MBP gets frozen after sleep

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MBP gets frozen after sleep

Hi! I have an early 2011 15" MBP running OS X 10.8.2. For some time I experience a problem which happened rarely in the past and got more and more frequent and now it happens always.

The symptom is that whenever I leave my MBP running with the display black (I configured the upper left corner of the screen to switch it off) for some time after like 3-5 hours it gets forzen. When I move the mouse the screen comes back, and the program running in the top window responds sometime, but latest after the first attempt when I try to switch to any other running programs or click the Apple menu, it hangs and nothing works any more. (Usually the CPU fans are on top speed but I'm not sure wether it's always the case.)

Then I press the power btn for 10sec and restart it. If I'm luckey the system boots if not is does not and either a question mark or a folder icon appears on the grey background. Then I usually reboot it in repair mode and lunch the disk utility, and make it repair all the problems, but it rarely finds any.

This behaviour is experienced even with no programs running (so after a fresh restart), so I don't think it's related to any of the user software. Yesterday I also tried to reinstall the system completely but it didn't help.

I have a feeling that it might be related to the indexing process, because after such a forced reboot, a long indexing starts usually; but if it were the reason, others might have the same issue i guess, so I'm really out of ideas...

Any hints/help is appreciated, thank you in advance!

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Jan 25, 2013 3:12 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 25, 2013 4:17 PM in response to Máté

My suspicion is the hard drive is failing.

I would back upimmediately and trouble shoot this further

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Answer 2

Máté Author

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Jan 25, 2013 6:14 PM in response to leroydouglas

Backup is done by TimeMachine. I also suspected HDD failure, but how can I prove it? Can you give me hints about the further trouble shooting? (Which preferably does not start with "buy a new HDD, copy your system and try if it works 🙂 )

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Answer 3

Jan 25, 2013 6:32 PM in response to Máté

You look at S.M.A.R.T. status but this is limited

To check on SMART status in Mac OS X, open Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities) and take a quick glance at your drive(s).

Pending failures will be obvious: the S.M.A.R.T. Status will read Failing. If a drive has completely failed, it won’t even show up.

You can run Disk Repair fromRecovery using Disk Utility. Reboot holding the command-R

You can run Appple Hardware Test from Recovery as well option-command-R, or boot hold D key

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Answer 4

Máté Author

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Jan 25, 2013 6:42 PM in response to leroydouglas

S.M.A.R.T. status reads verified, and I used to run Disk Utility almost after each crash, but usually it doesn't report any damage usually (I have seen one or two bad files sometimes, but that's not the usual case).

I will try this HW test now.

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Answer 5

Máté Author

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Jan 26, 2013 5:13 AM in response to Máté

Apple Hardware Test also didn't find any problem 😟

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Answer 6

Feb 7, 2013 10:27 AM in response to Máté

I am having the exact same problem (MacBook Pro Mid 2010). I went to the Apple Store twice. They replaced the SATA cable first, then the hard disk, and then reinstalled Mountain Lion. After each attempt, the MacBook was working fine for about a week, then the problem reappeared.

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Answer 7

Eric Root

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Feb 7, 2013 10:42 AM in response to Máté

Try starting in the Safe Mode and see if you get the same results:

Starting Up in the Safe Mode

What is Safe Mode

Also try using another account to see if you get the same results. Disk Utility doesn't repair permissions for your user account. To do this,boot to your Recovery partition (holding down the Command and R keys while booting) and open Terminal from the Utilities menu. In Terminal, type: 'resetpassword' (without the 's)and select the admin user. You are not going to reset your password. Click on the icon for your Macs hard drive at the top. From the drop down below it select the user account which is having issues. At the bottom of the window, you'll see an area labeled Restore Home Directory Permissions and ACLs. Click the reset button there. The process takes a few minutes. When complete, restart.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/15/repair-user-permissions-in-mac-os-x-lion/

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Answer 8

Feb 8, 2013 6:49 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks for your reply, Eric!

I tried all of your suggestions. Unfortunately the problem is still there.

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Answer 9

Máté Author

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Feb 8, 2013 1:10 PM in response to Máté

Additional detalis I found recently:

- the crash occurs for me only if the lid is open. If I close the screen, the running system will "last" for any time

- if the blank screen is activated (as I wrote above I use a hot corner to switch off the screen), the mac is still wakable for some time (one or more hours, but not a full night). When I come to the machine in the morning, the fans are on full RPM, I guess some very havy CPU load is the cause of the crash. If I move the cursor, sometimes the topmost window is still active, but when I try to do anything to swich the focus (Cmd+Tab or click on the background windows, it hangs.)

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Answer 10

zaak911

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May 2, 2013 4:57 AM in response to Máté

this happens to me also.

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