Q: my macbook freezes!
-
Dec 21, 2011 11:28 AMby Kappy,Reinstalling Lion Without the Installer
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alterhatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.
Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.
-
Dec 22, 2011 10:36 AMby Simpatico,unfortunately it's not posible to re-install lion from a wpa enterprise network, and so I've a hard time re-installing it. The option from the App store doesn't work either.
As for the SMART and repair I've done all of that and there are no problems.
Could there be other solutions to check first? What if re-installing Lion didn't do the trick? What else could it be?
My Mac regularly freezes, even before it's time to sleep (mouse and keyboard inactivity).
Problems didn't ensue as soon as I upgraded to Lion. They ensued recently as the lights of the display started turning off by themselves
-
Dec 30, 2011 6:10 AMby Simpatico,The RAM seems to be okay too:
$ memtest all
Memtest version 4.22 (64-bit)
Copyright (C) 2004 Charles Cazabon
Copyright (C) 2004-2008 Tony Scaminaci (Macintosh port)
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 only
Mac OS X 10.7.2 (11C74) running in multiuser mode
Memory Page Size: 4096
System has 2 Intel core(s) with SSE
Requested memory: 731MB (767025152 bytes)
Available memory: 731MB (767025152 bytes)
Allocated memory: 731MB (767025152 bytes) at local address 0x0000000101000000
Attempting memory lock... locked successfully
Partitioning memory into 2 comparison buffers...
Buffer A: 365MB (383512576 bytes) starts at local address 0x0000000101000000
Buffer B: 365MB (383512576 bytes) starts at local address 0x0000000117dbf000
Running 1 test sequence... (CTRL-C to quit)
Test sequence 1 of 1:
Running tests on full 731MB region...
Stuck Address : ok
Linear PRN : ok
Running comparison tests using 365MB buffers...
Random Value : ok
Compare XOR : ok
Compare SUB : ok
Compare MUL : ok
Compare DIV : ok
Compare OR : ok
Compare AND : ok
Sequential Increment: ok
Solid Bits : ok
Block Sequential : ok
Checkerboard : ok
Bit Spread : ok
Bit Flip : ok
Walking Ones : ok
Walking Zeroes : ok
All tests passed! Execution time: 1139 seconds.
-
Dec 30, 2011 6:42 AMby softwater,How did you reinstall it? From the Recovery disk? If so, its possible that the RD never installed properly in the first place. I had similar problems.
The answer was to re-download a fresh install from the App store (hold down 'option' while clicking on the 'Purchases' tab in the App store. Then choose 'Install').
When the download finishes, do NOT run it, but copy it to an external, bootable clone.
Boot off the clone, and run Terminal.app. In Terminal, paste/type this command
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1
Open Disk Utility. Choose the 'Debug' menu and choose 'Show Every Partition'.
Delete the Recovery partition and the previous Lion partition. Make a new partition HFS+ journaled.
Run the installer you downloaded earlier and choose the partition you just created as the destination.
Good luck
-
Dec 30, 2011 7:25 AMby softwater,Are all of the following true?
The problem did not occur on Snow Leopard, but started after the upgrade.
The hard disk has been been verified in Disk Utility
The RAM has been verfied
You did a NVRAM/PRAM reset
If ALL the above are true, the chances of it NOT being a corrupted OS install from a 4GB download are, IMO, pretty low.
-
Dec 30, 2011 7:33 AMby Simpatico,The problem didn't occur on Snow Leopard. It didn't occur on Lion straightaway though. It occured together with my display screen dimming to no backlight.
From the App store I don't have the option to download the OS. See http://screencast.com/t/k2uDe97c9
-
Dec 30, 2011 7:47 AMby softwater,Yes, but if you're already in your Lion system you can't re-download it. You need to boot up from a Snow Leopard install (any machine will do, borrow one if you don't have a clone of your original system), then sign in to your app store account, hold down 'option' and hit 'purchases'. If its not your own machine, then obviously save the downloaded install to a USB.
Message was edited by: softwater
-
Dec 30, 2011 7:51 AMby softwater,Kappy wrote:
Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry. There are situations in which this will not work. For example, if you are already booted into the Lion you originally purchased with your Apple ID or if an instance of the Lion installer is located anywhere on your computer.
FYI, it seems there is one more condition to that:
If your startup disk is partitioned with both SL and Lion installs
Even when booted in SL, I can't get the app store to let me re-download the installer (Lion isn't running, and the installer.app isn't on this machine).
-
Jan 21, 2012 3:10 AMby Simpatico,It seem that there is a Lion problem with 4GB of Ram on mid 2007 macbooks.
I've 2 slots of 2GB RAM installed in my mid 2007 black macbook, which supports only up to 3GB.
I've taken out one 2GB RAM slot (thus remaining with only 2GBs of RAM), and my macbook doesn't want to freeze anymore!
To verify that the problem is not with the individual RAM piece, I've repeated the experience with the other RAM piece as well.
So those experiments suggest that the problem could be one of:
1. Lion has problems with macbooks running 4GB of ram while they can only support 3GB;
Evidence for this is that on Snow Leopard I've had no problems. This would be confirmed if I switch back and still have no problems.
2. There is some problem with the RAM slots (not the actual RAM pieces) such that they cannot properly handle 2 slots. This is excluded if returning to Snow Leopard no issue arises.
Any thoughts on my diagnosis?
-
Feb 7, 2012 9:04 AMby james2016,Hey everyone,
I've recently come across the same problem. I have a 15" MacBook Pro (early 2011) and had my computer in for service a couple weeks ago. After getting my computer back from the Apple Store I was presented with a bunch of updates (listed in the picture below, all installed on Feb. 6.) Notice that the MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update v2.3 is installed twice (the Thunderbolt Firmware has also been installed twice but after the second install it hasn't prompted me to install it again.) Everytime it comes to restarting the computer after this update is installed the computer "clicks" on/off several times before actually booting. Then when I log in Software Update prompts me to install the same update again.
And in regards to the backlight issue, it started with the behavior mentioned above after I "installed" this update. I don't know if there is any correlation or if two problems arose at the relatively same time. Anyway let me know you thoughts on this. Thanks.
PS. I minor fix/workaround: I set my screen to never dim and to lock it up I go to my username in the upper right-hand corner of the title bar and click Login Window...
15" MacBook Pro (early 2011)
Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (11D50b)
2 GHz Intel Core i7
8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon HD 6490M 256 MB
