MacBook Pro keeps freezing up since installing OS X Mountain Lion

I have exactly the same symptoms as you. I would add that I do not think it's a heat issue. For me, it typically occurs after waking my 2010 MBP. Most (but not all) of the top bar freezes including the WiFi, which has 1 random bar lit. My guess is that, for you, iTunes keeps happening to be the first to try to use the network. I don't know the name of the network or clock processes to restart them in Activity Monitor, so I usually end up hard rebooting or force quitting everything like you said.

ryancassin wrote:

Every time I crash and get the garbled graphics, I see entries like these in the console:

kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0xd = GR: SW Notify Error

I found another discussion that indicated it could be an overheating problem. I installed a temperature monitor and watched. The computer was running a little hot, about 60-70 C. But I opened up a lot of tabs at the same time in Safari and saw the temperature spike at 78 C before the monitor garbled and the computer froze.

The interesting thing is that the fan never really powered up in response to the increase in temperature. As soon as I reboot, during the system startup the fan begins flowing very hot air, and then when I've logged back in the fans spin down to a lower level again.

Makes me wonder if there was a change to Mountain Lion power management that is causing this...

I'm having the exact same errors showing in my console log. I don't think it's a heat issue as I am running iStat. Seems to happen more often waking from sleep, or logging back in after deactivating screen saver. I installed the .1 update yesterday and haven't had a crash since, but until I go several days I'll assume I've just been lucky.

Yes, when it freezes, I also have one random WiFi bar lit. I now generally keep iTunes and Transmit (for FTP transfer) out of memory (not that Transmit does anything when it's not actually being used) and I've had only one freeze in the last three days.

I also got a call from Apple on Friday about my other issue: very short battery life since installing Mountain Lion. They didn't fix anything, but they did have me send them files, etc. I was impressed that they called. We spent about half an hour on the phone together. This particular tech advised me that since I purchased Mountain Lion and therefore have a warranty on it, I should call in my problems so they'll be aware. Haven't had time to do that as yet, but I eventually will, unless they come up with a fix first.

Are there already known fix to this problem? Apple should've solved this long time since the release since a lot of ML users are suffering from this. 😟

Since my post on 2nd August it hasn't frozen again.

Mine freezes less than it did, because I keep anything that might access the web out of memory until I'm ready to use it, but it still freezes from time to time. One thing that reduced the amount of freezing is taking iTunes out of memory. But it still happens about once every few days. In fact, this morning, I brought it out of sleep and it was "frozen". I could still use some applications, but I had no WiFi.

One thing I've noticed is that they'll generally be only one application in a "not responding" state, but when I force close that app, the next app goes into a "not responding" state until I force close that one, then the next one goes into a "not responding" state, etc. I have to force close each one and only then can I reboot.

I really hope Apple has a fix for this soon. I also have the problem where my battery has no life - even in sleep mode, it disipates in about an hour. Apple did call me on that one and take all kinds of info, but no fix yet. Mountain Lion has turned my Mac, which always worked great, into a PC.

I just quit the application. While I'm not sure if it makes a difference, I also take Transmit, an FTP program, out of memory, even though it shouldn't be trying to connect when it's not "on" and I quit Skype as well. It doesn't completely resolve the issue but before I started doing this, I had to reboot at least once a day. Now it's once every 2-3 days.

Let us know if they figure out anything at the Genius Bar. Frankly, I doubt it, since this really does seem to be Mountain Lion related. One note: I upgraded Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard, not from Lion, which I never bothered with. Don't know if there's any bug related to that.

I went from Lion to Mountain Lion - so no I wouldm't think so.

Mine's a mid 2009 MBP

I was hoping that 10.8.1 would resolve the problem, it has not. The only thing that works for me is to use a program to force the notebook to only use integated graphics. That for me cures the problem but is hardly a solution of any kind.

I called up Apple again and they still have no notes for the people on the phones that this problem even exists.

I wish you luck. I've been back three times and all three the hardware is fine so theres nothing they can do. At this point I hate to say it but we have one option if want to keep these machine and that's wait for 10.8.2 and hope it fixes the problem.