Snow Leopard freezes, crashes, system hangs

A few months ago I had a problem with my Macbook Pro, (late 2009 model, 15" 2.53 ghz) that many users with Snow Leopard have, the random 30 second freezes. I simply reset the PRAM and SMC and I never encountered it again.

Now, out of the blue, on Sunday (yesterday), I started experiencing these hangs again, but worse. The night before I had been browsing the web and my battery went to reserve and shut down, so I plugged it in and when I awoke and turned it on I started experiencing problems. I figured I would try the same fix, and it almost seemed to make the problem worse. Now if I shut down the computer via "apple -> shut down", then turn it back on and log in etc., from the first few seconds the machine hangs. If I open a folder I get the immediate beach-ball and the machine is un-responsive for anywhere from 1 minute - 5+ minutes.

I have read a lot of fixes for this problem, but most of the people's problems resulted from using Safari or Spotlight. I strictly use Firefox and very rarely even open Safari, and I think I've used Spotlight maybe 3 times total, none in the past few months.

So far the things I've tried are:
- Reset PRAM
- Reset SMC
- Run Disc Utility and verify, repair etc. (from SL install disc)

So I'm wondering right now what can I do? Its finals week right now and im in college so wiping my HD is not an option. I feel like there is just something hanging the computer but I can't find the culprit.

What's on your Login items list? Delete the .plst files for those items. Is Mail set to check for new email on start up and every five minutes? If so, is it having difficulty finding the POP server? If I think of any other possibilities I'll post again.

I removed iTunes and Skype form my login items in System Pref., although they were not checked and did not start anyway. I never use the Mail application but I changed to "check for mail" from "every 5 minutes" to "manually". I searched for ".plist" files and there were 2 for my printer, 2 for Office, and 1 called "Summary". I don't know what these files do but could they be the problem? Right now I'm updated Office Suite as I cancelled the update earlier this week and I thought that may be the problem.

As of now the only "ideas" or "remedies" I have are to restart in safe mode or check on my Windows 7 partition as I haven't looked at it in a while.

As you can imagine this is extremely annoying as I have finals this week and am crammed with work as it is, not to mention now my only computer not doing what I need it to do. Any ideas anyone has I'm welcome to hear.

Your problem sounds hardware related. Safari and Spotlight should not cause those symptoms. First thing to do is backup your hard drive. Make sure you have a recoverable backup made with Time Machine or a bootable clone done with SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.

Next run the Apple Hardware Test on your machine. See the following LINK.

Your machine should still be under warranty or Apple care. It's probably a good idea to make an appointment with Apple and have them look at it. Be sure to call first before going on in as this time of year they're very busy. And be sure to backup first.

Regards.

chscag said:

Your problem sounds hardware related. Safari and Spotlight should not cause those symptoms. First thing to do is backup your hard drive. Make sure you have a recoverable backup made with Time Machine or a bootable clone done with SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.

Next run the Apple Hardware Test on your machine. See the following LINK.

Your machine should still be under warranty or Apple care. It's probably a good idea to make an appointment with Apple and have them look at it. Be sure to call first before going on in as this time of year they're very busy. And be sure to backup first.

Regards.

Click to expand...

This would be ideal, in fact going to the genius bar would be even better. But right now I'm at school and it's finals week, and I have to have my computer working. I have a theory though: Last week I opened word and was writing, and noticed the automatic update running. I cancelled the update, finished the document and closed word. My computer then obviously "died" Saturday night as I was browsing on it. This means that the computer shut down. I noticed there are "recovery files" in the trash can every time I restart, and some have to do with Office (ex: Entourage). Im thinking because I didn't let the Word update go through my computer didn't like that and it may be causing the halts. Is this a possible scenario?

I'm in the process of updating word, but since my campus' connection is horrible (I'm getting 50 kb/s atm), it will take a while. I'm curious / hoping if this was the problem the whole time.

this could have something to do with it if it is occurring when using word.
The update 12.2.3 in word for mac 2008 is also the most stable version of word (hasn't stalled or crashed on me at all).
I would delete those recovered files (empty the trash), and also, before and after the update, I would go to utilities>disk utilities, and repair disk permissions..

Ok, updated word, still same problem. What boggles me is that I don't even have any applications running. I'm just on the desktop, and I'll click a folder and the machine will just freeze, for 3-5 minutes! Then all of the sudden it will come back, and I'll click one thing and It'll freeze again. Then another 3-5 minutes, and It'll come back. Then it will be fine. It must have something to do with the finder.

I'm running repair disk permissions now, and afterwards I will restart the computer and see what happens. Any other ideas or theories to why randomly this machine just starts stalling?

Failing that, I would certainly take chscag's advice... and go from there.

Agreed, I will run the Apple Hardware test. Should I use the original install discs or the snow leopard discs? or does it not matter?

If you have them, the original install discs... on disc 1

Ran the simple test, came out with no problems. I will let the longer one run later tonight as I have work I need to finish. Will report back with the results.

Ok, I let the longer test run. No problems found. At this point I'm pretty much out of ideas, I'm planning to backup all my work and re-install leopard, but not with a clean wiped harddrive. If the reinstall doesn't take care of the problem I'm just going to the genius bar and letting them deal with it, worst case scenario everything is wiped and I start from scratch, best case scenario I get a new computer.

I would check the hard drive for damage. The spinning beach ball for an extended period may be the computer waiting while the hard drive attempts to repair damage it has found. These are known as bad sectors. When it finds bad sectors, it attempts to reallocate them.

However, once bad sectors start showing up, they tend to grow quickly. Even a few bad sectors, or reallocated sectors, can be signs of a failing hard drive.

You can check your hard drive with a S.M.A.R.T. analysis tool, like Volitans Software- Makers of SMART Utility for the Mac (not affiliated with at all). This tool gives you 5 free uses before you need to pay for it. What makes it nice, is that it shows you the individual parameters. It doesn't just mark the drive "OK" or give you just a green light.

The reason this is important is that hard drive manufacturers set the limits of what they feel are unacceptable levels of errors. They may say they know best but it is your data, and a conservative approach, especially given the "relative" inexpensive cost of drives, may be a better choice.

You are looking for the "Bad Sectors" parameters. You can see, on my hard drive they are all zeros. This is optimal. (Given my job, I'm pretty religious about changing hard drives that look like they may fail.)



Google actually did a huge study about this and also found that any reallocated sectors often signaled an impending hard drive failure. You can see an article about the study here: Massive Google hard drive survey turns up very interesting things -- Engadget.

Jeff

Ok wow you were right, I ran it and got a ton of errors. It says 4 Pending Bad Sectors and 441 total errors, what does this mean and what can I do about it?

Being under warranty still, I would back up your drive with CCC Carbon Copy Cloner - Home or super duper SuperDuper! so no matter what you have a bootable drive that you can still work with your mac if it fails during your finals.
I would be straight on the phone with apple, explaining the situation, and that you need your mac for your finals and see what solution they can offer you.