Constant Freezing MB Pro 2.33 October 2006

[theyoda3]

Hi,

So I have been having a problem for the last few months where my Macbook Pro will constantly freeze and become unresponsive. It mostly commonly freezes when scrolling with the finger gesture or the scroll bar in Finder or any web browser, but it has frozen on a number of other random things too.

At first I thought it was a heating issue and I was using SmcFan Control, which helped to reduce the occurrence. Recently, however I decided to reinstall my operating system and see if that would fix the problem. I had no such luck and things got worse. The fan control did not help any more and I could not use my computer for more than 5 minutes before it froze again. Disk Utility says the hard drive is okay, but I do not have any other diagnostic tools. Someone else on the Apple Support forum has a similar issue and they thought the hard drive was the cause. I tried to install Mac OS X onto a firewire drive with initially positive results, but shortly after watching an episode on ABC's website the computer froze again. After that it started to constantly freeze.

I have now cleared the entire hard drive and am running just Windows XP. This has been working well for me and I do not get any freezing issues, but I would really like to use Mac OS. Please let me know if you have any other suggestions. My system specs are as follows:

Mac OS X 10.4.8
Macbook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo (October 2006)

Thanks,
Chris

 

[daneoni]

Maybe you have bad RAM

 

[theyoda3]

The RAM is the same set that came with the machine, but I will give that a try later today. Just to add one more detail though, I booted into Safe Mode and so far I have been using the computer for a couple hours without a problem. Do you think it is graphics card related? Sometimes when I am listening to music and the computer freezes it will keep playing until the song ends.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[theyoda3]

Hi,

Well I have done what was suggested and number of other things as well, but none of them have worked to help identify the problem. Here is a summary of what I have done:

PMU Reset
PRAM Reset
Extended Hardware Test - No errors
Disk Utility Verification Test - No errors
Switched Around RAM Modules - 2 sticks for a total of 6 combinations
Multiple reinstalls of Mac OS X on laptop hard drive
Multiple reinstalls of Mac OS X on external firewire dirve

As soon as I start up the computer and I try to scroll or move a window around the computer freezes. So far only two things work, Windows XP and Mac OS Safe Boot.

If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[lazydesi]

any applecare left on it?

 

[theyoda3]

No AppleCare. Are there any tests to check video card functionality? I think it is the video card, but it would be nice if I could verify that somehow.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[lazydesi]

can you provide more info about your video card?

 

[theyoda3]

Yes, it is an ATI X1600 with 256 MB of VRAM. The info from the system profiler is as follows:

ATI Radeon X1600:

Chipset Model: ATY,RadeonX1600
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x71c5
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-xxxxxx-158
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.158

I am thinking that the problem can be resolved if I can disable Quartz Extreme and enable Software rendering for Core Image. That is how Safe Boot is set up and the computer works just fine that way. Any idea how to change those settings to mimic the Safe Boot settings?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[theyoda3]

I think I figured out a work around. I just disabled the ATI graphics driver by removing the ATI X1000 files from the Extensions folder in the System directory. So far so good.

-Chris