MBP 2011 crashed. What now?

Yesterday, my late 2011 MBP started acting up. I'm running OSX Mavericks. It restarted on its own and all my bookmarks on firefox disappeared. I tried restarting my computer but it took about 10 minutes to boot and had a grey status or boot progress bar on the bottom. Once the status bar reached the end (10 minutes later), the screen went blank and the computer shut off. It did this 3 times. I got home and restored the system from time machine. It's working now but what can I do to diagnose the problem and prevent this from happening again?

This is the first time this has ever happened to me. I'm glad I did a backup on the 4th of July, so I didn't lose much, if anything, at all. I ran the disk utility and it didn't indicate any damage or disk problems on the hard drive.

Thanks,
Tony.

It sounds like your hard drive was acting up. Disk Utility does not check the integrity of the drive itself, only the file and folder structure. You might wish to check the SMART status of the hard drive to see if that indicates anything. And in the meantime, I would be making daily backups using something other than Time Machine. I recommend using cloning software such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to make bootable backups to an external hard drive.

SMART utility download

I ran the SMART utility. It took like 2 seconds to run and it said everything passed. My computer restarted today again by itself. I think I'm going to reinstall OSX.

Tony.

OK, you could be experiencing kernel panics if it's restarting by itself. The next time it restarts by itself, post the kernel panic log here so we can take a look at it. Sometimes we can figure out from that what's causing it. If the SMART utility says the hard drive is good, then it's probably OK.

I reinstalled OSX and it crashed again. Before I installed the software, I caught this error...



Don't know what to do from here...

Tony.

The crash report indicates a memory problem. Have you recently added memory to your MacBook Pro? If you haven't, download a memory checker and run it.

Download this memory testing app and run it. Read the instructions first. Let us know the results.

I upgraded my memory a few months ago. I maxed it out. I got it from Best Buy.

Tony.

Well, it appears some or one of those Best Buy memory modules may be acting up and causing your MacBook Pro to crash. Download the memory checker that I recommended above and run it. Use the extended test. The download is a GUI front end for the popular MemTest program. Let me know what the results are.

If your memory turns out to be bad, take it back to Best Buy. If I remember correctly, their memory is life time warranted.

I will definitely do that. I removed the cards and reseated them. I actually switched their positions. I could not get the computer to reboot so I did a repair/verify disk in recovery mode. It's in system restore now.

I'll keep you updated.

Thanks!

Tony.

TonyBen said:

I upgraded my memory a few months ago. I maxed it out. I got it from Best Buy.

Click to expand...

Another way to test the ram/computer stability…is if you still have your old ram…install it (remove all new ram)…and see what you get. If it's stable…then you know one or both of the Best Buy ram modules are bad.

- Nick

I tried doing a system restore last night and it failed twice about 2/3rds of the way through. I took my MBP to Best Buy and they gave me new RAM. I'm trying a system restore again for the first time since getting new memory. I could not find my original memory cards.

Also, the last few times I tried rebooting or restoring, instead of the apple logo, I got a circle with a slash through it for about a minute, then the apple logo appeared and it booted into recovery mode even after installing new memory just now.

Tony.

Reloaded OsX and the computer booted up normally I started doing a system restore, but walked away for a moment and when I came back, it's like the computer restarted and it was back to the home page where it asks you what country you're in. I'm holding off on restoring my time machine backup and I ran the memory test.

It all passes.

Here's the text from the report...

Rember Test Results

All tests passed!

Total built-in memory: 8 GB


This is the total amount of physical memory that the computer has installed. If this figure is not showing the correct amount of memory there may be a problem with one or more installed DIMMS.

Available memory: 2971 MB

Available memory is the amount of physical memory that is currently not in use by any other processes. All available memory will be used for testing when the "All" option is selected. To increase the amount of available memory, you can restart your computer before testing. If you are familiar with the command line (CLI), you can run memtest (the core of Rember) in single-user mode. See Rember help, or http://www.memtestosx.org for more information.

Requested amount: All MB

The total amount of memory requested for testing by the Rember application. Not all requested memory can be allocated for testing. See information on "Available memory" for more information.

Memory allocated for testing: 2971 MB

This is the total amount of memory that memtest was able to allocate for testing. See "Available memory" section for more information.

-------

Loops selected: 1

Total loops selected by user for testing. All loops should complete when testing is successful. Test failure when the "Continue on Error" preference is selected will cancel tests before this number of loops has been completed. Users can also cancel testing before this number is reached.

Loops completed: 1

Total loops completed by memtest. Note that the Rember is not always able to identify how many loops ran. If there are discrepancies between this and the loops selected, the log should be examined to determine exactly how many loops were performed.
-------

Total execution time: All tests passed! Execution time: 1014 seconds

This is the total amount of time that it took to execute the selected tests. Execution time may vary from system to system, and is provided as a guide for determining how long users can expect tests to run based on the amount of memory installed on the system.

Testing start time: 2014-07-13 03:53:34 +0000

Testing end time: 2014-07-13 04:10:30 +0000


Rember version: 0.3.7b Memtest version: 4.22

Tony.

So now my computer won't recognize my external hard drive and says it's damaged and it can't be repaired.

HELP!!

Remove the Best Buy memory and see if any joy that way. For memory deal with OWC and Crucial only. We have seen this before here with Best Buy memory.

Check out the specs against this:-


http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/1333DDR38S4G/


http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-notebooks/312708-my-macbookpro-adding-ram.html

harryb2448 said:

Remove the Best Buy memory and see if any joy that way. For memory deal with OWC and Crucial only. We have seen this before here with Best Buy memory.

Check out the specs against this:-


OWC 1333DDR38S4G 4.0GB PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz... in stock at OWC


http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-notebooks/312708-my-macbookpro-adding-ram.html

Click to expand...

The computer works now. The new memory they gave me did it but apparently, since the old RAM was killing the system during time machine restores, the external hard drive (Seagate) was not safely removed. Apparently, this killed my external hard drive. I now have a fresh un-configured MBP.

I'm going to ditch the Seagate. What is the recommended external hard drive I should do backups from?

Tony.

Glad to hear you're back up and running again. Sorry to hear about the Seagate, but if it's still under warranty, (Seagate = 3 years) you might want to give Seagate a call and ask for a RMA. They should under the warranty replace the drive. I know that doesn't help you in the short term, but at least you won't be out the cost of the drive.

As for buying another external hard drive, I personally like the Western Digital Passport models but any good external drive should be OK. I have a mixture here at my home office: Toshiba, iomega, Hitachi, and Western Digital.

Thanks. The drive is only 5 months old.

Tony.

TonyBen said:

The computer works now. The new memory they gave me did it but apparently...

Click to expand...

Awesome!

- Nick

Seagate's are okay but one thing. Like Windows, if connected as an external drive, you have to dismount by dragging the icon on the desktop to the Trash before unplugging or chances are you will have a corrupted drive. When the MBP is up and running, connect the external, go to Disk Utility and if it is there, erase and format Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and under Options in partition, set up as GUID.

Fingers crossed and you can start using it again.