Regretting Mac Purchase - OS X Freezing Issues

Hi all,

I've been having freezing issues with OS X Leopard 10.5.3 that have been happening since 10.5.0. Every day (not exaggerating - literally every day) my Mac freezes for about 15 seconds, unfreezes for about 5, and then freezes again for 15, etc.

Here is a video of this basically happening:
http://www.viddler.com/explore/markbao/videos/6/

I can move the mouse, but clicking and keyboard usage is backed up, such that if I keep typing when it is frozen, it will show what I have typed when it unfreezes. Activity Monitor always shows kernel_task as the problem, taking up the entire CPU when it is in these 15 second freezing cycles, which doesn't really help.

Sometimes this goes on for about 10 or so cycles and then it just completely freezes, sometimes it's completely frozen after just one. In either case, the only way to fix it is to force restart, as I had done in the video.

Specs: MacBook Pro 15.4" 2.4GHz Penryn (Early 2008) - No, I do NOT have Parallels installed. OS X Leopard 10.5.3. Apple Hardware Test passed, no issues.

Any ideas? Thank you!

ggjstudios said:

Have you looked at Activity Monitor to see what's running and using resources?

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Yes, updated post to reflect that. Activity Monitor shows kernel_task as taking up the entire CPU, which doesn't help since kernel_task is basically the system running. Thanks for the reply.

HLdan said:

To be fair, you modified your dock and you should take haxies into consideration when you have problems. I also see other transparencies that are not stock OS X.

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Yes, I did change my dock background, but this has been a problem far before I did that. I don't know what other transparencies are non-OS X, though.

Thanks for the reply.

yellow said:

3rd party RAM? Stock RAM?
Does it do it when you're logged in as another user?

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No 3rd party RAM. This is a stock machine.

Don't have another user, can't work in another user. Maybe will try leaving it on overnight though.

Thanks!

nick9191 said:

Why did you not return it to Apple when the problems started? Had you done so in the 14 days after you purchased it you would have got a brand new one, or a full refund.

This does sound like a hardware issue, so return it to Apple and I'm sure they will fix it. Have you attempted a reinstall? Is your RAM third party? Have you run the Apple hardware test to check for errors?

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Haven't attempted reinstall yet. Don't want to go to that, but I'm expecting it will.

Not a RAM problem.

Will run HW test right now.

I can't send this in - I work on this machine daily. Thanks for your suggestions!

thenetstud said:

Run an Apple Hardware Test.

Insert your install disc #1 and restart holding down "D".

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Thanks. I did so, returned that there were no issues found with HW. Definitely SW then, so I'm somewhat happy.

ingenious said:

Why can't you just create a different user account and use it for some non-work activities and see if the problem still exists? The way you worded your original post, it sounds like the issue occurs regardless of your open application.

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This happens once every 20-24 hours, and I do work on this laptop. Thanks, though.

Sun Baked said:

About this Mac > More Info > Software > Logs > System.log and error log

Might see a dyld cache retry or samba error happening when the system is freezing for that period.

Or might be one of the machines where spotlight has been hanging.

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Thanks. At the end of my video, I recorded some futile attempts to catch what was going on in Console, . Didn't find anything suspicious.