Trouble Shooting - Frozen MBP/Chronic Crasher

Just moved back to mac from 5 yrs with a PC, and did it with the 15" unibody, 2.8ghz...loving it, though in the past week I've had it shut down on me a lot. The grey box "Hold down your power key....(in multiple languages)" shows up and I freak, and then I do a disk check and it says everything is fine.

Since I'm new to Mac(again) I've been testing all sorts of software hoping to find what I like, and using CleanApp to help with deleting things I don't like. I figure i have something I installed causing this and I was wondering is there anyway to see what might be triggering these freezes?

Safari seems to be shutting down a lot too, randomly(meaning I'm not even using it when it quits). I won't have Snow Leopard till the 15th of Sept(long story), at which point I'll probably do a clean install, though I would like to know if possible what is causing this. The other night the computer froze completely, except I was in a skype conversation that continued without a problem, as the screen pixelated.

I'm typing this now from Safari without a problem, just an FYI. Thoughts? Suggestions?

Hi, welcome to the forums, sorry your having some issues. From what you describe, it sounds like your are getting quite a few kernel panics.

First thing have a look at the following thread:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-operating-system/93819-basic-os-x-mac-troubleshooting.html

Next, I would consider running the hardware test that came with your MBP. This test will be on the second disk provided with your install disk set. Put the CD in, reboot telling the MBP to boot from the CD and run the test. You may want to run the extended/complete test just to be sure.

Also, did you happen to make any radical changes to the machine in the past week? Software? OS upgrade?

Thanks for the tips, working trough them now, and will let you know...No major changes though I have added and removed quite a few programs in the past week, so sadly I can't see a direct correlation between any of them and the problems.

Is there no way to see what function is making the system hang/crash? Would be nice to know if there is some program obviously causing this.

Thanks again for the help

From what you describe, it sounds like a hardware issue more than anything else (though this is my best guess at this point). That's why that hardware test is pretty invaluable for situations like this.

One place you could look are the system logs. These are kept in /var/log/. To get at these files you can either enable enable your root user account. Or use the Console app, this can be found in your /Applications/Utilities folder.

To enable the root user have a look at this

Enabling and using the "root" user in Mac OS X

Once enabled you can use the Terminal app to login as the root user and go look at the system log which is /var/log/system.log

su root
cd /var/log
tail -F ./system.log

or

less ./system.log

There may be something in there indicating what may be causing the kernel panics.

Alternatively, fire up the Console app and look at the logs that way. I would run the hardware test before doing this though, it may be something that comes up right away.