Gui is freezing

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Gui is freezing

Hello;

I have a black macbook I have had for a few weeks, and it has been intermittently hanging. The mouse pointer will still move around, but the rest of the gui is frozen. After a little while, the beach ball pointer will show up.

This has happened about 6 times in the last 2 weeks. There is nothing consistant about how/when it does this (apps or cpu usage or anything).

I am able to ssh into the machine, so the rest of the machine is still functional. I can then 'reboot', and the machine will reboot.

Here is what I have tried:
1) I ran 'rember' to check the ram. No problems.
2) I repaired the permissions.
3) I reseated the ram.

Here are my questions:

1) Is there a way to 'restart' the gui from the command line?
2) Is there some way to test the machine when it is in this state to try and diagnose what is going on?
3) Could this be a hardware problem?

Thanks

J

Macbook Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Jun 16, 2006 11:54 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 16, 2006 4:33 PM in response to jsisson

Hi, I have the same problem. I ordered my Black Macbook the day they were announced and it came a week later. Over the last week or so, I've noticed mine freezing like this as well.

I haven't found out anything yet...

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Answer 2

Jun 18, 2006 6:16 PM in response to jsisson

This problem only seems to happen to me while I am using the laptop during battery charging. I have not had it happen when I was running on battery.... so far that is.

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Answer 3

jsisson Author

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Jun 18, 2006 6:47 PM in response to jsisson

I guess the one consistant thing is that it freezes while I am using it, or when the screensaver is running (I was running 'hills'). I think when unplugged, the machine will throttle the cpu usage down, so perhaps this is caused by high cpu usage, or heat?

J

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Answer 4

Jun 19, 2006 5:57 AM in response to jsisson

Ok, it does it while on battery too. And it's doesn't seem network related, it did it after turning off Airport. I'm not sure it's heat related; I ran that chip temperature monitor and it would do it at my idle temp (60c) ...

I'm going to keep poking around; next I'll try making a new user and see if it does it there. I'll probably wait until the next update comes out, and if it's doing it after that, I'll reload the machine.

Once mine starts freezing like this, it does it every 2-3 minutes and hangs for about 30-60 seconds. Pretty un-usable.

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Answer 5

jsisson Author

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Jun 19, 2006 6:51 AM in response to Rob Klingsten

Our issues might be slightly different...

When my machine gui locks up, it's done. With the exception of the mouse, everything is frozen. After a few minutes, the mouse pointer turns into a beachball.

The odd thing is that I recently tried closing the lid to see if it had any effect... I closed it, and opened it, and the frozen screen was still there. About 20 seconds later, the screen went dark. I played with some keys, and then about 20 seconds later, the screen came back.

It's almost as if the cpu has slowed waaaaaaaaay down, but it doesn't make sense. If I ssh in, everything seems ok, and the cpu is idle.

I should probably let the machine sit for a while and see if it comes back on its own, but I tried it for 20 minutes before, and it didn't budge.

J

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Answer 6

Jun 21, 2006 2:29 PM in response to jsisson

I have this problem, too. Only, I have noticed something regular about it. I keep activity monitor open all the time.

Each time the MacBook freezes, then it "unfreezes", there is a huge spike in disk activity.

Something seems to be either being written to, or read from the disk.

I initially thought this was virtual memory, so I'd try to run with fewer apps (I have 2 GB of RAM installed). But, it happens even if I have only a couple of apps open.

Anyway, someone on MacInTouch posted that he was experiencing similar symptoms, and that he had opened a bug report via the Apple Web site, and that the engineers had it filed as a "known bug". At the moment, IU'm hopeful it can be fixed in the next OS update...which I hope will happen sooooon.

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Answer 7

Jun 22, 2006 10:34 AM in response to Marc Vose

Thanks for the tip; that is what I'm seeing too. The disk activity spike that is...

It seems like I don't have the problem until I use Safari. Maybe it's a plugin or something? I did notice Flash player errors to console during the same sessions that I get the freezing.

When I get the chance and it's doing it, I'm going to call in - maybe I will get more info then.

Rob

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Answer 8

Jun 23, 2006 9:52 AM in response to jsisson

Hi, unfortunately I don't have an answer, but I wanted to go on record that this was happening to me to.

I was wondering, do you think a PRAM reset, Reinstall of the OS, or waiting for 10.4.7 would help?

I used to have a 1st generation 12" Powerbook where something similar happened, I couldn't even use the mouse in that scenario though. Ultimately I had to have the logic board replaced. Do you think this is also a hardware issue?

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Answer 9

jsisson Author

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Jun 26, 2006 7:41 AM in response to jsisson

I replaced the original RAM back into the machine, and it hasn't hung since. This suggests that either I had some bad ram, or the macbook ram ports/motherboard are bad.

I will be getting new ram soon, and if hopefully this will solve it.

J

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Answer 10

Jun 29, 2006 12:12 PM in response to jsisson

Could the people that posted to this thread state whether or not they have 3rd party RAM in their Macbooks. specifically from OWC?

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Answer 11

Corelogik

Level 2

345 points

Jun 29, 2006 2:02 PM in response to jsisson

You could try command optionesc and see if you can bring up the force quit window. If you can then just force quit and relaunch the Finder. That will restart the GUI protion of OS X,...

As for the rest,... I dont own a Macbook yet.

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Answer 12

Jul 2, 2006 8:13 AM in response to jsisson

Well, 10.4.7 didn't fix this problem for me... it happened within 5 minutes after applying the update.

However, after that, I decided to do a fresh install after backing up my stuff. During the install, I went into the Disk Utility and zeroed the drive and then re-installed a fresh 10.4.6 and then applied 10.4.7.

Since then, I have not had the problem, it seems to have fixed it. The one thing I did not re-install after reloading was MS Office.... but that could be just a coincidence. I switched to iWork instead.

Rob

Macbook Black, 1gb RAM

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Answer 13

jsisson Author

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Jul 5, 2006 12:22 PM in response to jsisson

I have solved my problem.

The dealer replaced the ram they gave me, and the issue hasn't occured since.

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Answer 14

Jul 5, 2006 8:44 PM in response to jsisson

Hey, I've been having the same problem with my wife's new macbook, which is 3 weeks old. It's happened twice so far, with all of the same spinning beachball symptoms that everyone has described. Once was before the 10.4.7 update, one after. We did not purchase a mouse right away, and it did not show up until we bought a Logitech Bluetooth mouse. We added an extra 512 mb of ram from Apple when we ordered it. What is the ssh procedure that has been mentioned? The only way that I've found to deal with the GUI freeze-up is to remove the battery. I don't get any response from Force Quit, or the power button.

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Answer 15

jsisson Author

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Jul 6, 2006 8:30 AM in response to Robert Harris5

You can SSH (Secure SHell) into a mac if you have another mac you can use to connect with. (SSH is just like telnet, but with encryption and stuff)

You need to enable 'Remote Login' in System Preferences -> Sharing on the machine "A" (the machine that is freezing). Then from the other machine (machine "B"), using Terminal, do a 'ssh <ip of machine A>'. After you connect, you can issue a 'reboot' command to have the machine calmly reboot.

I am assuming that machine A has the same symptoms as I did. The GUI was frozen, but the underlying system was still running, so I was able to do this SSH trick.

I would recommend you test the machine for a while with other ram, if possible.

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