[SOLVED - apple.afpstat issue, Time Machine] 2012 MBA randomly freezes and shuts down

[brayhite]

It's hard to give details about what exactly is happening, but heregoes:

Google Chrome and Safari both consistently crash. What causes it is yet TBD, but it's not the Chrome "Waiting for cache" crash.

What will essentially happen is I'll be reading an article or a page, and when I go to open a new tab/click a link/etc., it doesn't respond. Nor will any other tab or window. Usually, I will also noticed that the Mail app will say I have 0 messages, and it too will crash.

Most apps will continue working (Spotify keeps playing music, etc.) until I click on them, then they too crash.

In Chrome, it will begin with a series of "XXXX page has stopped responding, you can Kill or Wait" errors. Safari will begin telling me that to visit a page, it has to refresh all open tabs and windows.

I've also noticed that, when leaving the MBA unattended, I'll return to find it's restarted. I've also been near the MBA when it's restarted, and noticed it gives the "Your computer restarted due to a problem. Press any key or wait for it to continue blah blah". The Problem Report indicates a kernel panic, whatever that means.

And finally, I've gotten the error "The system extension "/System/Library/Extensions/prl_usb_connect.kext" was installed improperly and cannot be used. Please try reinstalling it, or contact the product's vendor for an update." multiple times recently, most recently on Nov. 29th.

Any ideas or suggestions AT ALL would be greatly appreciated!

[Bigserver1]

I'd definitely take it in...Sounds possessed, lol.

[jerryobr]

@brayhite
Definitely take the machine in to an Apple store, or call Apple service. You are still well within the warranty coverage period even if you didn't buy AppleCare. You could possibly be facing any number of hardware problems that you can't fix: such as, RAM gone bad, SSD gone bad, logic board problem, etc. But 1st, make a backup. You are backing up currently, correct? If you aren't, back up that thing before taking it to the store or sending it in. If this truly turns out to be a hardware problem, your machine is going to get recycled. If you can't make a back-up, or don't know how to do a backup, take it to the Apple Store and ask them how to do it. Then, once it is backed-up, take it back in, or while there during a back-up they might help you with, tell them "Oh, by the way...", and get the crashing problem resolved. You may have to buy an external hard drive to perform the backup, but in the future you can then regularly perform these. Oh, one other thing, when running your MBA to do the backup, DO....NOT run Chrome or Safari, since you indicate that they may be the culprit for the crashes. When you restore the backup, unless you get a new machine out of this, do not install the backed-up copies of Chrome or Safari. If you end up with a brand new machine, it will have Safari on it already, and you definitely do not want to install a dodgy copy of Sarari in place of the copy that came with the new machine. I also would lay off of Chrome for a while, given Chrome's past problems, and see if the new machine runs fine without it. Then decide if you want to install Chrome, but not the backed up copy; install a freshly downloaded copy. If you get the same dodgy results after installing Chrome, then you know that Chrome is the culprit.

Jerry

[brayhite]

Originally Posted by Bigserver1

I'd definitely take it in...Sounds possessed, lol.

Originally Posted by jerryobr

@brayhite
Definitely take the machine in to an Apple store, or call Apple service.

I was afraid of this. I've already had one issue with my Macbook Air and had it replaced, and they messed up the data transfer (I work on my laptop so can't go more than a day or two without it) in-store, and had a few issues getting license transfers for a few software installs and iTunes authorization problems.

Are there any other solutions I could try before resorting to that?

[abuleban]

and just had it checked at the genius bar with no problems detected. I dunno, maybe its a software issue? Will an update address it?

[brayhite]

Originally Posted by abuleban

and just had it checked at the genius bar with no problems detected. I dunno, maybe its a software issue? Will an update address it?

I've tried something else: I went to Disk Utility and clicked Verify Disk (NOT Repair Disk Permissions). It said there was an error found with missing blocks and the Macintosh HD was corrupted, and had to be repaired in Recovery HD mode.

So I restarted, held Command+R while it was restarting, opened Disk Utility in Recovery HD mode, ran Verify Disk in Recovery HD, and it eventually said the disk must be repaired. So I Repaired Disk, and it appears to have repaired just fine. I repaired disk permissions while I was in there, as well.

I'll update if everything continues to work fine. I have a feeling this was it, as things do feel snappier (windows and tabs don't take a while to open, the keyboard doesn't appear to lag when typing fast, etc.).


UPDATE:

Unfortunately I was wrong. Twice now Chrome has crashed, Mail showed 0 messages, nothing would close properly from the dock, and eventually everything froze and couldn't click on anything, activate Mission Control, etc.

Still looking for answers and suggestions please :/

[brayhite]

Okay, so I think I've narrowed down some things correlated with the crashes, but need someone much more technical than myself to let me know what is happening.

The Console log shows this consistently before each crash:

12/6/12 10:40:06.770 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[266]: (com.apple.afpstat-qfa[316]) Job failed to exec(3). Setting up event to tell us when to try again: 2: No such file or directory
12/6/12 10:40:06.770 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[266]: (com.apple.afpstat-qfa[316]) Job failed to exec(3) for weird reason: 2
12/6/12 10:40:07.000 AM kernel[0]: CODE SIGNING: cs_invalid_page(0x1000): p=321[GoogleSoftwareUp] clearing CS_VALID

This happens around the same time every hour (between :38 and :42 mark), assuming I restart my machine as soon as it freezes.

Any ideas?

UPDATED:

Because it seemed the freezes were happening on a regular, scheduled basis, I turned off the only program I know that is on an hourly-ran basis, i.e. Time Machine. It has seem to have done the trick. Moreover, I've noticed that while the GoogleSoftwareUp message has appeared since, there hasn't been a com.apple.afpstat Job failed to exec come up since turning Time Machine off. And my machine has been running fine and not experiencing hourly freezes since.

Not sure what I'm going to do the next time I need to run Time Machine. Thankfully I just backed everything up the other day, so not in need to do so anytime soon. If anyone has any insight on what exactly everything I did means, please share. Hopefully this helps someone else who's experiencing what happened to me.

[abuleban]

My Air crashed on the flight to Korea, but the good news is they got it to an Apple person here, Applecare took care of it & now it is running very nicely. I have no idea what they did, just a reinstall or a hardware repair, but I'm not complaining!