Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Mac keeps freezing (SSD issue)

mgpg89

mgpg89

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 31, 2008
970
16
Belgium
Hi everyone,

as of recently, I've been experiencing some problems with my late '08 MacBook Pro ... It's been freezing randomly.
Can't do anything until I force restart the device.

So I fired up Disk Utility & narrowed it down to an SSD issue.
Disk Utility told me to repair the disk, which I tried.
Then it told me this was impossible, so I needed to back-up all my data & wipe the drive. Which I did.

Booted up my MBP in target mode w/ a Firewire connection to another Mac, used SuperDuper to clone my SSD to a disk image. Then wiped the MBP drive & copied the SuperDuper back-up back over.
Then I booted up the MBP, fired up Disk Utility again & did a 'check disk', which came back positive.

I thought I fixed it ... but no, an hour later, same problem: my Mac locks up again.

Anyone got any other suggestions?
(Please don't tell me to get a new SSD :p)

EDIT: however, on further inspection it doesn't seem to be an SSD issue ..
Disk Utility reports it's fine now, but my Mac still keeps locking up.
It does seem to happen when I'm doing CPU-intensive stuff though,
so could it be a CPU issue? Is there any way to troubleshoot a CPU?

Any help would be appreciated
 
Last edited:
Run a RAM test.
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11342

If nothing shows up in the shorter tests, run it overnight, with the charger plugged in.


If RAM is faulty or intermittent, it can lead to disk corruption (sometimes repairable, sometimes not), since disk data is written from RAM.

Faulty RAM can also lead to CPU freezes, program crashes, etc.
 
Thanks chown33! I really hope it's "just" a RAM issue.

I apparently need "the system software disc that came with my Mac" ... but I don't have it anymore. (and even if I did have it, my superdrive doesn't work anymore).

Any other way to run a RAM test?
 
Just ran a memtest & results came back positive.
The issue doesn't seem to be RAM-related...
Any other suggestions?
 
mgpg89 said:
Just ran a memtest & results came back positive.
The issue doesn't seem to be RAM-related...
Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...

You original problem description sounds like it's intermittent. I'd run the RAM test overnight.

It could still be an SSD problem. You'd have to swap for a known-good unit, or swap with a known-good HDD, and see if it works better. I don't know any good ways of testing SSDs, but you could search the Mac App Store.

Just because it happens under high CPU load doesn't necessarily point to a CPU problem. It could be the RAM or SSD is temperature-sensitive, and the problem only appears after things heat up.
 
Are you using a TRIM enabler on the SSD? I've seen people who weren't, on third-party SSD's, experience what you are experiencing. Once they installed and enabled TRIM, things cleared right up.
 
Installed this Trim Enabler a couple of hours ago and it hasn't crashed since ...
Thank you SandboxGeneral. Hope this resolves the issue.

Also still running a 255-sequence memory test to see if I have faulty RAM, just in case.
 
mgpg89 said:
Installed this Trim Enabler a couple of hours ago and it hasn't crashed since ...
Thank you SandboxGeneral. Hope this resolves the issue.

Also still running a 255-sequence memory test to see if I have faulty RAM, just in case.
Click to expand...

Good deal! Let us know if things remain well or start happening again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back