Macbook Keeps Freezing

Hello all,

This issue may very well belong to the hardware threads, but I suspect this to be a software issue.

I've got a Macbook; it's running an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16ghz, 1gb ram, and 120gb hdd. The issue is that it freezes an unusually frequently amount of time. It will run beautifully for a few hours, then for the next hour (or until I give up trying to care) it'll keep freezing to the point of requiring a manual reboot. When it freezes, it will start with the frontmost application (typically iTunes or Firefox/Safari/Camino), then any other application I try to switch to will freeze as well. This includes Finder, so I am unable to force quit most of the time. After a couple hours have passed, it'll start up again, then slowly decline into uselessness.

I don't recall this issue when I first purchased my Macbook (about 1.5 months ago). It frustrated me enough to first try an "archive and reinstall" then a complete, clean, re-install of Mac OS X (twice, actually). After the first clean reinstall, I felt that the freezing may have been due to my reinstallation of several apps (a bunch of open-source apps that I use; NeoOffice, OpenOffice, Burn, etc.). So I did the second clean reinstall but without reinstalling any new applications or importing old settings, songs, address cards, etc. All to no avail.

I thought that it may follow that trend of working for a few hours before starting to freeze because of overheating; so I tried "Fan Control". Again, to no avail.

On a side note, my hdd is partitioned. One is 15gb for WinXP SP2, and the remaining space was left for Mac OS X. Interestingly, my Windows partition works flawlessly. It hasn't frozen or crashed once yet. I wish I could say that for Mac OS X. In fact, I had tried to write this post twice in Mac OS X before getting fed up with the spinning wait cursor and booting from Windows to write this.

I have tried Disk Utility countless times. I installed the Apple Software Updates immediately after both clean installs, before doing anything else. So yes, I am running 10.4.10.

Please, please, please, any help would be so greatly appreciated. My Macbook is something of a lifeline to me; I can't be efficient in either my studies or my work without my Macbook. So when it's not working, neither am I.

Thanks!
Kevin

This was originally posted in the Mac OS X section, but I learned that this is a hardware issue:

"Hello all,

This issue may very well belong to the hardware threads, but I suspect this to be a software issue.

I've got a Macbook; it's running an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16ghz, 1gb ram, and 120gb hdd. The issue is that it freezes an unusually frequently amount of time. It will run beautifully for a few hours, then for the next hour (or until I give up trying to care) it'll keep freezing to the point of requiring a manual reboot. When it freezes, it will start with the frontmost application (typically iTunes or Firefox/Safari/Camino), then any other application I try to switch to will freeze as well. This includes Finder, so I am unable to force quit most of the time. After a couple hours have passed, it'll start up again, then slowly decline into uselessness.

I don't recall this issue when I first purchased my Macbook (about 1.5 months ago). It frustrated me enough to first try an "archive and reinstall" then a complete, clean, re-install of Mac OS X (twice, actually). After the first clean reinstall, I felt that the freezing may have been due to my reinstallation of several apps (a bunch of open-source apps that I use; NeoOffice, OpenOffice, Burn, etc.). So I did the second clean reinstall but without reinstalling any new applications or importing old settings, songs, address cards, etc. All to no avail.

I thought that it may follow that trend of working for a few hours before starting to freeze because of overheating; so I tried "Fan Control". Again, to no avail.

On a side note, my hdd is partitioned. One is 15gb for WinXP SP2, and the remaining space was left for Mac OS X. Interestingly, my Windows partition works flawlessly. It hasn't frozen or crashed once yet. I wish I could say that for Mac OS X. In fact, I had tried to write this post twice in Mac OS X before getting fed up with the spinning wait cursor and booting from Windows to write this.

I have tried Disk Utility countless times. I installed the Apple Software Updates immediately after both clean installs, before doing anything else. So yes, I am running 10.4.10.

Please, please, please, any help would be so greatly appreciated. My Macbook is something of a lifeline to me; I can't be efficient in either my studies or my work without my Macbook. So when it's not working, neither am I.

Thanks!
Kevin"

I figure this is a hardware issue, because it ONLY happens when the AC adapter is plugged in... I thought it might be a heat issue, so I'm running fan control, and it still doesn't work. All the symptoms exhibited since the original post still apply.

Any insight on this issue would be GREATLY appreciated. While I can do with running off of battery power, that means I'm only working for te 4 hours that I have on battery...

Thank you!

I am having this problem now as well. It all started yesterday after I downloaded the latest patch for NeoOffice. Maybe that is where the problem lies. Until then, I had no problems whatsoever (in the three weeks I've owned my macbook).

same here...

Hi there,

I don't know whether you have already solved your problems, in case so I'd be grateful if you could post some solutions. The thing is I'm facing similar problems with my Macbook. I bought last summer so It's just 3 months old. I installed macosx and ubuntu using rEFIt as the boot manager and ubuntu works perfectly but macosx keeps freezing whenever I introduce a USB device (Freecom HD, Lacie HD, USB modem,...), connect to Internet using Camino, return from a sleep,... It's not that I cannot surf on the internet but after a while is more than likely that the system will freeze, this always happens whenever I introduce a USB device, sometimes as soon as I plug it, sometimes after a while.

I'm thinking of reinstalling macosx but I fear of having to reinstall Ubuntu too. Is it possible to reinstall it without losing data and without having to repartition and reinstall Ubuntu and rEFIt?

The other option I have is to completely remove MacOsx and install Ubuntu as the one and only operating system. By the way, Ubuntu works really fine so it shouldn't be a hardware issue.

Any help?

Regards,

Igor.

the last one...

My macbook has just frozen while it was running the Yasu system utility running weekly cron script... Time to shut down manually and restart again, this is desperating, more than Windows...

My macbook is also freezing up today. It just started doing it today. I updated my iTunes and my Quicktime viewer. Could that be it????