Q: OS X Lion freezes at login screen + App Store is slow

New Mac buyer here. Always been a PC.  Fact that I can't use Citrix is likely going to mean a return of this MacPro if I cannot login to my work from home VERY soon.  Get with it Mac. So far, I'm regretting my purchase (not mention the fact that the App Store won't allow me to update iphoto either...). This MacPro goes back in 7 days if no fix is out soon (that doesn't require more than a few clicks).

Ok so I am new to this whole Mac thing, and things just are not as straight forward for troubleshooting as I thought they might be. I searched for help becase my daughter's iMac appeared to be hung at the login screen and I stumbled across this thread.

It was weird because I was able to move the mouse cursor on the screen, but I couldn't select a user to log in, no amount of clicking worked. I figured the machine was hung and tried all the things listed here including the Command + R to get into the disk utility -- it was there I realized that the mouse sort of worked, as with the log in screen, but I couldn't select anything. I was able to navigate the dialog box just fine with the attached USB keyboard. While I ran the disk verify utility I decided to replace the batteries in the mouse just for fun to see if the mouse was the culprit. Sure enough, as soon as I switched the batteries out the problem went away... weird stuff these Macs:) Merry Christmas.

I too have freeze problem but it only happens when I am at any (or most) login requests ie.: switching users, netflix login, facebook, apple support, apple dev center, gmail and more. Doesn't matter if its firefox, google chrome or safari - it still freezes.

It will eventually un-freeze but most of the time I do not have the patience and so will press the power button momentarily and then cancel the window where is says  . . . . are you sure you want to turn off your computer".

I did a clean install (not from the recovery partition) of Lion and that solved the problem for a while. Now it is happening again. So I am thinking it must be a software problem causing this.

As I reinstalled my programs 1 by 1, I would test and see if the problem was with a specific program. Everything seemed fine but now it is happening again.

I have a feeling  (don't ask why - because I don't know), that it is Adobe CS5 calling home to check my license, but I cannot verify this. I am about to uninstall Adobe but am unsure if I should use the "Adobe Uninstallers" that came with the software or use something else like "Clean.App" or MacKeeper to to the uninstall.

BTW, MacKeeper says I have no viruses.

The problem with uninstalling Adobe products (I am told), is a 3rd party program called Flex that is installed with the Adobe license and it is this program that seeds in hidden directories and is not uninstalled when Adobe CS4 or 5 is dragged to the trash bin.

Any suggestions are welcome and as I further try to eliminate this I will post back here with any progress.

Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2

MacBook Pro 15" (early 2008)

2B RAM

Your post has been very instructive due to you sistematic way of dealing with this problem of login freeze!

I, too, have thought about the possibility of connecting the freezing problem at logon to some bad behaved program. Well, I would like to sugest you the possibility of eliminating some or all those programs that start automatically when you logon.

The steps to reach the config panel for those programs is:

1. System Preferences

2. Users & Groups

3. Click on your own user ID (although this should not be necessay, as you must have logged in your own user id at first).

4. At the top right side of the window there will be two buttons. You should click on "Login Items".

5. You will be presented to either a list of programs which start at logon or to an empty list. One of the procedures I adopted here as a way to stop this problem in my MBP was to remove ALL programs in this list.

I also sugest that you call Apple too. They have some special procedures to reset parts of the MBP with a bag of commands to be used during boot time.

Hope you could have a better time with your Mac with this little tip here.

Tchüss.

One thing I wish to leave witten here once again is that the huge number of users that has written in this strain here  about logon freeze CAN NOT be ignored.

My point is that there is a real problem with Mac OS X 10.7.x (Lion) wich is still to be clearead and explained officially by Apple. Most of my friends at work which have migrated to Lion report more or less frequent SBBoD freezings. Mostly during the logon process.

Out of the blue, this horrible unpredictable problem emerged and made completly unreliable those so stable Macs. And to make things worse, Apple has not yet recognized this problem officially, as what we have here in this strain is only a set of goodwill peer users tring to help each other.

This has made me quite suspicious about Apple and its promise of a reliable, error free platform.

Hope that we all be happier with our Macs, even if it is through magic.

Thanks for your post. I haven't had the freeze issue for a few hours now. But it will come back - I can feel it.

I have spoken to Apple about this and did many things they suggested: Repair Permissions, Disk Verify & Repair, Reset PRAM. They offered to give me an appointment with a Genius at an Apple Store (at no charge), and I intend to do this next week unless I solve the problem before.

Last week I removed iTunes Helper from:  Users & Groups > Login Items but still have the freeze problem.

I also created a new user and logged in that account and still had the Freeze Issue with Safari and any password page (like facebook) and so the freeze issue must be system-wide, not just the automatic login user.

And in switching back to the default user account, the system freezes at that login.

I've got no problem with typing in user names but after that the MB Pro freezes at won't let me into the password box.

I think Lion is fantastic and it's integration w iTunes, iCloud & iOS devices is a beautiful thing. The freeze thing is driving me nuts however.

It's not as bad as it was prior to the clean install. I was really forced into that clean install because this MB Pro had become almost totally useless. I had first tried a re install from Lion Recovery and that did absolutely nothing.

For the clean install I used Snow Leapard to delete the Lion partitions, Created a new Partition, formatted it and installed Snow Leapard. I downloaded the SL Updates and then went to the app store and downloaded Lion again and did the install.

Two other issues that happen sometimes, but not all the time is if I shut down or restart the computer the system freezes - or maybe just hangs at the spinning circle of dashes in the gray screen and just won't shut down. And sometimes start-up from a cold start or a reboot will take up to 20 minutes and at other times it will only take 30 seconds. Its a real crap-shoot. I never know when its going to happen again.

Message was edited by: Courtland McDonald

Courtland,

   Does your mac ever give the Gray screen of death, telling you something went wrong? Or is it just hanging, and you're killing the power?

    It sounds alot like a problem I had that I finally attributed to a RAM issue -

    it was very difficult to troubleshoot, as all the memory testers said the ram was fine.

     Running out of options, I replaced the ram and the problems went away - completely.

     The reason I ask about the gray screen of death is that if you get that, the system will have logged something in console - and you can see which program crashed and the memory address.  After looking at about 10 of those, I started to recognize the same memory address in each one, which is what finally prompted me to replace it.

Ok, one final go for a scripting solution that keeps the beach ball at bay. The script that follows needs to be saved as an application, and you need to click the 'keep open' checkbox. Then set it as a login item. What it will do: check to make sure AGS is turned on at login (i.e. after you've been through the login screen). The advantage: AGS will continue to work and save battery life. Then, when the applescript quits on shutdown or logoff, it will uncheck AGS. The only way this can work without using the complicated means of a logout hook (which involves shell scripting) is to keep the system preferences open (and hidden) all the time (I know, it's inelegant, but so is the error that causes this in the first place!). It needs to stay open because the script will cause logout/shutdown to timeout if it has to launch system preferences. Your mileage may vary with the timeout problem...let's hope this is a VERY temporary solution for some.

tell application "System Events" to set isUIScriptingEnabled to UI elements enabled

if isUIScriptingEnabled = false then

          tell application "System Preferences"

  activate

                    set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"

                    display dialog "Please click the \"Enable access for assistive devices\" checkbox at the bottom of the Universal Access pane and run the script again."

                    return

          end tell

end if

tell application "System Preferences"

  launch

          set current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.energysaver"

end tell

tell application "System Events"

          tell process "System Preferences"

                    set AGS to checkbox 1 of group 1 of window 1

                    if not value of AGS as boolean then

  click AGS

                    end if

          end tell

end tell

tell application "Finder" to set visible of process "System Preferences" to false

on quit

          tell application "System Preferences"

            set current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.energysaver"

          end tell

          tell application "System Events"

                    tell process "System Preferences"

                              set AGS to checkbox 1 of group 1 of window 1

                              if value of AGS as boolean then

                                        click AGS

                              end if

                    end tell

          end tell

          continue quit

end quit

I'm seeing the same spinning rainbow disc on my login screen as well. This time it appeared when I was using vnc to screen share from a MBP to a new 27" imac with 12 GB RAM, model late 2011.

WIll try disabling the adaptive graphics option as suggested in multiple posts.

BasementJack: In answer to your question . . . . "Does your mac ever give the Gray screen of death, telling you something went wrong? Or is it just hanging, and you're killing the power?"

I think it is just hanging. When I go to shut off the computer I get a gray screen w the apple logo and below the logo I get a spinning circle of dashes then the apple logo and the spinning thing dissapear and I'm left with a gray screen for anywhere from 10 secs to 10 minutes, depending on how my MBP is feeling at the time. For the past few days it has been shutting down normally.

When I when I signed into Apple Support just now to respond to your post, I launched Google Chrome, clicked the bookmark for this forum and then "Sign In" . A saved username & Password window came up (saved, I presume with Google auto-complete),  and I clicked "sign in". The system then froze. I can easily tell just by putting the mouse cursor in a blank area of the top menu bar and try to move the entire window around the desktop. If it doesn't move, it's frozen. So I press the power button momentarily and the "Are You Sure You Want To Shut Down Your Computer Now" Screen comes up & I press cancel. That unfreezes the system.

On a cold startup I will sometimes use that same trick if it takes too long to start up. However, I have not had a problem starting up lately.

I will start looking at console logs. I hadn't thought of a Ram issue but that would make sense and sort of feels right intuitively. Thanks for that.

I cannot find the adaptive graphics option in my sys prefs - energy settings. Maybe its not there for me because I have a MBP 15" early 2008 with an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB Graphics card (Apple confirmed to me that its not part of the the Nvidia Recall).

Helmut - I forgot to mention that the Tunes Helper Application was the only item in the Login Items. System still freezes whether its there or not.

One thing I cannot figure out is why MacKeeper loads on restart as well as CineForm Studio (Software for 3D editing from GoPro.com for their "Hero2" High Def Camera). Neither are listed in Login Items. I Don't need CineForm Studio so I'm planning to delete that program. I installed it last night and the freezing problem predates that install so I don't think its that. There is no "Load at Startup" option in CineForm preferences nor in MacKeeper so whay are they loading? Reminds me of Windows Messenger from my Windows XP days.

I am wondering what other 3rd party programs are running in the background - will have a look at Activity monitor.

I'll also uninstall MacKeeper and see if that has any affect. The RAM issue mentioned by Basement Jack is intriging.

Courtland:

How to turn Automatic Graphics Switching  (AGS) On/Off:

Open the Apple Menu > System Preferences > (Hardware) Energy Saver [Battery tab] panel.

(You can also access this by clicking on the System Preferences icon in the Dock)

If your Mac has two GPUs in it you will see, at the top left of this panel, a CheckBox. Un-check ti to turn AGS Off.

If the Mac has only a single GPU, as some early Macs did, then there will be no CheckBox.

Thanks Terry. I pretty much thought that would be the case - No way to turn on AGS if I have only one GPU.

Hi. Yes - it looks like your MBP is this one - that had just the nVidia GeForce 8600M GT GPU board. No "on-board" Intel graphics at that point.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/stats/macbook-pro-core-2-duo-2 .4-15-early-2008-penryn-specs.html 

So this glitch is not related to the AGS problem that seemes to be causing problems for some of the other folks on this thread.