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C2D weird locking up/freezing/hanging?

Hey everyone,

I have been experiencing some weird locking up/freezing/hanging when using my Core 2 Duo. The first couple of days after I got my MacBook Pro and after using the Migration Assistant I would get locking up -- the machine would go in a state where some functions are working (like the mouse, you could move it around) but everything else would not be available to use.

This meant that I could move my mouse around but can't click on any windows, any buttons, can't type anything in and the dock doesn't magnify, nor do its icons work. Since I can't click on the Apple menu to log out/restart/shut down, I have no option but to force a shut down by holding onto the power button.

This happened twice within 4 days of owning the machine, so I reformatted and moved everything over from my old PowerBook G4 manually -- reinstalled all my apps manually, copied my mail over manually, all my data over etc.

This freezing or whatever hasn't occurred until 15 mins ago, so there has been about 2 weeks between lock-ups. Up until now, I put the previous lock-ups down to something that perhaps was copied over from the PPC side of things over to the Intel side that the MBP C2D didn't like.

But now this is really weird. I can't remember what I was doing the first time the machine locked up, and I think I was command-tabbing through open apps the second time it happened and as I released the keys it froze then. The third time this happened (today), I was doing the same thing as the 2nd time.

When it did this today, I was listening to a podcast, and when the machine froze the podcast was still playing! So clearly half the machine is unresponsive, while some other parts of the OS and apps are still working. Unfortunately I didn't have Activity Monitor open during any of the locking up, so I can't see if there are any wayward applications.

Could this be a graphics problem? Maybe the drivers or the video card is a little dodgy? I sometimes get graphics corruption as well, either in Safari with the tabs showing up as black rectangles, or once when I woke up the machine from sleep the usual black background for the Username and Password dialog box was "coloured random static". I also sometimes get graphic rendering bugs in pages in Safari -- there would be a "line" missing from the browser screen, but scrolling up and down again usually corrects this.

This has never happened to me on my PowerBook G4, and find this rather odd. Anyone got any ideas? If anyone needs more information I'll be more than happy to provide.

15" MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz, 15" PowerBook G4 1.67GHz, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Nov 24, 2006 1:17 AM

192 replies

Nov 29, 2006 1:40 AM in response to George Haritonidis

OK this has just happened again about 15 minutes ago.

I had a few apps open, and I was about to command-tab into another app when everything locked up again, just like how I first described it.

I tried SSHing into my machine from another machine, nothing seems like its going haywire -- in fact some of the apps that would be taking up a percentage or two of CPU time was taking up 0% (probably because the machine was kind of frozen).

I have just resetted the PRAM, so we'll see how we go. However, I have found something a little interesting in my logs in Console:

Nov 29 20:10:20 Endoxius /Applications/jEdit 4.2/jEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub: removeDisplayMapping: _CGSUnmapFramebuffer returns -536870206

This is just a sample of the error reported in system.log -- this error is repeated for every application that was in memory at the time, including loginwindow, Dock.app, Finder.app, Dashboard.app (repeated many times, I assume once for each widget), iTunes, Mail, Safari, other apps, SystemUIServer, Little Snitch.prefPane, Salling Clicker.prefPane, even iTunesHelper.app and Microsoft AU Daemon.app is the last app.

All up there are 27 log records like this for this particular timestamp. Endoxius is the name of my machine. Anyone got any idea what _CGSUnmapFramebuffer is, and why it's returning -536870206?

Nov 29, 2006 8:51 AM in response to George Haritonidis

I see that log too when my MBP freezes up. I've googled that log message until I'm blue in the face and have found nothing helpful. Maybe someone in here will know what it means?

MBP 2.0GHz

Nov 29, 2006 9:04 AM in response to George Haritonidis

Would you happen to be using the SMCFanControl? If you are then uninstall it and see if the problem goes away.

Nov 29, 2006 9:35 AM in response to infinite vortex

Nope, I am using FanControl. Also, I have been having this problem for a long time. Since June at least. Long before FanControl or SMCFanControl existed.

MBP 2.0GHz

Nov 29, 2006 10:31 AM in response to George Haritonidis

i was reading this post and saw that you are using fan control, i had the same problems that you arre having and i read tha youi had the problem before you installe , btu just for giggles did you try a proper uninstall?? getting rid of all files including sleepwatcher?. that is what seems to be the problem, the if you still want a fancontrol i would reccommend
http://www.conscius.de/~eidac/software/page5/page5.html
it doesnt attach itself to anything, and doent create any lock up issues.

the problem with the other fancontrol is that you have to perform three things
startupfiles
prefpanes
killalldaemon...and they dont tell you the killall in their uninstall but thats the only way to get rid of it

Nov 29, 2006 11:20 AM in response to nancygarden

I'm a little confused. You responded to the guy who is using SMCFanControl. I am using FanControl ( http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/index.html), but I stated that I had the problem before I ever began using it. Also, I looked around (source files and installed files) and did not see anything called sleepwatcher, so I'm not sure what you are referring to there. Lastly, both of us have a problem with the MBP freezing, usually during a cmd-tab operation. Again, not sure what sleepwatcher might have to do with this?

MBP 2.0GHz

Nov 29, 2006 12:29 PM in response to Ian Searle

i replied to both posts i guess, and i realize as i aid in my post , that you did have the problem before hand, just wondering if you still are using the program or just to see, get rid of it and see if it just might have been agrivating the problem.

the original fancotrol was called fanspeed, and it had an attachment when you downloaded called sleepwatcher. it was a 2 part download, and that controls the the sleep mode for the computer, if you looked at the whole "sticky Post" with all the posts about both fanspeed which has the threshholds and attachs to files and smcfancontrol which just sits on desk top, you would see that many people had problems with their sleep modes and lock ups from fanspeed. and if you dont completly get rid of it, as it tends to hide in a few places, it still controls sleepmode.

i was just making a suggestion, just happened upon this thread. sometimes for me the complicated problems are the easy ones to fix and the obvious issues tend to get overlooked while looking for deeper issues. (did that makes sense?)

since your problem started before you downloaded this app, perhaps there was some other app that had something like sleepwatcher attached??

Nov 29, 2006 2:51 PM in response to Ian Searle

I'm even more confused. What is SMCFanControl? What is FanControl? What are the differences between the two? AFAIK, I have not installed any third party apps or drivers that control or throttle any fans in my MBP.

I had downloaded CoreDuoTemp but only used it once and I set it to not start upon login. Does ths have to do with anything?

I am quite confused.

Nov 29, 2006 2:55 PM in response to George Haritonidis

if you have not installed any fan control apps then there is nothing to be confused about, this would not be your problem then, and i can offer no further help. i just know that there are problems with one of these apps that are exactly like the problems you are having, thats why i asked.

Nov 29, 2006 3:37 PM in response to nancygarden

Ah, OK, I understand now. Thanks for clarifying. So, yes, I have un-installed FanControl (last time it came back from Apple Repair center it has a fresh new Tiger image on it. I did not reinstall FanControl right away) and it made no difference. Which, is what I would expect as I haven't had any problem with sleep/wake cycles.

Thanks for the suggestion. At this point, I am willing to entertain anything that makes sense. Unfortunately, I've already tried it.

MBP 2.0GHz

Ethanee

Level 2

350 points

Nov 29, 2006 3:48 PM in response to George Haritonidis

Sorry, dumb question 🙂, edited away...

Okay instead I read somewhere that CGS = Core Graphics Services. Perhaps the hardware test doesn't test the graphics card fully?

Nov 29, 2006 3:40 PM in response to George Haritonidis

it isn't weird... it happens on all Core Duo MBP too.

Ethanee

Level 2

350 points

Nov 29, 2006 5:49 PM in response to George Haritonidis

I did a grep for the error function _CGSUnmapFramebuffer, and the binaries that have this are in

/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/CoreGraphics .framework
/System/Library//Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/ CoreGraphics.framework
/System/Library//Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/Current/Frame works/CoreGraphics.framework/

These directories are also found in the installation disks.

1. If the hardware test doesn't signal a problem, perhaps the issue is with the libraries, maybe they're corrupted.

2. A more general question is: is it possible to simply copy the files from the install disk into their corresponding location on the drive? Or is there some way to reinstall only certain parts of the OS X kernel?

Nov 29, 2006 6:07 PM in response to Ethanee

I suppose you could find the OSX package that contains these files, then remove it's receipt and then do a reinstall of just that package.

Though, in my case, I have had 3 different installs of OSX, all fresh, all done by different people. With each install I have had the same problem. That, IMO, eliminates a corrupt library as a suspect. A buggy library is not ruled out however 🙂

Thanks

jkottke

Level 1

0 points

Dec 1, 2006 8:47 AM in response to George Haritonidis

Just to add to the discussion, I've been experiencing this problem with my 15" 1.67 GHz Powerbook as well. Cmd-tab and poof...nothing works except for the mouse. (Two other people in my office have this problem as well, one has a 17" MBP and the other a black MB.) It happens every few weeks or so (first instance occurred 2-3 weeks after I bought it), but has happened 3 times in the last two days, prompting me to try and track down the problem, which led me here.

I bought this computer about 3-4 weeks before the MacBook Pros came out (mid-Dec), so it's not a chip problem but it could be another piece of hardware that they just recently started putting in them...like a graphics card maybe?

C2D weird locking up/freezing/hanging?