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Random freeze using trackpad (10.10.2)

I have a brand new (<2 mos. old) 15” MBPro Retina which I just updated last night to 10.10.2. Doesn’t matter how many or few apps or Safari tabs I have open, nor whether I’m using Mail or Safari. After about an hour (sometimes less) while I am moving the cursor using the trackpad. the cursor freezes and EVERYTHING but cmd-opt-esc becomes unresponsive. Cursor remains either the I-beam or hand, can’t drag windows, close tabs, drop down menus, click on a button, etc. All that responds is doing cmd-opt-esc, hitting enter for each app to close (clicking on the actual blue button does nothing--it doesn’t click). When I finally reach Finder and hit Enter to Relaunch it, the screen simply refreshes and I have to hit the Power key to shut down (and hit Enter because none of the buttons in the dialog box will respond). Then once the computer shuts down I have to start it back up again. Note that I cannot simply bring down the Apple menu and click on Restart or Shut Down; once I boot back up I am there is neither a “It appears your computer was not properly shut down” message box with an option to see details, nor a dialog box asking for if I want to report the problem to Apple. And I am familiar with kernel panics since the dawn of OS X--this doesn’t look like one, since there isn’t code splashed all over the screen.


Is the problem my trackpad, in which case I need to switch to a mouse until I can get the computer repaired under AppleCare; or is it the 10.10.2 update, in which case do I need to uninstall it (and how do I do that?) or wait for a patch to be issued?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2), 15”, 512GB, 16GB RAM, 2.56GHz

Posted on Feb 4, 2015 12:38 PM

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9 replies

Feb 5, 2015 12:34 AM in response to Sandra Andina1

It happened again, while I was doing a crossword puzzle in Safari. What triggered it--and upon reflection, triggered the previous freezes, was the base of my thumb brushing the trackpad and causing the current desktop to shift to a different one (i.e., the pattern of open windows moving to the right or left, revealing the wallpaper-with-icons desktop. This didn’t happen as often in Mavericks, but it did happen; but until now it didn’t cause everything to freeze!


And I keep getting a message box about 5 minutes after reboot that “Sophos Anti-Virus is not running.” I realize that an AV program, even one designed for Mac, is superfluous on a Mac and want to get rid of it but can’t find any uninstall file. When I bring up Console, just about everything in the report refers to Sophos. Dragging Sophos' icon from the Applications folder to the Trash accomplished nothing, and I can’t remove it from the menu bar (upper right icons, analagous to the old Windows systray). I suspect that Sophos and Yosemite may be incompatible--could this be freezing my Mac or is the trackpad problem wholly independent of it and the real culprit? I hate to have to go to the Genius Bar, because the extreme cold and snow in Chicago make it impossible to drive there or get to mass transit, and very expensive to take taxis.

Mar 12, 2015 8:54 PM in response to Sandra Andina1

Hi Sandra Andina1. Any progress on this issue? I'm experiencing similar problems—also on a MacBook Pro Retina (mid 2012). Sometimes it happens as you describe, when I brush a thumb across the trackpad. Sometimes, though, it happens when I'm not even touching the keyboard. Total system freeze, no kernel panic message, and no action possible but a forced restart.


On another forum users have speculated that Safari is the culprit, and I am now experimenting by using other browsers. Might be worth a try?

Mar 13, 2015 11:49 AM in response to scarpent33

No progress--and I doubt Safari is the culprit, as it sometimes occurs in Mail and Full Deck Solitaire. Another weird behavior is that sometimes "the pinch" results in all Safari tabs being tiled side-by-side as discrete windows. I’m now using a USB wireless mouse most of the time, and being extremely careful when using the trackpad because I need to free up the port used by the mouse. Because it’s not happening on my 2013 MBAir running Yosemite, nor on my son’s 2014 13” MBPro, I’m still pretty sure it’s a hardware issue; and I will probably bite the bullet and visit the Genius Bar this weekend. Hope you can figure out why it’s happening!

Random freeze using trackpad (10.10.2)

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