Mountain Lion freezing

Yeah, except I didn't know they made a mid 2011 MBP. I thought the 2011 MBP's were just early and late. Anyway, you should try what I'm going to do and back up your stuff with an external hard drive then erase your HD and do a clean install from the Recovery partition. http://macs.about.com/od/MountainLion/ss/How-To-Perform-A-Clean-Install-Of-Os-X- Mountain-Lion-On-A-Startup-Drive_2.htm If anyone knows a better way to do this please feel free to let me know.

Sorry, you are absolutely right, I'm talking about an early 2011 MBP 8,3. Thanks for the link though, would be interested to know if going through this process has actually solved the issues for anyone....? Anyone out there had any luck..?

Yeah I have he same MBP! Have you had any other problems other than freezing? Beachballs? Anything at all? Even tiny things?

That's the wierd thing...naturally each freeze is accompanied by the dreaded beachball and the SSD sounds like it is in some kind of loop (hard to hear but there) but apart from that everything is absolutely A OK! It's really annoying though because when doing light tasks like emails and surfing the net there are no issues...it's only when the processors start to crank that the computer can't handle it... And again, only since the 10.8.2 update...

@Jonathan, don't know if you saw my posts a page or two ago, but I found that upgrading the firmware on my SSD resolved the problem for me. The only difference in my situation is that the beach balls were brought on by waking from sleep, not heavy CPU utilization.

All I can say now is that my computer has been running smoothly for the past 2 days and 5 hours now without any hiccups or freezing or whatever.
Very nice tip from steelduck. I downloaded Onyx and run the automation tool with all the boxes checked. Now the computer has been great the past days.

Will report back if there is any issue with its freezing.

Yes, I looked into that but so far no luck finding a firmware update for my "APPLE SSD TS128C Media" SSD. All other firmware upgrades for MBP are up to date...so against a bit of a wall there... I think that although the symptoms are the same it might be a different problem because I have never had sleep issues befere... Thanks though...

Might give that a go again....I left some of the boxes unticked when I did it... Got an appointment at the "genius bar" tomorrow....will report back on any insights....

Your SSD makes noise? How? No moving parts....

Same problem here, drives me NUTS!

I have tried to repair OSX Mountain a few times, with no luck.

I wish there was an easy way to go back to 10.8.1 where I didn't had this problem.

The problem was getting so worse that I bought an SSD drive to make the macbookpro (early 2008) faster. Just to keep up with the logfile being filled.

I also have cleaned my PRAM several times. But the problem comes back.

Even after a total new installation the problem came back within 1 day.

When I examined the log file, there are a lot of kernel panics in IOUSBFamily.kext. I also noticed that the problem is getting worse when you mac tries to give some sound (music, video, etc).

Also a lot of sandboxd error messages with com.apple.coresymbolicationd.

Also the mac lost the sound interface and then swith to Airplay?

Sometimes the sound only works from the speaker when I insert the jack from the headphone?????

It's lost the sound settings/devices (properly because the mac is so slow)

BUT situation is getting much better after I edit the following Lines in com.apple.audio.coreautiod.sb

cd /usr/share/sandbox/

vi com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.sb

contents of my file:

(version 1)

(deny default)

(import "system.sb")

(debug deny)

;(trace "/Library/Preferences/Audio/coreaudiod_trace.sb")

(allow file-ioctl

(literal "/dev/dtracehelper")

)

(allow file-read*

(subpath "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL")

(subpath "/Library/Preferences/Audio")

(subpath "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins")

(subpath "/System")

(literal "/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist")

(literal "/dev/autofs_nowait")

(literal "/dev/dtracehelper")

(literal "/dev/null")

(literal "/dev/random")

(literal "/usr/sbin")

(literal "/usr/sbin/coreaudiod")

(literal "/usr/sbin/coreaudiod/..namedfork/rsrc")

(subpath "/usr/share")

(literal "/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter/SubmitDiagInfo.domains")

(literal "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components")

(literal "/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist")

(literal "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/A52Codec.component")

(literal "/Library/Keychains/System.keychain")

(literal "/private/var/db/mds/messages/se_SecurityMessages")

(literal "/private/var/db/mds/system/mdsDirectory.db")

(literal "/private/var/db/mds/system/mdsObject.db")

(regex #"^/private/var/folders/[^/]+/[^/]+/C/mds/mdsDirectory\.db$")

(regex #"^/private/var/folders/[^/]+/[^/]+/C/mds/mdsObject\.db$")

(regex #"^/private/var/folders/[^/]+/[^/]+/C/mds/mds\.lock$")

)

(allow file-read-metadata

(literal "/")

(literal "/AppleInternal")

(literal "/etc")

(literal "/private/etc")

(literal "/private/etc/localtime")

(literal "/private/var/empty")

(subpath "/usr/lib")

(literal "/var")

(literal "/Library")

(literal "/Library/Keychains")

(literal "/private")

(literal "/private/var")

(literal "/private/var/folders")

(regex "/private/var/folders/[^/]+")

(regex "/private/var/folders/[^/]+/[^/]+")

(literal "/private/var/run/systemkeychaincheck.done")

(regex "^/private/var/folders/[^/]+/[^/]+/C$")

(regex "^/private/var/folders/[^/]+/[^/]+/C/mds$")

)

(allow file-write*

(subpath "/Library/Preferences/Audio")

(literal "/dev/dtracehelper")

(regex #"^/private/var/folders/[^/]+/[^/]+/C/mds/mdsDirectory\.db$")

(regex #"^/private/var/folders/[^/]+/[^/]+/C/mds/mdsDirectory\.db_$")

(regex #"^/private/var/folders/[^/]+/[^/]+/C/mds/mdsObject\.db$")

(regex #"^/private/var/folders/[^/]+/[^/]+/C/mds/mdsObject\.db_$")

)

(allow file-write-data

(regex #"^/private/var/folders/[^/]+/[^/]+/C/mds/mds\.lock$")

)

(allow mach-lookup

(global-name "com.apple.CoreServices.coreservicesd")

(global-name "com.apple.PowerManagement.control")

(global-name "com.apple.audio.audiohald")

(global-name "com.apple.distributed_notifications@1v3")

(global-name "com.apple.system.DirectoryService.libinfo_v1")

(global-name "com.apple.system.DirectoryService.membership_v1")

(global-name "com.apple.system.logger")

(global-name "com.apple.system.notification_center")

(global-name "com.apple.windowserver.active")

(global-name "com.apple.SystemConfiguration.configd")

(global-name "com.apple.coresymbolicationd")

(global-name "com.apple.SecurityServer")

(global-name "com.apple.ocspd")

)

(allow ipc-posix-shm)

(allow sysctl-read)

(allow iokit*)

(allow network*)

(allow process-exec

(literal "/usr/sbin/coreaudiod")

)

----------------------------------------------------

I also edited the mdworkers.sb file (pratically the same solution applies here, just keep a keen eye on your log file and then add a filter on "sandboxd" it will give you some clues what you have to adjust.

My mac is now performing much better, but still not what I'm used to it.

This is a really novice question, but how do I edit an *.sb file? I opened it using the vim command you mentioned, but I'm not sure about the syntax - I was able to edit the file, but when I used :!w to save it, the changes weren't retained.

I then tried opening it with TextWrangler, but got a permissions error (not being a member of 'wheel').

I've read here: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/65486/how-to-fix-slow-spotlight-and-tim e-machine-after-upgrading-to-10-7-5 that I might be able to fix some of my other issues (lots of console output pertaining ot sandboxd denying access to things)

Well, I'm only guessing it's the SSD...like a faint, pulsating humm whenever it crashes.... Anyway all, my problems have all been solved! I thought I'd try and restore my whole system from time machine to the ML version prior to 10.8.2 (which is where I thought all the problems began) but lo and behold, partway through restoring the computer...yes, you guessed it, it crashed! Said it couldn't restore files...tried again, got to about 19%, crashed again. Getting pretty stressed I thought what the heck, I will do a clean install using these instructions http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11273 because the drive had been wiped anyway. Took a while to download from WIFI but it succeeded in installing. I have since installed all my programs from scratch (not from time machine) which was very time consuming but now it's like I have a new computer - running great, no crashes. One thing I'm wondering is if you inadvertedly don't "allow application downloads from anywhere" under security settings in system preferences maybe when software automatically checks for software that is not from app store it might cause issues. Anyway, that was my fix...pretty much forced into it but at the end of the day just happy to be working again interruption free....

Nevermind - solved my own issue. I couldn't really figure out vim, but using sudo nano FILENAME worked perfectly.

You likely heard your cooling fan coming on full speed because the "crash" caused your CPU to heat up suddenly.

The fan(s) should be very hard to hear. If you can hear them, you should check what speed they are running at to ensure they fans are not jamming. For example, when my MBP wants cooling, it runs the fans at 2,000 RPM. If it wants high-cooling it ramps up to 4,000 RPM. But if you use a utility to check the fan's actual speed, and find they are not going over 500-1000 RPM then they are likley damaged or dirty.

If your cooling fans fail, the CPU can over-heat and that will crash your comuter - possibly loose data too.

I don't believe the "softwawwre update" checks anything not bought through the store. I think that security setting is to stop you from downloading a trojan in a chat room or Skype, etc.

Definitely know what a fan sounds like, I do a lot of intense processing on my machine and the fans kick in all the time to cool it down. No, this was definitely something else. In fact, just before most crashes, because they appeared to be a result of the processing load at the time, the fan had fired up as normal due to processing but then died down again once the computer had frozen. So nothing wrong with the fans; I have an app that monitors and controls them manually should I so choose. Besides, now that all is running perfectly again, processing as normal, fans coming on and off naturally, can only conclude something went awry in my system after doing my update to ML from Snow Leopard...Fresh install has fixed everything it would appear! Was only speculating about the software update checks..I really have no idea about that kind of stuff. Anyway, that has just been my experience, had a win in the end and hope that at least will provide some encouragement out there...