Why does Safari hang in OS X Lion?

Davemach, I'm sorry I cannot help you, and I'm not defending Apple.

I've been a Mac user since 1993, and gone through Mac Operating systems since 6.x to the current 10.7.3.

I've had my share of problems, but nothing I couldn't solve, either with the help found in these discussions, and/or from results of searching the net.

Lion has caused, and is still generating a considerable amount of debates, pro and and con. I also had serious problems with Safari previous to the current 5.1.3, beach ball and all.

I can say that I have no problems with Lion, Safari or Mail, although Mail is not my favorite e-mail client application, I much prefer and use Thunderbird, but I'm not recommending anything here.

I don't own Apple shares (unfortunately), I'm not a developper, Apple or other, just an end user, I have paid good money for every bit of Apple's software and hardware I own.

If you don't know how to make a "clean install", you'll find ample and detailed information how to do it, surely in this or other forum of these discussions.

But if you believe all those threads about a clean install not working, can't you schedule a meeting with an Apple expert at one of those Apple Stores, and discuss your issues face to face with a living person? I have never done that, but logically such a meeting should help you.

Wish you luck.

Many thanks for your words Charly. My nearest Apple store is 45 miles away and being freelance and with 3 kids under 7, it's something that is a chore to sort. That said, I've been trying since last September to fix these problems so I will have to go in and see what they can do. Crazy though isn't it that we are having to do this?? The thing that nags me most is when you are showing a client or employer a drawing on SketchUp and the beach ball of death starts spinning. It's not supposed to be the Mac way!! Thanks again though.

Just checking in to see if there are any new useful devlopmnes. Am already up to 10.7.3 and still having problems. Talked with an Apple Care rep and they had me running with only the external USB drive that I'm using for Time Machine. Yes it's more stable but still not as stable as Snow Leopord but I need my Firewire Drives online, otherwise I can't do the stuff that I got the computer for. It was working just fine with the Firewire drives on Snow Leopard, so the situation is still unacceptable. You think they'd figure out soon enough how to fix it.

My deleting prefs solution only proved temporary, with the freezing returning as bad as ever a couple of days later.

My get-by solution is to have a different admin account set up now, although I haven't sorted out access to all my photos etc via this.

I haven't done "clean" install solution, if that means erase and install, because of the hassle of backing up every file on a freezing account, my reinstallations of Lion were all via the web reinstall now on 10.7.3 no difference but happy with my alternative login.

Hi Dave,

yeah, when I factor freelance, 45 miles and three kids<7, I know that my advice was off the mark by at least 45 miles :-).

Add beach ball + employer/client, even worse.

I'll go out on a limb, and take the chance of more advice.

Have a look at:

<http://mashable.com/2011/07/20/lion-clean-install-guide/>

<http://www.macworld.com/article/161203/2011/07/should_you_clean_install_lion.htm l>.

But please don't rush to follow the instructions in those sites (I quoted only two of the many available). If you can spare the time, try to understand what it is about. The Lion operating system is quite different from his previous big cats.

Since you mentioned SketchUp and the spinning beach ball, please have a look at these pages:

<http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8320>

<http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=39450>

There are many others. If you already subscribe to this forum, I apologize for the duplication.

Again, I wish you better luck.

After months of searching the web for solutions and trying ever fix proffered, including those mentioned on this board, I've finally got rid of this problem. My solution won't be acceptable to a lot of people, but I"m as happy as a clam to have a stable, fast computer and web browser again. My solution? I upgraded to Snow Leopard and to Safari 5.05. I say upgraded because to me with all the problems I had with Lion it is definitely a downgrade from Snow Leopard, Leopard and many other OS's Apple has had over the years.

Anybody who wants to do this can simply do a Google search and there are step by step instructions on how to do it. In the end, Lion didn't have anything I needed and all I got out of it was headaches, which I didn't want or need. Now before I upgrade to anything I check the boards and news sites for problems to avoid nightmares like I had with Lion. For instance, Apple's latest security update for Lion and Snow Leopard, kills your ability to run Rosetta. I was on the verge of installing the upgrade, never thinking a security update could cause problems, until I read about this on MacRumors.

Thanks for the advice Charly and the links. I will try them. Am preparing for an interview tomorrow but I'm loading everything on to Dropbox and am going to show it at the interview on the family iPad. This is simply because, as I say, sitting with potential employers and making small chat whilst the beachball spins is something I thought I'd left behind with pc & Vista!!! Crikey, just a few months ago I had Snow Leopard, iDisk & iWeb and it was all a breeze. Thanks also to Stockscalper!

UPDATE: I think I may have sorted it. I noticed that the "hangs" started after my MBP was woken from sleep. I did a bit of research and plumped for switching off the automatic backups in Time Machine. Upon waking from sleep, for the first time my Mac is working really fast and there's been no spinning beachball yet. I will keep you all informed.

Dave,

I also got occasionally those hangs when waking my MB from sleep, but it was because the laptop had to "renew" its wifi connection to my home wireless network. After applying AirPort Utility 6.0 (1/31/12), the problem is [almost] gone.

About Time Machine, I can't offer advice, I don't use it, I prefer to make periodical backups to two external USB portable drives, using SuperDuper!

Since you seem to be on the go quite often, you might consider using (and carrying with you) one of those external portable drives, they are not expensive and are quite manageable.

I'm glad your beach ball seems to be staying at the beach where it belongs.

Cheers Charly. Just spent 13 hrs travelling to London for interview and back. Dont think it went well but you cant win 'em all! Got another one tomorrow anyway!! My MBP has been asleep for 24 hrs and has just woken with no spinning beach ball so I think it is the automatic backups. I do have a LaCie external hard drive so I will use that from now on. I also have the Airport Utility update which seems to work well. Thanks again for all your help!

Exactly what I did so that tells me the issue is with Lion. I want my $30 bucks back plus $10,000 for aggravation. I love apple but this totally *****!

I think Safari hangs problem is due to auto-join wi-fi that requires authentication to log in before the ISP release the IP (based on the error message log), and airport bailed and hang because the process is already associated and not releasing it. This caused the classic deadlock, neither one would release the process, and hangs. It sometimes even hangs Finder completely.

Safari hangs on wi-fi when it requires authentication log-in to your ISP before it releases the IP address. Somehow, Safari cannot handle the authentication prompt, whereas Firefox handles it without a glitch.

When that happens, Force-Quitting Safari would not help, because it is still stuck in the persisted state, because Lion keeps the state of the app when it is re-launched rather than re-starting the app from scratch.

Here is the workaround:

So the only hope you have is to re-boot Lion, then use FireFox to authenticate and log into you ISP network. Then launch Safari, and it will work. Do not launch Safari until you have authenticated with Firefox.

That is the workaround, until Apple fixes the airport auto-join problem.

I think in Lion, Apple added an additional pop-up window when the wi-fi requires authentication. For some reasons, that pop-up authentication window does not popup, causing Safari in a limbo state, because it is waiting for you to login through the pop-up window.

But for Firefox, it doesn't wait for the popup authentication, and go directly to the ISP authenticate page in the browser, whereas Safari doesn't. That is why it waits forever for the popup authentication window that never appear.

It is a weird bug, because on my iMac, the popup authentication window will appear when it finds a wi-fi that requires authentication, and it never hangs.

But on my MacBook Pro, it does not trigger the authentication popup and hangs it every time.

Hi Dave,

glad you solved the problem.

You're welcome.

Charly;

I think I've solved this problem by adding a new network profile. I've documented the steps to do this here:

http://www.tonyzampogna.com/2012/02/08/safari-not-working-but-firefox-does/

Hi all,

After installing Lion with Safari 5.1.3. i have very serious problems with my MB.

At first I thought it was hardware problems, even re-installed Lion (because of system failure when booting).

But no changes for better - when I start Safari my system totally hangs - no operations are available. The only possible way was to stop Safari via Alt-Cmd-Esc - wait 5 min until reaction - kill Safari - wait 5-10 min until reaction - then everything OK.

I have tried reset all Safari options, emptied Cache, changed Safari.app to 32-bit, add new network profile and so on - no result.

What helped me: I looked for all connected with Safari files and found /localhost/Users/Me/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Cache.db - it weighted 50 Mb - when I tried to re-set it via Safari menu - almost no changes in its size. Therefore I just deleted it in Finder.

After that and for several days on Lion and Safari works fine, no more hangings, no more hitches.

Hope somebody finds it necessary.