 2011" MBP 15" received with Lion but downgraded to SL.

This problem really looks like a hardware problem as it's getting more problematic after a long day of intensive work (I'm a Unix developer and use this machine mostly to code database intensive applications).

That problem even appeared right after a reboot, when the Login Window show up ! All what had to be done at AppleCare Level 1 (PRAM, SMC, Safe Boot, premissions ...) Only thing I'm refusing to do is to reinstall the system. Man ! It's a Unix machine, not a Windows machine ! YOu don't have to wipe your drive clean to get a problem solved. Better buy a PC if it's the only option.

AppleCare Level2 hang up on me because the system was "Downgraded to Snow" ... because I'm a very bad customer NOT liking that !$#$$#% Lion !

As of now, Spotlight has decided on its own to rebuild its whole database for the 4th time !!!

One important detail : --> That "Freeze and Go" thing does NOT happen when I work within Java and Unix native applications (MagicDraw, oXygenXML, nedit ....).

So. Now I have to turn it to my local Apple Support Center (luckily downtown) and get them to check the hardware (deeper than Techtool). I fear that they'll have to replace the harddrive. It takes me some 2 weeks to rebuild my Mac (over 400 GNU and Perl modules to recompile, plus a lot of other development stuff to rebuild ..). Anyways. I'll have to do that one day sooner or later.

That Mac's is at work a minimum of 14 hours a day. My previous dual core Memron MBP was at 100ºC all the time !

Well ....

I was having this issue and it turned out that the freezes were being caused by the OS trying to access a particular file in a part of my hard disk that had physically failed. This file, which happened to be accessed quite frequently, was related to certificate caching.

After I didn't find my answer in this forum I grepped around and found this article. I followed the instructions and renamed the affected file. Everything has been working properly for the last hour or so... no more beach balls. I will be doing a time machine backup tonight and replacing the failing HD this weekend. I hope this helps somebody.

@nvadave - with my problem, I don't get the beach ball. I just get these annoying pauses for like 3-5 seconds and they happen about every 30 seconds or so. I thought it was Firefox at first, but this happens all over the place and on both of my MacPros (my MBP only has this issue from time to time).

Wish I could figure this out. This is a new computer and it's quite annoying.

Dear all Mac fans !

I AM SAVED (so far ... knock in wood).

I applied the recent "Security Update 2012-001 (Snow Leopard)" posted on February 1st.

Since then, no more "sudden freeze for 1 second". Video playback doesn't stutter, no more lags during scrolling, no more ... no more ... no more ... (long list of jaggy opeations)

Perhaps the cause was indeed a software problem. Or the update replaced a damaged file, reset some cache ... I'll never know.

BTW, the link behind that Security Update is broken http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1489

I keep my fingers crossed that this fix will last.

I hope it'll doe for you. I may add in the list of "things to try when the world break loose" : Reapply the last Combo-Update.

:-)

Unfortunately for me, this update has made things worse. I was very hopeful after reading your message. I was never getting the beach ball before, just pauses. Now I'm getting the pauses with the spinning beach ball. And it seems to be pausing longer than before. So I'm sorry to say that in my case - things just got worse.

Hello MKadrie and All ...

I was so happy ... but on the day after (this morning) ... all break loose again: The Mac stalls again one second every few seconds !

Bummer. Gotta bring in for a hardware check. I'll have to take 2 days off because I can't do nothing at work without my Mac.

I'm sorry for the deception ... I really believed it was over.

I have to believe this new security update is screwing things up, at least as I've observed. I'm getting very slow loading of videos, very slow, and having pictures not show up, the spinning ball as I type, like now, and very high RAM usage, I'm currently pushing nearly 3 GIGS of memory! Safari has been crashing a few times a day, often when I'm not even sitting at the computer, just on its own!

It was working fine before the update....

Not sure if this will help anyone, but I have noticed that most of my problems seemed to be with Firefox. I learned that by default, Firefox tries to save your information and data every 15 seconds. That's absolutely annoying. If you go to your browser address bar and type in about:config, you will then be asked if you are sure you want to proceed (just say yes) and then in the filter searc at the top, type in browser.sessionstore.interval. You will see (in miliseconds) that it will be set to 15000 (or 15 seconds). Change this to a much bigger number (I tried 600000 which is 10 minutes). Since then, no more annoying pauses. The only downside is, if Firefox crashes, it will only restore from the last time it saved. I certainly don't have an issue with that (at least for now).

Anyway, just thought I would share that with you guys. So far so good for me. I was able to type this whole message without one pause 🙂

I think it is the OS (I have the 10.7.3) ... I thought it was MS OFFICE or the WI FI connection or ADOBE READER, a friend believes it was ICLOUD settings... I've read people with different reason (e.g. hard-disk, Firefox, auto recovery file, etc.). The common factor is the OS. I updated MS OFFICE and fixed the "endless ball" issue. I updated with the february patch and my computer still is ok. So keep fishing and eventually you wil fix it. Sorry.

Mine's the same MKadrie's problem, although I am on a relatively old macbook (2008).

I havent updated the OS so am still on Leopard, not Snow Leopard.

Basically, as everyone else has pretty much described, everything bar the mouse and audio freezes for around 2-3 seconds every 8 seconds or so. I don't get the spinny ball thing but I do get extremely ****** off. The only thing for me that fixes it is to restart the laptop, which will fix it for a while, but it always ends up coming back. I'm on Firefox too, and everything is up to date. Annoying!

Edit: I also had my hard drive changed a couple years ago, as it corrupted. Luckily I got it free off applecare. Better not be the problem!

Hi All,

The problem is here since December 24, the day it first happened. After having learned to live with it I came to the conclusion that it must be hardware related. You all describe the same symptoms but we all have a different lash-up. I've done all possible software verifications and it's not possible it's software related (also because the problem happened when NO software changes were done on my MBP !)

I suspect problem with RAM, or the VRAM that is also used internally, perhaps the HD controller too. Anything that does direct memory accesses.

I've resorted to take a couple days vacation and turn my MBP out to my local repair center. Appointement taken W10. Taking vacations will be more efficient than the 3~4 days required to reconfigure a backup machine.

Applecare Level 2 turned their back on me because "I have downgraded my September 2011 MBP to Snow Leopard !"

Hello All !

Well, here it is. I brought the MBP to an Apple Repair Center. They pulled the hard drive and popped in a test one with a fresh Snow Leopard install .... and the problem was gone ! It's software then.

We're all flabbergaster as there is absolutely no clue of what's wrong (as even with a Safe Boot the problem exists).

The solution has been to set in place a fresh new hard drive and reinstall everything one piece (of software) at a time. As I'm a Unix developer, I need some 500 GNU and CPAN applications/modules. Took me quite a time to load anc compile all this stuff. I only use Office and Adobe commercial apps. All my other professional apps are Java based (UML, XML modeling, DB front ends ...). Nothing I could load that would alter the OS such badly.

The only 4 softwares I've not loaded yet are the three that place kernel extensions (Snitch, Bresink, Parallels, Apani VPN). I should do a CarbonCopy clone of my HD first ... just in case one of these 4 apps was the culprit.

I've kept the original - damaged OS - drive in an external enclosure, for reference to help me rebuild my machine. Every time I boot on it, I get the problem (freezes 1" every 3") !

That's a costly repair ... and still I don't know what has happened. "Damocles sword" ... you know ?

Hoping this will help you.

I'm not sure what exactly the fix is, is Apple going to replace everyone' s hard drive who's having a problem? And if it this is "just a software problem", then why did you need a new hard drive? Why not just clear it & do a clean install? So far you've installed all your programs and nothing's gone wrong, so if it turns out not to be one ot the last remaining ones (none of which I have, by the way, so one of those is not creating my problems), then what does this mean? Maybe the new drive will work fine for a while, and begin to act up again, maybe not. But what exactly does this mean for everyone else? I've only experienced issues with browsers, slowing down, running up RAM to nearly 3GB, and CPU usage to 180% just for the browser, usually Safari. Again, all this began after the latest security update, which pretty much rules out software I already had installed, since the update is the only thing added before problems occurred. What exactly "damaged" your initial hard drive?

Here are some more information. Indeed, I should have provided them.

First : I still don't know what has damaged my original HD.

A "Clean Install" is the fix (not the answer to the origin of the problem). I needed a new hard drive because I need to keep it as a reference for the configuration of all the applications I use daily. Even though I use Time Machine to back up my data, I can't back up the setup of my apps. You can' simply copy over all your Application Support and Preferences folders. This simple can't work because some of the setups are tied to one instance of MacOSX. When you install the OS, unique informations such as UUIDs get created and you can fix old prefs to work with a new OS install. I have some 500 Unix apps and modules I need to recompile. I can't just copy them. For instance, some are tied to the dynamic temporary directory in /var/folders.

Anyways, I needed to keep my original hard drive for reference. Most of the "standard" users of a Mac will be happy with a Clean Install.

The problem I experienced is crazy: The UI freezes a fraction of a second every 3 to 10 seconds then restart catching up what was delayed during the freeze. On movie playback, it's like when you see a TV ad where actions accelerates to skip non important moment and then slows back down. Here, the frames past the freeze are played back quickly until it catches the lap. All apps were impacted, even the genie effect when the Login Window appear after a reboot. No process hogging CPU, nothing to be monitored ... just "stand still", "catch back", "stand still", "catch back". It's not fun when you move a window on the Desktop : it drops. No fun when you right click : Contextual menu closes .... Just like when somebody is poking you in the back when you try working !

That problem did a few time not happen on the machine when stored shut down and being cold. I comes up after being warmed-up and RAM loaded. I swore to the repair guys that it could be only a hardware problem. Proof it wasn't :-(

I also prefered to get a new drive, in case the HD had indeed a nasty hidden interface failure - even though all evidences showed that the original hard drive had no failures (hardware bench tested) and a Clean install (plus new HD) removed the issue.

I will only get the real end of the story after I clean install the original HD. Problem is that I don't have an DVD with 10.6.8. It's a downgraded Lion machine. AND I can't use Lion because there is no Spaces (I use 16 spaces (2 * 4 on dual displays). But that's another story.

I had to take two days of vacation the time the machine was under repair and it took me three days to install back all my stuff. I lost 5 days of work.