Mac Pro Freezing

I have a Mac Pro with a Intel Xeon processor and 16 GB of memory. I am running the most recent version of Snow Leopard. I have one hard drive with a bootcamp partition so that I can run windows xp for certain applications. Lately I have been having a problem with my mac freezing. It hasn't frozen on me while I am working on something, but mainly when it is sitting ideal or in sleep mode. The only way to do anything is if i do a hard reboot and shut down the system by pressing the power button. I have ran a disk utility, as well as, defraged the hard drive. I don't know if it is my hard drive, but if it is I would like to replace it while it is still functioning. Does anyone have any suggestions or know what the problem might be. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Whenever someone is having issues of this sort I ask:

- How full is your hard drive (what size is the HD, and how much free/unused space)?
- When was the last time you repaired "permissions" (Disk Utility)?
- How often do you restart your computer versus putting it to sleep every night?
- Open "Activity Monitor" (Utilities folder)...and see if any programs are running that don't look familiar.

It certainly could be your hard drive...but I like to troubleshoot other things first before declaring "replace your HD".

HTH,

- Nick

Here are my HD stats:

Main - 647.33 GB capacity with 380.59 GB used.
Bootcamp - 102.48 GB capacity with 14.11 used.

I ran the disk utility this morning, as well as, disk defrag using drive genius 2.

I don't restart my computer very ofter. Most nights I put it to sleep versus shutting it down. The only time I really shut it down is when there is a lightning storm, I will be gone for several days, or when I have to reboot because it froze.

I looked at the Activity Monitor and don't see anything unusual.

Does this help? Thanks.

aggie97 said:

Here are my HD stats:

Main - 647.33 GB capacity with 380.59 GB used.
Bootcamp - 102.48 GB capacity with 14.11 used.

I ran the disk utility this morning, as well as, disk defrag using drive genius 2.

I don't restart my computer very ofter. Most nights I put it to sleep versus shutting it down. The only time I really shut it down is when there is a lightning storm, I will be gone for several days, or when I have to reboot because it froze.

I looked at the Activity Monitor and don't see anything unusual.

Does this help? Thanks.

Click to expand...

Most of that looks & sounds pretty good. If you reboot/restart the computer...does this seem to help with the freezing. Basically does the freezing happen more often after the computer has been running for hours & hours...or could it happen 5 minutes after rebooting?

You said something about running "Disk Utility"...but you didn't specifically say that you repaired "permissions" (yes/no)?

- Nick

When running disk utility I verified the disk and ran a repair. It said there was nothing wrong with the disk.

I have tried to determine if there is a common denominator regarding when the computer freezes. I really have been able to find anything. It can do it at anytime. However, it seems to do it when I have windows xp running via bootcamp. That could just be my biased attitude toward windows making me think it is the problem.

aggie97 said:

When running disk utility I verified the disk and ran a repair. It said there was nothing wrong with the disk.

I have tried to determine if there is a common denominator regarding when the computer freezes. I really have been able to find anything. It can do it at anytime. However, it seems to do it when I have windows xp running via bootcamp. That could just be my biased attitude toward windows making me think it is the problem.

Click to expand...

Since you have a Mac Pro...we have some options normally not available to laptops or iMacs. I think that all Mac Pros can have 4 internal hard drives. It sounds like you have one HD currently...so here's what you could do:

- purchase a new hard drive ($40-$60)
- install it (very easy in a Mac Pro)
- install the OS onto the new HD
- restart the computer booting from the new HD

If your computer is stable (no freezes)...then it's probably the original hard drive. This idea assumes that purchasing the new HD is not an issue.

HTH,

- Nick

aggie97 said:

When running disk utility I verified the disk and ran a repair. It said there was nothing wrong with the disk.

Click to expand...

Just to be 100% clear. With Disk Utility you can do two things:

1. Verify and/or repair the "Disk"
2. Verify and/or repair "Disk Permissions"

So it's still not clear to me that you repaired "Disk Permissions"...since you only said that you...ran "disk utility I verified the disk and ran a repair."

If this is confusing...Open Disk Utility...and you will see what I mean.

- Nick

Hey, I appreciate you talking through this with me. That is a simple solution that I probably should have come up with on my own. However, I like to run things by everyone on the boards to make sure I am thinking along the right lines. After all, I am a finance guy, not a computer tech. Thanks again.

aggie97 said:

Hey, I appreciate you talking through this with me. That is a simple solution that I probably should have come up with on my own. However, I like to run things by everyone on the boards to make sure I am thinking along the right lines. After all, I am a finance guy, not a computer tech. Thanks again.

Click to expand...

If in the end you find out that it's really not the original hard drive...you can use the 2nd drive as a back-up drive using "Time Machine" or any other back-up program.

And hey...if you're a "finance guy"...you're making the "big bucks"...and unless you have an expensive "stable" of girl-friends...you should have no problem affording that 2nd HD! Ha ha.

- Nick

I had a similar problem with my G5 on two different occasions. Both times diagnosing the problem took quite some time because the machine would run for extended periods of time with no issues.

The first time the issue turned out to be a stick of failing memory. Although the machine passed the memory tests portion of the Apple Hardware test it failed almost immediately using an earlier version of MemTest for Mac OS X Tests your RAM. I haven't had to run this tool for some time though.

The other issue arose when the machine had difficulty booting. once booted the machine would perform fine. This went on for months until finally the machine would not wake from sleep. In that case a kernel extension may have been the culprit. The problem went away when I did a clean install of Leopard.

And as Sly suggests, run Apple Hardware Test by inserting disc one, rebooting and holding down 'D' after the chimes and run the extended test. It takes a while so go enjoy a coffee or a walk in the park.

AHT covers logic board, CPU's, memory (not as thorough as MemTest), graphics etc.