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El Capitan Freezing on Boot and Randomly Crashing

I have a early 2011 Macbook Pro (8,2) with 16GB of RAM with a Samsung 840 EVO SSD and I am running OS X 10.11.1. I have never had any problems with this machine prior to El Capitan. In short, I believe that others are having a similar problem: El Capitan consistently freezes while booting displaying one of the following behaviors:

1. Progress bar will get about half way, and then the screen goes white and doesn't load.

2. Progress bar will get about half way, and then I get a garbled (graphics) bar across the screen, and then it goes to a white and doesn't load.

3. Progress bar will get about half way, then the screen goes blue and doesn't load (sometimes it will shut down after about 30 seconds to a minute).

4. Progress bar gets about half way and screen freezes.

Additionally, the machine will crash randomly either halting, or going to a blue screen (after which I have to begin the reboot process).

After multiple PRAM (Command Option P R) resets the machine will eventually boot (it sometimes takes 30 or more minutes), but there doesn't seem to be a reason why it eventually boots (I can't detect any kind of pattern).

These problems initially began when I upgraded to El Capitan. Finally, I gave up and did a complete, clean, reinstall of the OS. After a few days, they began occurring again. The only 3rd party software I have installed is ClipWrap, Tor, Office 2016, Trim Enabler (I've disabled), and Quicken 2015. I have looked for any offending kexts (as mentioned in the various fora), but don't seem to have any of them.

If anyone can help, I would really appreciate it. When El Capitan is running properly, it's fantastic...but these crashes are driving me crazy.

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Nov 29, 2015 11:12 AM

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Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Posted on Nov 29, 2015 1:05 PM

According to Apple's specifications, that model can use at most 8 GB of memory, but you've installed 16 GB. The results are unpredictable. I know that the aftermarket RAM vendor says that the configuration will work. If you accept that assurance, please ask the vendor for help with any problems you have. Otherwise, reinstall the original memory, or new memory that meets the official specifications.

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32 replies

Feb 1, 2016 1:39 PM in response to Bill LT S.

Thought I'd share an update. So I took the laptop home over the weekend and I worked in Excel for quite a while on two different occasions and no problems. No overheating, video problems, etc. so thought I was good. Today at work I thought I'd go on and install the Adobe Creative Suite and see how things went when something more processor intensive was used. Started the Adobe installation and it seemed to be hanging in the middle of the install, so after waiting a bit, I finally force quit the installer. I was trying to install under my regular user account and thought maybe Adobe required it to be installed under an admin account, so I tried switching over to my administrator account, I got the login screen and typed in my password, but then it started like it was going to log into the account, but just froze. I shut the computer down and restarted it. It got about halfway through the startup progress bar and then it rebooted itself. The second reboot came up to the blue/gray screen as before. So I shut down and tried a Safe boot and nothing. I did notice when it was trying to install the Adobe package that the Temperature Guage app I'd installed was showing the temp at 122 degrees and the left back corner of the laptop was pretty hot again. Looks like I'm right back where I started. So not very happy at this point. Rotechflightsafety gave me the name of someone at Apple and I'm going to try to get with them to see if they can be of any help. So here we go.. Bill hope you are having better luck with your reinstall.

Apr 5, 2016 6:10 AM in response to Beth Ernst

Wanted to follow up on the saga with my MBP. I wasn't able to get it in to the Apple Store before the end of February. I had contacted one of the folks recommended by rotechflightsafety and they couldn't help over the phone and told me I would have to make another trip to the Genius bar. We don't get in that way very often, so I didn't get there till last Wednesday. They ran several diagnostics at the Genius Bar while I was there, all of which it passed. They offered to keep it for a couple days to run some more tests and it passed those as well, however on Thursday they notified me that they wanted to send it out to their depot to have them take a look. It was returned to the Apple store by Saturday with a new logic board. Picked it up last night and noticed the symptom listed on the repair summary is REP MBP 2011 Graphics. I'll be working with it this week and see how it goes. Hopefully this will take care of the problem. Anyway, wanted to thank everyone for their help and suggestions while trying to get this resolved! Will post back if any problems arise in the near future. Thanks again Bill and rotechflightsafety!

El Capitan Freezing on Boot and Randomly Crashing