I got a 2011 MBP back in Sept or October after Apples inability to repair my 2010 one (2+ logic boards, new harddrive etc). Acting on the advice of a mac tech I purchased and installed 8gb of ram from OWC. My computer now has an issue of becoming totally unresponsive. At first application will cease to work but I will still be able to move between windows and applications. Soon after that the whole machine will stop and the spinning color will appear. I have never had the computer work after this happens and am always forced to reboot. Any ideas or help is appreciated!
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2011 Model becoming unresponsive
- Thread starter rglax
- Start date
Did it start after you installed the new ram? If so I'd suggest memtest run in single user mode. You could set it to go through five cycles or so overnight. Other than that I'd check activity monitor during periods of unresponsiveness and describe what you were doing.
Typical things that cause unresponsiveness include hard drive access, an application hogging cpu cycles, and bad or insufficient ram. Out of software spotlight indexing is one of the most common irritations. I'd reboot your computer. Look at activity monitor at the first sign of sluggishness. Screenshot it if necessary. For cpus view "all processes". For ram you're looking for page ins vs page outs. Provide me with some more details on this stuff and perhaps I can help you figure out if it's a simple problem.
Typical things that cause unresponsiveness include hard drive access, an application hogging cpu cycles, and bad or insufficient ram. Out of software spotlight indexing is one of the most common irritations. I'd reboot your computer. Look at activity monitor at the first sign of sluggishness. Screenshot it if necessary. For cpus view "all processes". For ram you're looking for page ins vs page outs. Provide me with some more details on this stuff and perhaps I can help you figure out if it's a simple problem.
Thanks for the suggestions, I wouldnt exactly describe myself as too tech savvy so I dont know how to run the memtest. The problem has been occurring with increasing frequency and I cant pinpoint any outliers on the Activity Monitor prior to everything ceasing to work. The past two mornings its frozen almost immediately after opening it back up after being asleep overnight.
are you Savy enough to open the bottom and remove 1 stick of RAM at a time to see if you have bad RAM?
So should I remove 1 stick then boot it and use it for a while to see if the problem continues?
That seems like a quicker way to check for a faulty stick if you don't want to do the memtest. This would give you the most broad/general test to see if your memory is ok, I bought 8gb OWC memory maybe a week ago and its worked great. Fortunately if you do have bad stick(s) the lifetime guarantee from them will set you right, Ive had no problems with the ram, fingers crossed.
So this hanging system problem happened immediately after the upgrade?
So this hanging system problem happened immediately after the upgrade?
Yea, Im pretty sure thats when it began, soon after I upgraded. I'll try that when i get a chance, thanks guys
Even though OWC is a reliable brand, it's always possible to get a bad chip. Since it started around the same time you upgraded the RAM, that's definitely the first thing to check.
I just received a replacement order from OWC and while the issue with freezing after booting up is gone, the computer is now extremely sluggish at times and will take an inordinate amount of time to complete simple tasks while displaying the spinning beach ball.
