MacBook Pro keeps freezing up since installing OS X Mountain Lion

There's got to be something else wrong - a software conflict or something. I have a late 2008 MacBook Pro and initally had a ton of lockups (whenever it would lockup, the WiFi indicator in the Menu Bar would display one random bar) as well as severe battery drain, but have had absolutely no problems in many months (although the battery still drains relatively quickly, but it's now an old battery). I was really going crazy -- after decades of never having a problem with my Macs, I was about to abandon my religion, throw the Mac out the window and start using (ugh!) Windows.

I can't remember when the problems stopped, but it was either with 10.8.2 or 10.8.3 or maybe it was when I switched out some older third party apps with newer versions. I was never able to pin down exactly what worked.

Although I didn't need to do this, you might want to do a clean install of the OS. If that doesn't work, I'd backup your documents, format the hard disk and start over even though that means reinstalling all your apps.

Agree with you mbrooks01. Mine stopped freezing and I don't know why.

Maybe for the same reasons as you say. Don't think 10.8.2 made a difference.

That's the thing, when things are working correctly, you can't remember when the freezing stopped.

Seems to be a common thread of late 2008 MBPs running through this. That's what I have, too.

I'm wondering if ML is more sensitive to bad RAM on this model. My 8GB RAM upgrade (from OWC) failed a few weeks ago, and since they replaced it, I haven't had a problem. I wonder if the RAM was unreliable before it failed completely.

Note that my problem would not likely have been simply bad RAM. It started right after the ML upgrade, and I had never seen it before, so ML definitely seems implicated in my case.

Also, I'm not sure that my problem is over, since I have had periods as long as this w/o failing even before the RAM swap.

After a year of futzing with the tape inside the battery compartment, I took it to the local service shop specializing in Mac. (not Mac authorized) After 2 minutes they said it needed a new upper case. After reading this forum and someone's recommendation on replacing the ribbon cable, I decided to take an $18 plunge instead of the $175 they wanted to replace the upper case. Fifteen minutes and $18 later my formerly locking-up trackpad and keyboard have been liberated. It's been about 6 weeks now. All is good.