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My Macbook Pro keeps freezing. Help!

Hi, I have a macbook pro mid 2010 model running OS X Lion 10.7.4 with 8GB of RAM (3rd party upgrade), 128 SSD. Up until about 3 weeks ago everything was running fine. Then one day the mac just froze and it's been doing it ever since on an irregular basis. Some days it will happen 10 times in one day, then it won't happen for 3 days.


Symptoms:

- The mac will freeze completely, no mouse, trackpad or keyboard input, if itunes is playing a song it will just hang and repeat the last 1/2 second of the song like a broken record. The only way out of this state is to do a hard reset.

- Occasionally I get some screen on startup that says I must hold down the power button to restart. It says this in about 5 different languages.

- Occasionally starting up the mac gets to the grey screen then doesn't move. Again I must do a hard reset.


Attempted Fixes:

- Booting up in safe mode does not fix the issue. It sometimes freezes in safe mode, or gets stuck on the grey screen.

- Apple Hardware Test - No issues found after running 3 times in extended mode.

- Verified/Repaired disks - Problem remains.

- Restored from a time machine backup. I didn't expect this to fix it, and it didn't.


If anyone has any ideas on what could be causing the issue, or any way to figure it out I am all ears.


Thanks,

Graham

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on May 21, 2012 8:09 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on May 21, 2012 10:11 PM

I think a #8 should cure the issue


but don't stop there, check the other steps too


Step by Step to fix your Mac

148 replies

May 23, 2012 9:28 PM in response to Gman001

I tried booting up from an external drive as well and this did not help. Running out of ideas I made an an appointment with apple to check it out.


After a few hours of diagnosing they have decided it's a sensor fault on the logic board which now needs to be replaced. This laptop is only 2 years old! How can such a core component need replacing after 2 years!? For almost $700 no less!


Has anyone else experienced this with apple? This is my first apple computer and if this is the norm then I will think twice before buying another one. My 6 year old PC is still going strong and it is on 24 / 7.

May 24, 2012 6:06 AM in response to Gman001

I too have a midyear 2010 MacBook Pro and never had a problem with it until a few weeks ago. It would just freeze and I could not use the trackpad. I couldn't force quit anything because I couln't move the cursor. I have to do a hard shut down. It's driving me crazy ! I never had this problem before "upgrading" to Lion. I have five Apple computers in my home and have to buy a sixth for my son who's graduating high school and going into music production. We use Logic Studio so he has to have a Mac. I don't understand what the problem is. The update 10.7.4 has done nothing to fix the issue. I wish I could "downgrade" to 10.6xxx but the machine won't allow it. The other 2 Apple laptops in my house are running 10.6.xx and are not having this issue at all. I use my laptop for work in the field and mixing music when I travel. This situation is unacceptable !!!!!!

May 24, 2012 4:15 PM in response to Mario Celso Jr

You tried to reinstall and recover from Time Machine and it

didn't worked, right?

Yep, I restored from my last time machine backup and it contiued to freeze. One thing I did not do was do a fresh install of lion and test it with no 3rd party apps installed.


The only reason I am confident that it is a hardware issue (aside from the Apple people telling me so) is that it froze in: safe mode, at the grey startup screen, and recovery mode.

May 25, 2012 2:47 AM in response to Gman001

Not sure why I'm having feelling that this topic will have quite few replys very soon!


I have Macbook Pro 13", 8GB Ram, 120GB SSD (Mid 2011) and the same issue started after 10.7.4 upgrade. First I thought that mail clinet is bad, then iCal, Chrome and so on until I realised that something is wrong with 10.7.4! I came to that conclusion since problem persisted even after all apps were closed my whole machine would be frozen for 20 second to almost a minute!


Since no one tried clean install up to 10.7.3 I'll do it tonight (Australia) and post the result.


Cheers


Dr Chandra

May 25, 2012 5:50 AM in response to DrChandra

OK, here is the first result. I installed Lion on top of existing 10.7.4 without formatting hard drive. Upon completion OS version was 10.7 with all user data and applications preserved. Unfortunately freezing (wheel of death) was preserved too. I installed 10.7.3 package and there was no difference.


Try no2. Disk formatted and going with 100% clean install. 10.7.3 will be installed and results posted here.


Dr C

May 25, 2012 12:59 PM in response to DrChandra

Hi DrChandra



It's a good news.



My problem appears to be a little different, but same cause: update to 10.7.4.



When my MacBook freezes, there is no wheel of death. It simply freezes. Display turns off, no mouse, no keyboard (the keyboard backlight stays on).



In all occurences, iTunes was loaded. As Gman noticied, if itunes is playing a song it will just hang and repeat the last 1/2 second of the song like a broken record.



I'm not using iTunes, since last Wednesday. No freezes until now.



I may be wrong, but smells some conflict between iTunes and Lion 10.7.4.



I'm working with no time to breath. If I had time I would the same as you. Install from zero and don't update to 10.7.4. Maybe I can do that in one or two weeks.



Until there I'm keeping searching some fix, and using iTunes the less time possible.



[]'s



Mario

May 25, 2012 7:06 PM in response to Mario Celso Jr

Mario,


I think that I'm more confused now after working on my clean install of 10.7.3! I continued with apps installation and death wheel started spinning again but not too many times. I didn't want to make any conclusions since I was installing apps for VM, file system and those that could halt the machine during the process of installation.


Once I completed app install I noticed cold boot time jumped from 13-14 seconds to much longer time (2-3x). From the moment password entered it would take long time complete login process. I removed Sophos, stop use of Chrome but no change. I installed TRIM support for my SSD which reports all fine now. I'll add all updates for Lion except 10.7.4 and just try to use for the rest of the day without installing any new app and see the results.

May 27, 2012 12:52 PM in response to Gman001

I have what seems to be the same problem and I think I have narrowed it down to my externally attached Seagate GoFlex hard drive and Lion update 10.7.4. Everything was running fine until I applied the update for Lion. Ever since then if I tried to access the external drive I would get the spinning beach ball and have to shut down with the power button.


I had been doing Time Machine updates until the update and since then it won't do the updates any more. I have verified the hard drives, both internal and external with no problems. I have now unplugged the external drive and things are running fine again. I will post any updates if things change.


Don

May 31, 2012 4:24 PM in response to Mario Celso Jr

I am having the same issue with the display going black but the keyboard stays lit. I can hear it running but I have to hard boot it each time.


I bought my MacBook Pro in June 2010 and have NEVER had a problem until upgrading my Mac OS X. First I had a problem with the upgrade and I had to completely wipe my HD before it would allow the upgrade. Now, weird things are happening all the time. In addition to my screen going black, I have had applications randomly close while using them (although this does not happen very often). The freezing problem used to happen a couple of times a week soon after installing 10.7.4 but now it is happening several times a day....I have already had to reboot 6 times today.


I will keep checking back to see if a permanent fix is found.


Thanks for letting me vent.


Amy

Jun 1, 2012 12:42 PM in response to Gman001

I have this same issue. My Macbook is a mid 2010 unit. My problem mostly occurs on boot up. The computer would just hang on the log in screen. I would have to power down the computer using the on/off button. The second or third time doing this I could log in. I took it to the Genius Bar and they said it was a corrupt log-in issue. Of course it would log in okay at the genius bar. They did a complete wipe of my computer and did a fresh install of Lion, etc. The next day the problem started again. Somewhere I read the graphics card is the problem. So I went to Preferences, Energy Saver and UNchecked the Automatic graphics switching. After I did that I have had no problem logging on for the last 5 months.

My Macbook Pro keeps freezing. Help!

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