Brand new 2011 13" MBP freaking out-never seen this before

[technopimp]

I just bought a 2011 13" MBP. I dropped in a 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 and 8GB RAM and did a fresh install of Snow Leopard. Been using it for about a day. Everything was fine the first, but tonight something weird started happening. I started the machine, and it got to the login prompt. I logged in, but suddenly everything just "froze" and went back to the login screen. I thought maybe I typed my password wrong, but doing it again it actually froze while I was typing, and again, dumped back to the login screen with no characters typed. It did this about 10 times. I finally powered off and on again. Next time, it actually let me log in, but then about 2 minutes later, freeze and back at the login screen.

Again, restarted. Lasted about 45 minutes...then suddenly my open finder window just randomly closed. I thought, weird...so reopened finder...immediately closed. Did that 5 times...finally it said "Finder cannot be opened" and just went blue. Restarted...login freezing loop again. Eventually it let me in.

I've had 2 MBPs and a MBA and have never had this happen before. Is something just corrupt with the install? I can redo it (haven't really installed anything yet) but I'm a bit concerned that maybe the Vertex 3 is hosed. In my previous MBP I had an Intel SSD and never had a lick of trouble. Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks!

 

[emiljan]

Try to repair permissions first, and see what that does. If not you can always nuke it and start out fresh.

 

[technopimp]

Try to repair permissions first, and see what that does. If not you can always nuke it and start out fresh.

Is that something that can be done through a utility or do I have to do it manually within a terminal prompt?

Der, nevermind, found it in Disk Utility. Will give it a try. Thanks!

 

[zap2]

Take out one stick of RAM, see if the issue persists, take out the other if it does. If it still does, my next guess would be that SDD.


But try booting into safe mode first and see if you can run disk utility and play around with its ability to scan and repair the disk.

If you are up for it, taking the SDD out and putting the HDD back it would be good evidence its the SDD thats causing the issue. Or using the SDD to boot with another Mac. Or boot from an external HDD to your laptop. All ways to see if its your boot disk, which in this case if SDD.

Edit-Repairing Permission can be done with Disk Utility.

 

[TheFarmer]

If repairing permissions and stuff don't help, start the process of elimination (sucks but it has to be done). Remove RAM, reinstall originals. If that doesn't work, remove SSD and reinstall OE HD.

 

[technopimp]

Well I did a repair permissions...found a bunch of errors. "Fixed" them and rebooted. Scanned again and they were all still there. So maybe I'll just reinstall tomorrow. Just weird it would be OK for a day and then all go to hell...literally all I have installed is Firefox.