Frequent freezes since update to 10.6.8

I finally figured out the source of my freezes. They were caused by the firmware on my SSDs. The 2nd gen sandforce drives had a lot of issues with the earlier firmware. When i upgraded the firmware from 2.08 to 2.12 everything ran as i expected. My drives were ocz agility 3's - 120gb. I hopefully this may shed some light on your freezes / system hangs.

Exactly the same for me. Every 5-10 minutes a 30-60 seconds hang with beach ball. It is OS wide so doesn't matter where you go to escape...it's the finder. Looks like I will have to reinstall. But is this now a SSD issue?

Vincenze,

It could be an SSD problem. First, give me a little system and hardware information. What kind of Macbook do you have? What OS are you running? What kind of SSD(s) do you have? If the SSD(s) contain a 2nd generation sandforce controller and it's using firmware 2.06 or 2.08 then i don't think that reinstalling your OS is going to make any difference. Let me know and it's similar to my issue i can tell you the steps i took to correct it.

Marc

Hi Marc,

Model Name: MacBook Pro

Model Identifier: MacBookPro6,2

Processor Name: Intel Core i7

Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz

Number Of Processors: 1

Total Number Of Cores: 2

L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 4 MB

Memory: 8 GB

Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s

Boot ROM Version: MBP61.0057.B0C

SMC Version (system): 1.58f15

That's my machine in a nutshell. 10.6.8. I don't understand the Sandforce solid state device thing. Guide me please. Cheers Andy

The trouble i was referring to pertains to a certain type of solid state drives not functioning properly while using a SATA 3 connection. It's a firmware issue that can be resolved by updating the firmware on the SSD.

Based on the system information you gave me it looks like you have a 2010 model with SATA 2 connections so i don't believe this is your problem.

Do you have a mechanical hard drive in the laptop or do you have a solid state drive in it? If you're not sure you can get this information from the system profiler under the serial-ATA heading.

Once you identify what kind of hard drive / SSD you have in your laptop you can determine if that's the problem or if you need to look else where.

Marc

Marc,

I'm with you now. It's a rotational, so no SSD.

However, finder hangs go into remission when in safe mode, relapsing on normal boot. This hints at software.

Thanks for your time

Andy

Andy,

No problem. Honestly, if it's not to much trouble you can always resinstall OSX. This of course depends on how much time you spent configuring your system. Unless it's a simple fix i'd probably go with the reinstall - that may prevent furture troubles. Good luck on whichever route you decide to take.

Marc

Hey Marc!

I think you're spot on. These freezing problems most likely come from the SSD. Considering that many Windows users also have freezed and Black Screen of Death on SSDs. I have the same problem: I just replaced my HDD with an OCZ Agility 3 SSD and I was super-happy with the speeds on my old MacBook 13 (2008). But quickly the freezers, hang-up, hangs beach-ball of death or how you wanna call it happened. They happen during any kind of use, surfing, emailing, word processing. System is unresponsive for 30 secs, then back to normal. The other instance: When waking the laptop. I have a 2.08 firmware on my OCZ Agility 3. However, i read in the OCZ Forums that many users had even worse performance with later firmwares (2.11 seems the newest one!).

Can you confirm that the problems disappeared after upgrading from 2.08 to 2.11? I am running an old machine, with ICH8-M AHCI SATA1.5 chipset on Mac OS Lion (10.7.1).

Do you recommend upgrading the firmware of the SSD? Thanks for the reply!

Yes, i definitely recommend upgrading the firmware. They actually have a newer version out now - 2.13. I'm currently running 2.11 so i can't speak to 2.13 but 2.11 pretty much fixed the beachballs & freezes. I still get an occasional "hang" but it's not nearly as long as it used to be and it happens a lot less frequently. I'm not sure if this is related to the SSDs or something else on my system but it's so infrequent it's not really a problem.

I had some trouble updating my drives and had to boot off a ISO i downloaded from the OCZ forums. I would recommend going that route if you run into any issues. Good luck

Marc

Hm, my performance seems to be similar to you: I get about 1-2 small freezes (10-15 secs, no beachball, just unresponsive), which is ok. Then more annoying is the inability to wake up. This happens i think about every 3rd time I try to wake the laptop from sleep, it just doesn't wake up anymore. Since restarting is nearly as quick as waking it up, it's not such a big problem, but still a bit annoying with unsaved documents etc. But considering this I think I will not risk upgrading since even in the best case scenario it would probably be similar as now, whereas it might also introduce serious problems.

If it ain't (really) broke don't try (really) fixing it...

If I see more consistent feedback about a REAL fix by the firmware upgrades on the OCZ Forums I will probably jump into the water, right now it seems not to pay off.

I started having this exact problem after update to 10.6.8 while using Safari. Complete freeze in the middle of a web page load. This only happened with Safari running -- not Firefox. I dumped the Safari and got Chrome. Same thing happened -- freeze during page loads. Had to do a "button" shut down and restart. I switched to Wyzo (and I kept Firefox) and the problem has gone away (so far). No problem with either of these browsers. The only other thing I did was a TechTool Pro Scan of my main HDD, repaired permissions. My conclusion is that Safari is not playing nice with 10.6.8.

I'm glad you posted this as I was having the same problem. And it was only reading this I noticed both of the last times I can remember it happening it was with Safari. Both last crashed happened with Safari. Dumped and using Firefox now so hope it's fixed!

Hi Barry

I know this is completly off this topic but i deleted the file you said to delete when you answered a question in 08 to auntie about her trash not opening, i deleted it and i lost my backround, i cant seem to replace it or my dock has completly dissapeared

PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!

Not sure if this helps anyone but I have had similar fun trying to get a Crucial M4 to run in my MBP 5,3 - no luck, and a whole lot of wasted time. Came across an article about downgrading from EFI 1.7 to EFI 1.6, gave it a go (pretty easy) and guess what? No more beach balls running the M4 drive as a replacement for the 500gig the machine came with. No matter what I do the thing is now stable as a (large) rock. Only hastle is that every time I check for udates the EFI1.7 upgrade is there waiting for the day I accidentally click on it to install. Hopefully that will not happen, if so I guess I will need to reapply 1.6.

My "analysis" of the situation is that EFI1.7 will not work with a third party SSD on a 5,3 MBP. ***** right?

I have the same issu on MBP 5,1 late 2008. From time to time i get the spinning beach ball, without an apparent reason. I leaved the mac turned on for an entire night waiting form trim procedures to start and situation was better, but still i have some hanging problems.

I can't downgrade the EFI (is it really possible to downgrade a virmware version??) since in my last firmware update Apple finally fixed a problem of flickering images specific of my laptop version.

****, i guess if changing from SL to Lion the problem will remain...