Mac OSX has been freezing since 2002

Adding to original post:

I also deactivated all widgets.

The freeze is an Apple development issue where each group is not checking on the impact of what they are developing will have on other parts of the system - never mind their users.

Additional

My Mac has a slow startup - either or both on Tuesday and Wednesday -- where it sits on the Grey screen for a few minutes and then the blue screen before the desktop comes up. The desktop does not load 100% the way it should -- so I immediately restart & if I don't like that desktop load - I restart again (both are fast) then I check that finder - Go option works and I can open something on the menu. (this process make sure that it does not freeze)

Wish I knew this months ago about the long startup - because I wasted a lot of time with resetting pram etc. Going to just letting it do what it has to do is the correct thing.

What is happening - is that my system although very clean over time has triggered some OSX Unix style weekly house-keeping that has to be done - and probably does not show in any log. As I just deleted an IPHOTO library yesterday - and rebuilt it blank - guessing some more house keeping went on.

Prior to tiger this housekeeping was run sometime after midnight - now its run apparently on power-up or wake up.

So - if you have a sluggish wake up where the desktop does not look or work correctly - just restart.

In addition the keyboard Shortcuts for freezes do work - but apparently they take awhile to kick in.

For instance yesterday my Time Machine froze while I was backing up through the days -- I chose to try to Quit all applications and restart

- Command-Contorl-Media Eject key (on my mac) nothing happened -- I chose to wait - so walked away - about 5minutes later heard the startup chime

So when trying anything with a frozen or appears to be frozen mac --- patience - - is required -- wish apple had added it to its notes.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

Two hardware times being unresponsive can commonly cause such problem.

One is a disk Drive that is becoming unresponsive. This often happens without any reported errors in the console log. A disk Utility ( Repair Disk ) may hang in the middle, your drive MAY show SMART issues rather than "verified".

The other is a graphics card that hangs and becomes unresponsive. This is often accompanied by messages in the logs that WindowServer had problems or was unresponsive.

The slow startups and possible freezes are all because of a memory leak in the Finder/Spotlight indexing -- I have control of same - now --

The Time Machine drive is okay - except that it has a bad backup on it from the big freeze day -- originally could not go into it at all without it freezing - now it will go to that original backup - -

Notes on here are to point out that Apple has multiple instructions on what to do with a freeze -- or long pause on blue and grey screens during startup - without mentioning you should wait - if it appears to be doing something - it is.

The Shortcuts for freezes page I printed from my Mac support (gee thats a great place to put it on the system instead of in the bitty book that came with mine) still does not mention the interrupt may take some time to kick in - making it seem like killing the power is the only way.

All shutting down - with reset the pram startups is prolong the problem - whatever its doing it has to get done.

More info and possibly why

I changed time machine to stop backing up period.

I erased my time machine drive as it could not page back after a certain date so the backup was fried.

I partitioned it (1tb into 2 500MB drives) and started a new time machine backup in one partition only.

I dropped the drives into the private section of Spotlight preferences because I know where my stuff is.

I have hourly backup turned off and instead do backups when its worthwhile because I am rapidly changing stuff - or once a day.

Doing this may have corrected an underlying OS problem - as I noticed for awhile that there was a bit of a lag when the Time Machine was writing to disk - and I think it was getting longer and longer between the time it started and actually wrote something - my work around was to force a backup before starting anything -- with the new setup no delay.

Have not seen any apple information about how long you should run time machine before restarting a new one - so guessing its when you see a slow down to the backup.

Additional - I still have Mac OSX - first release - and the Mac OSX Panther (10.03) Manuals that came with the software (on paper OMG)

Both mention that the FINDER could stop working correctly and what you are suppose to do is to force quit and relaunch.

I don't think I every had a freeze of finder on the Power Mac (G4 Cube) so I am wondering why apple never fixed the issue -- On the intel I have had freezes in Safari and in E-mail (apple mail) -- but never able to open the apple menu to force quit anything as the entire display froze up.

As I don't use the spotlight function - just cut to the chase and dropped my mac hard drive into the private area to see if that helps.

Wondering if apple made the change in RAM/VM handling in Yosemite and later to try and handle the freeze situation that had been happening forever by keeping everything in memory - rather than first duplicating it in a controlled situation to determine what the problem is.

We the users are at a loss because it could be a program that does not generate a log and may not show in activity - so when we get the system back everything is fine .

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

I appreciate that this is an annoying issue.

I do not see it on my Mac Pro 2009 models running any version of Mac OS X. (I have been through them all on the way to ElCapitan.)

I think you need to consider that this may not be a pervasive problem, but a sample defect or an anomaly that occurs with your exact setup, and not a general issue for all Users.

Other users have had this problem with various models of Mac and various levels of OSX. Based on the posts showing up with El-Capitan -- it looks to me like the problem is getting worse for very active users -- until the long startups - the freeze were always Safari - internet.

Running the same software since 2009 -- the slow starts and freezes (other than the ones caused by Safari Top Sites - or the internet issues that apple still has based on posts here - the annoying slow starts with freeze only started after I did very fast updates to files etc.

Most of the time I was working in Photoshop - where cleaning up a scanned in picture with multiple fingerprints and other dings could take a number of hours. Did not keep my system on-line all the time - so whatever the underpinning of the OS does for disk management had time to run.

Crossing fingers and touching a forest of wood - I now have added back to my routine - playing a solitaire set of games after startup - and before shutdown - as I stopped doing it before the problem occurred - the system seems to be steading itself back.

One other thing I am doing - if I have to force quit a non-responsive job - I also relaunch the finder at the same time. Surprisingly - when I thought Console did not close correctly - I just relaunched the finder - and console was in the doc.

Okay so I never really used the apple mouse - because I almost always used the WACOM pen device. I only used the mouse to bring up widgets on the desk top as I really don't open many applications at the same time.

I replaced the mouse which had a broken tail with the exact same model -- and uninstalled the wacom software in case the pad was a problem - also having seen better days.

My longest no freeze has been 10 days - when I did a software update in the middle of those days -- so I did one today after having some freezes to see if makes a difference. Yes I know there are no updates - and Yes I have my system set to Manual updates -- but am wondering if Apple OS tries on its own because of some glitch somewhere.

Also, noticed with the mouse that the scroll button sometimes causes a scroll to continue after I stop - so I have started using the keyboard arrows.

On a happier note - found the instruction book and the install disk for my Wacom pad and will reinstall and just use the pen (I was using their wireless mouse a lot around the time of the November freeze - so wondering if there has been an issue all along with the mouse scroll. With the pen I just dragged the scroll bar on the right rather than rolling along)

Well this certainly will muddy the water.

My apple magic mouse that came with this mac pro was rarely used because I prefer to use a WACOM pen pad for navigation. I rarely used the mouse - except to bring up widgets - and eventually the mouse tail covering split close to the mouse so the wires were exposed - after that certain functions did not work well unless one had the wires lined up. Didn't matter -- and last november when it would be easier to use the mouse for the project I was working on I used the Mouse that came with the Wacom pad pretty much the same layout as the magic mouse except the scroll button only goes up and down not 360.

Thinking the pad had a problem I purchased a new same model Apple Mouse -- and removed the WACOM software - still freezes. The last freeze I noted that I had moved the Apple mouse over a surface from right to left when it suddenly froze the system.

Next day I installed the WACOM software and the pen has been working no problem - and the startups seem to be going better.

It has occurred to me that the majority of freezes happen when I used the mouse (would have also been on the internet) scroll button (normally I just drag the bar with the pen).

So in muddying the water - the big problem may be with the apple mouse having software having too much going on and getting signals crossed - particularly if you keep the mouse touching a surface -- or your hands on the mouse - whatever.

So if you have freezes - try and remember exactly what you were doing at that instant - particularly with the mouse as somewhere in the interface there may be an uncharted problem.

On Adding back the WACOM pen device

It has occurred to me that the way you use touch screen emulates the way a pen works -- -- vs the way a mouse works.

I did see some posts on the magic mouse - now just a mouse but still same part number - where there were problems with horizontal scrolling - guessing that that would include moving the mouse horizontally will moving an object on the screen - as that is where some freezes occurred - in later version apparently there is an option to turn off horizontal scrolling (not a fix - just a work around).

So first thing when you have a freeze seems to be consider what you did just before the freeze - if you moved something right to left - consider checking mouse settings.

If I really knew then what I know now -- problem seems to be software - in re to the apple mouse (aka the magic mouse). I vaguely recollect setting up right click - left click - in Snow Leopard --but as I was not using it - no problem.

Since going back to Wacom pad - over a week ago - no freezes, no long power-ups requiring multiple restarts to get a clear/clean desk top.

I had seen a post here mentioning that Apple had added the ability to turn off the horizontal scroll - but Snow Leopard required you to enter a terminal command to do it -- finally took a look at the mouse setup - and apple at some point did, in Snow Leopard add the Ability to turn off the horizontal scrolling.

(I did turn it of just in case I feel the urge to move the mouse - but I really don't remember seeing all these options).

So recommendation on freezes -- check your preferences after each apple update.

Well - these freeze ups are definitely something in the part of the Operating System -- so are the slow wake ups and start ups -- had a wonderful month with no freezes since May 20th and surprise - it froze again on June 20th -- freezes only on a particular day of the month means its not hardware - its the operating system!!!

What I have learned -- when you power up - and probably when you start up - make sure everything loads that you want started before you touch the mouse/pointer/keyboard. If its slow on startup or wakeup -- restart until clean - usually 3 times works -- if you have a job crash - or freeze - after force quit - relaunch the finder.

As to the 20th have not resolved it yet - but I think it has something to do with checking apple for updates even though I have auto update turned off.

In general - the more stuff you run/activity on your system - the more likely you may be to have a freeze up if you shutdown or sleep without waiting for your system to settle down -- I am doing that by playing a few games of solitaire - about 10 minutes (forced to do it is a great way to not want to play games -- gee to I really have to)