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LionelD Author

Level 1

0 points

Are there known issues in 10.8.5

Hi everyone, I'm new here and hoping to get some assistance please.

I updated from 10.8.4 to 10.8.5 today, and since then my MacBook Pro (circa 2008, but apparently compatible with this update) has just hung, at least twice. Are there any known issues with 10.8.5 that might account for this?

I've done a Command-R restart and used Disk Utility to verify permissions on, and repair the built-in disk; Disk Utility reported that the disk was good, did not need to do any repairs. (Did this once).

After a subsequent restart I my MBP hung again while I was using Finder and Preview. The spinning blue ball goes solid, and both the magic mouse and the touchpad do not respond. I'm actually a little surprised and rather hopeful now I've managed to get to this point.

I have a current Time Machine backup and Install OS X Mountain Lion.App (10.8.4) on a USB drive - just in case.

Thanks in advance

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Sep 13, 2013 3:48 PM

49 replies

lesna

Level 1

0 points

Sep 18, 2013 1:09 PM in response to LionelD

Same here. Updated "vintage" Mac Pro and "vintage" MacBook Pro to 10.8.5 - the latter all but died. Freezes randomly, sometimes at password time, other times even after an hour, but freezes all the same. Tried everything (clean OS (re)install, then installing one app at the time, restarting, seing what happens, etc.), finally gave up, and since when downloading via App Store, the @%$# 10.8.5 overwrote my 10.8.4 full installer (even though it was "hidden" on an external drive !!!), I'm right this very minute installing 10.8.3, to be followed by 10.8.4 update.

Not happy, Apple !!!

LionelD Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 18, 2013 1:17 PM in response to lesna

Well, the good news is that my MBP is suddenly stable and reliable again, running for 24 hours now, no more freezes; during that time I successfully copied about 1TB of data to backup and various other non-trivial tasks. The USB drive with the installer that I made for a problem with another machine saved the day for me; if my experience applies in your case, you should soon be back to normal. As noted earlier, the only additional issue I had to deal with was installing Java 6 runtime, and that was easy enough.

Regards

Lionel

lesna

Level 1

0 points

Sep 18, 2013 1:58 PM in response to lesna

Wow!! I had no idea this was possible, but - I started my MacBook off an USB drive with 10.8.3 installer on it, proceeded to install expecting it'll format the drive and perform clean install, but instead - it installed 10.8.3 onto my 10.8.5 system !!

Wish I knew that, it would save me from now having to re-install and re-authorize everything. This way you don't even need to worry about backing up your system when you upgrade it.

Csound1

Level 9

60,033 points

Sep 18, 2013 2:58 PM in response to lesna

lesna wrote:

Wish I knew that, it would save me from now having to re-install and re-authorize everything. This way you don't even need to worry about backing up your system when you upgrade it.

And in the event of an installation failure? what then.

LionelD Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 19, 2013 8:45 AM in response to LionelD

First of all, many thanks to everyone who suggested ways of dealing with this problem. As I am now convinced that the problem has been resolved, I'm going to consolidate the relevant information into one post for the convenience of anyone else who runs into this problem.

Background:

I have a MacBook Pro from late 2008, and was running 10.8.4 successfully - i.e., no apparent problems.

I upgraded to 10.8.5, and almost immediately experienced a series of system freezes In this case "freezing" means that the spinning blue ball goes solid, and neither the magic mouse nor the touchpad respond. While the freezes seemed to coincide with the upgrade, I obviously could not be certain that it caused the problem.

My MBP would freeze intermittently, with no apparent pattern. It sometimes froze immediately after I logged in, and it even froze when the only active applications were Finder, Activity Monitor and Little Snitch; all external devices were disconnected during this time.

I'm also the paranoid type, so I had a current Time Machine backup and Install OS X Mountain Lion.App (10.8.4) on a USB drive - just in case.

First Steps:

I did a Command-R restart and used Disk Utility to verify permissions on, and repair the built-in disk; Disk Utility reported that the disk was good, did not need to do any repairs. (Did this once)

My MBP continued to freeze intermittently, with no apparent pattern. It sometimes froze immediately after I logged in, and it even froze when the only active applications were Finder, Activity Monitor and Little Snitch; all external devices were disconnected during this time.

I took my MBP to the Genius Bar; they did some testing, checked the logs and experienced a freeze. The outcome:

My MBP is "vintage" - very late 2008 model, only just young enough to be considered compatible with OS X 10.8.5, so Apple will not keep it in the store overnight for more intensive testing. They also don't have spare parts any more.
The Genius, who was very helpful, expressed the view that it might be the graphics card. I suspect the hard drive, but the logs do not contain any information that confirms or debunks either theory. We discussed the idea of reverting from 10.8.5 to 10.8.4, using my Time Machine disk which is current.

Back home I tried to get the MBP up and running long enough to uninstall PhotoShop CS4 so I could avoid the hassle of calling Adobe to re-enable my license/swhen I re-install them. After several attempts ended in a freeze, I decided this was a futile effort.

With nothing to lose at this juncture, I decided to re-install 10.8.4 using the USB drive mentioned above. Miraculously the install ran to completion; that was noteworthy because that process runs far longer than the time between freezes. I expected the install to wipe the built-in HD, but when it ended I checked, and found all my data files on the HD; the Applications, Downloads and other standard user folders appeared to be intact as well, so the install of 10.8.4 had overwritten the existing copy of 10.8.5.

My MBP has now been up and running almost continuously for almost 48 hours after re-installing 10.8.4; in that time I've copied almost 1TB of data to refresh an external backup drive, updated Time Machine and completed several compute and I/O intensive photographic tasks. I know this is circumstantial, but I am convinced that re-installing 10.8.4 solved my problem.

If you have this problem, please make sure you have at least one current backup before you attempt what I did. I'm sure Apple would consider re-installing 10.8.4 on top of 10.8.5 very unorthodox and unsupported, but in my circumstances I'm very pleased with the outcome.

Regards

Lionel

Sep 19, 2013 6:02 PM in response to LionelD

So as I understand it while getting to the crux of the matter, for those of us in the same situation the "solution" is after one experiences his/her Mac fail miserably after updating to OS X 10.8.5, use your back-up installer and revert back to OS X 10.8.4 which we all had working perfectly before bothering with OS X 10.8.5 in the first place ?

LionelD Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 20, 2013 7:26 AM in response to tj_andersen

Yes, as frustrating and outrageous as it may be. Reverting to the previous release (of anything) is not a "solution" - it's just a short-term strategy for continuing operation while a real solution is implemented. It's the best I can do. Apple, of course, could do better.

I expected better as well - there's either something wrong in 10.8.5, or it should have been recognized as incompatible/inappropriate for vintage machines like mine. But now we know, and hopefully Apple knows as well, so they can fix it while we avoid it.

Regards

Lionel

Csound1

Level 9

60,033 points

Sep 20, 2013 11:56 AM in response to LionelD

I wonder why I am having no problems at all with the .5 update, luck?

LionelD Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 20, 2013 12:06 PM in response to Csound1

I obviously can't say, but luck is not supposed to be a factor with computers. Perhaps your machine is younger?

I'd like a real solution, so I can keep my MBP current as long as possible.

In the meanwhile, enjoy your good fortune!

Regards

Lionel

Csound1

Level 9

60,033 points

Sep 20, 2013 12:13 PM in response to LionelD

One of my Macs is a mid 2009 13" MBP, not so much younger than yours really.

Sep 21, 2013 9:21 AM in response to LionelD

Hi LionelID,

I'm glad to see you managed to get your system back.

This is purely speculative, but if your system is hard freezing yet that is apparently resolved by reinstallation of an earlier software release my first port of call would be to look at the power management kernel extensions, and any changes made in this area.

Hard locks such as those you describe are a common symptom where power management is involved; specifically where the voltage on a component drops as the current draw ramps up, eg when a CPU with power management techniques such as Intel's SpeedStep (used in Macs) or when a GPU requires more power for graphics work. I used to have a sideline business fixing Macs and the iBook G4 models had a deisgn flaw where a hairline crack would develop in the solder to one of the pins ona voltage regulator to the graphics chip causing a disconnection. The system would work fine until something required additional power from the GPU and tried to draw more juice, at which point the system would hard lock.

I'm posting this from a new retina MBP 13" which is based on the newer Core i (5/7) family of Intel processors. These use a significantly different architecture to the previous generation of Intel CPUs which used the Core 2 (Duo/Quad) design, so it is - while I reiterate that is purely speculative - possible that development on power management for 10.8.5 has focussed on current and recent Apple hardware releases and in doing so has introduced an error condition which only presents on previous generation architecture.

To confirm the error definitely lies with the operating system, if you have the means (ie a spare hard drive) you could do a clean install to an external drive over USB or Firewire, upgrade that to 10.8.5 and see if the issues are present then. If so, you know the error lies with a change Apple have made between 10.8.4 and 10.8.5 in which case you could chec the changelog and maybe open a bug ticket; if not, you know your issues are the result of a conflict with a change made in the 10.8.5 update and something else installed on your system, possibly something which makes certain power management related calls in the background.

The good news, muted as it may be, is that it does not appear to be a hardware fault, else the rollback to 10.8.4 would not have proved successful. Additionally I have not checked the changelog for 10.8.5 (I believe it snuck in as a security update - I'd only had this machine a day or so) but I can't see any feature differences between the points releases.

Sep 21, 2013 11:20 AM in response to danpalmer

A fair and pointed analysis I must say however I can save anyone some time in relating that I have tried the external drive route both in attempting to boot from an applied update (both the software update as well as the combo) and from a native OS X 10.8.5 full app installation and it makes no difference. Interesting that you point toward the powe rmanagement aspect as in googling this issue, the "Hackintosh" community when confronted with this same freezing issue, has described and found a fix by replacing the AppleIntelCPUPoerManagement.kext in OS X 10.8.5 with the OS X 10.8.4 version. Out if desperation, I used "kext wizzard" and performed the same swap however knowing that a "Hackintosh" and a real Mac are essentailly two differnt animals that fix didn't work either.

I think the obvious fact still being somewhat over looked in what appears to be a "cross the board " issue with all owners of the 15" MacBook Pro from 2007 is that this machine is Mountain Lion capatible and runs OS X 10.8.4 with great effecientcy and precision. And not to be rundundant however a simple search of this specific MacBook Pro model with OS X 10.8.5 included within that search will reveal case after case of folks reporting the exact same occurence when simpy trying to update from OS X 10.8.4 to OS X 10.8.5.

I personally take issue with anyone who in labeling these laptops as vintage, insinuates that somehow because of the laptops age that its ridiculuos to expect OS X 10.8.5 to function properly. To that I say...in a nicer term...BALONEY !!! The bottom line is that ANYONE who owns a Mountian Lion capatable Mac and an OS X 10.8 license should fully expect and deserves to be furnished with a fully functioning/working update of the lastest system version. End of discussion.

hbbd

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2013 12:34 PM in response to tj_andersen

10.8.5 Desaster - It took me 6 hours in total and now I'm back to 10.8.4.

I'm an every-day user, not a pro.

Thanks for making it clear but who will care?

"The bottom line is that ANYONE who owns (...) OS X 10.8 license should fully expect and deserves to be furnished with a fully functioning/working update of the lastest system version."

Sep 24, 2013 6:43 AM in response to LionelD

So...

As I am the type that can rarely "let a sleeping dog lie" and as the impression I was getting in contacting Apple directly reagrding this issue was to not expect a solution any time soon...I pressed forward and I believe to have come up with a viable (temporary or otherwise) fix to the OS X 10.8.5 freezing issue. I will preface in what I have to found work with my 2007 MacBook Pro15" 2.2 GHz A1226 by making the statement that if one elects to perform this proceedure they do so at there own risk. Firstly, in analizing what was occurring when updating "normally", in the many steps I had taken to to try and correct the problem, I became fairly confident in assessing that it was a updated driver/kext in OS X 10.8.5 that is causing the freezing issue in my MacBook Pro. I deduced this from variety of circumstances that I had witnessed behavior wise coupled with the fact that my Mac Pro updated to OS X 10.8.5 without any issue whatsoever and possesses every single third party application that my MacBook also has installed. I woke up this morning still puzzled yet determined to try to come up with my own resolution.

I began as I had done before, with my MacBook Pro booted to my perfectly operating OS X 10.8.4 system and an external with the full native OS X 10.8.5 ".app" installation mounted on my desktop. I opened up each System/Library/Extension folder and placed them side by side began comparing the two. After about 15 minutes of tedeously going down the kext list and going into finder and clicking "get info" on each and every kext while checking versions etc., I thought to myself "f" this....there are way to many combinations and variables that could be effected by replacing each of them one by one systematically. Then without making any single changes, I put into practice my "what have I got to loose" mindset, went into the OS X 10.8.4 Extension folder and in Finder used "Select All" selecting EACH AND EVERY kext extension and then OVERWROTE the entire kext Extension Library in OS X 10.8.5 with those from OS X 10.8.4. Repaired permissions, used DiskWarrior 4.4 and cleaned up the directory and low and behold, OS X 10.8.5 has booted successfully for me now on my MacBook Pro at least a dozen times and I have had it running and performing various task with no freezing issues at all.

Conclusion...IT IS A SOFTWARE ISSUE. I have basically done enough of Apples homework where now some engineer should be able to take this proverbial ball and run with it in disecting and comparing the two kext extension folders and replacing only what is necessary and issuing a corrected, official Supplemental Update. I know I won't get one but none the less...your welcome Apple.

Sep 24, 2013 8:27 AM in response to LionelD

It has been approximately 6 hours since applying my fix and everything remains stable, functional, and completely operational.

Are there known issues in 10.8.5