Mac Book Pro hangs

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I have to reboot my Macbook Pro every time I leave it alone for a few hours. When I wake it up I see a gray screen with what looks like a progress bar at the bottom--as if the machine were loading something. It never finishes loading. It will give me the login screen after a few minutes--but the cursor doesn't move in the password dialog box.
I am generally running Chrome and the DVD player. Occasionally I've got a Word document open. None of these strike me as the kind of applications that would make a MacBook Pro with 16 G of RAM hang when I try to log in/wake the computer up.
 

chscag

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Some specs about your MBP would be helpful = Model, year and version of OS X.

Is sounds like you may have a hard drive that's failing but it could also be other things. If you know how to run a Verify and Repair, do that and let us know the results.
 
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I bought the machine in 2012. It runs OSX 10.9.5 It has a 2.5 GHz intel core i5 processor.
I looked online for how to run the Detect and Repair. The articles I see imply that this utility is on a DVD that came with the MacBook Pro. I didn't get a DVD with this device though.
 

chscag

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Do this: Restart your MacBook Pro while holding down the command and r keys at the same time. That will boot the machine to the recovery partition. When in recovery, choose Utilities, and then choose Disk Utility. Select Verify. Let us know the results.
 
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I ran the utility. At the end it said "The volume Macintosh HD appears to be okay" in green. I ran the repair part anyways.

I probably won't know if this did any good until tomorrow morning. The symptoms only appear after I leave the machine alone for a few hours and then try to wake it up.
 

chscag

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If the hard drive checked out OK from Disk Utility, there may be another problem or it could still be the hard drive. Unfortunately, the Disk Utility "Verify and Repair" option does not catch all hard drive errors.

In the meantime, try doing an SMC reset. Follow these Apple instructions.
 
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I read how to reset the SMC. What was not clear to me from that article (or the articles to which it links--which are archived and no longer being updated) whether or not a 13 inch MacBook Pro from 2012 is a machine whose battery I can remove or a machine whose battery I cannot remove. The battery is not as easily accessible as it was in an older Macbook--I'd have to take the bottom off to get to it.

So--should I follow the instructions for a machine whose battery you can remove or one whose battery you cannot remove?
 
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I followed the directions for resetting SMC for a machine whose battery one cannot remove. I won't know if it fixes the problem entirely until tomorrow morning, but the battery--which hadn't been able to charge past 95% is now at 100% for the first time in a year. (Batteries that don't charge being an indication that SMC needs to be reset.) So that's hopeful. :)
 
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No Joy. When I woke the Macbook Pro up this morning the screen was grey and there was a status bar at the bottom that slowly loaded. Any other ideas as to what might be going on or how I can fix this?
 

chscag

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I'm still leaning toward the hard drive being at fault. I've seem that symptom before and it usually indicates a failing hard drive or one that is nearly full with little or no room left. You never mentioned how much free space remained on your drive? Also, you might want to check to see what's going on by opening your activity monitor.
 
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I'm running the activity monitor. Chrome seems to have a lot of "helpers" but other than that nothing particularly interesting is happening. Assuming the problem is with the hard drive, should I take it to the Genius Bar?
 

chscag

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If it is the hard drive that's failing, you can change it out yourself. There's no need to have Apple do it for you as they will charge for the labor and a new hard drive. Of course if your MacBook Pro is still covered by Apple care, then by all means take it to the genius bar.

Instructions for changing out the hard drive can be found at www.ifixit.com. Make sure you keep up with your backups.
 

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