Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mac Users Reporting Widespread System Freezes With OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 Update
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yep, I retired my 4 year old Mac Book Pro . It won't upgrade pass Snow Leopard. I've tried every upgrade pass Snow Leopard. I even replaced the motherboard , even multiple clean installs . Even tried beta Sierra. It would sometime work a few hours and freeze up.
Sorry, Apple I jumped ship and bought a Dell 2-1 for half the price and it's been working fine with windows 10.
Has anyone of you, with freezing issues, tried the new OS X 10.11.6?
Just give it a try and report if Apple solved the problem with the last iteration of OS X El Capitan (please).
EDIT: Now I updated my 2010 13" MBP from 10.11.1 to 10.11.6.
I will report any freeze I could suffer. I've done a PRAM reset after the update.
Just give it a try and report if Apple solved the problem with the last iteration of OS X El Capitan (please).
EDIT: Now I updated my 2010 13" MBP from 10.11.1 to 10.11.6.
I will report any freeze I could suffer. I've done a PRAM reset after the update.
Last edited:
Yes, the latest 10.11.6 is freezing on my late 2009 iMac, the only partition i have on my iMac that is rock solid and super stable is 10.11.3, every release since then (introduced in 10.11.4 Beta 2) have this incredible annoying freeze bug
macOS Sierra Beta 3 does not cause freezes for me but "AmbientDisplayAgent" is constantly using alot of cpu (40-60% range) and is crashing as soon as the GPU is getting some load, for some reason, how they are related i have no idea, anyways, this causes my screen to go black, i can get it back by putting the display to sleep and then turning it on again. So, OS X and macOS have not been usable for me since late Januari, which is pretty incredible
experience freezing issue on my iMac 17" el Capitan 10.11.5 Managed to update to 10.11.6 ....same problem
Ok, I wil help trying to reproduce the error... Dedicated GPU or integrated one? If dedicated, have you tried to use only the integrated, if there is one?
What are you doing every time your system freezes? In order to reproduce it on my 2010 C2D MacBook Pro.
Same thing: do you have a dedicated GPU? Have you tried to disable it and give it a heavy use?
What are you doing generally when freezes occur?
Thanks to everybody and excuse me if you have answered those questions early.
If any freeze occurs to me, I will tell you, and of course I will report to Apple.
Nope, i have no integrated GPU on my iMac (Intel i7, i7-860 to be specific), only a dedicated Radeon 4850.
Anyways, 99% of my freezes starts while scrolling in Safari (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-safari-freeze-issue-lets-fix-this.1957355/), its non site-specific, it can freeze up on any website, the only common denominator is scrolling, 1% while closing a tab (for other people it is just when closing tabs, or some other action), i don't think it is reproducible on your MBP since the only Macs i currently have problems with are those with Intel i-series CPU + Radeon/AMD GPU combos, my C2D MBP with GeForce 8600M GT has never once frozen like my iMac do
You're right. No freezes so far.
If I can help in any way, just tell me.
And I wish this to get a solution ASAP. Honestly, if this sort of things keep happening, I probably wont buy another MacBook in the future. This is serious business for Apple and its loyal customers.
I have had these freezes on my Late 2012 iMac running 10.11.6. They are really annoying!
I've discovered that if I ssh into the iMac from my laptop and look at the process list with "ps aux", the process "distnoted" is using a lot of CPU. Sometimes 2-3 cores at full tilt. If I kill -9 that process, the iMac recovers and seems fine until the next time it freezes.
So, this is obviously a bug with distnoted. At least in my case.
Perhaps we can get some more information from people who are having this freeze? If you have another machine, enable Remote Login in Preferences. Then next time it happens ssh into your Mac and do:
sudo killall -9 distnoted
and see if it unfreezes. This way we can see if we're having the same problem and may be closer to narrowing down the cause.
I've discovered that if I ssh into the iMac from my laptop and look at the process list with "ps aux", the process "distnoted" is using a lot of CPU. Sometimes 2-3 cores at full tilt. If I kill -9 that process, the iMac recovers and seems fine until the next time it freezes.
So, this is obviously a bug with distnoted. At least in my case.
Perhaps we can get some more information from people who are having this freeze? If you have another machine, enable Remote Login in Preferences. Then next time it happens ssh into your Mac and do:
sudo killall -9 distnoted
and see if it unfreezes. This way we can see if we're having the same problem and may be closer to narrowing down the cause.
MacBook Pro 15 inch mid 2010. Was suffering from freeze issue and now it's gotten worse. MAC will freeze then reboot. Happening more and more often now. Am on the latest os.
Seriously annoyed.
Seriously annoyed.
hey Tripper …
for what it's worth - over the years and irrespective of which Mac model I've owned - I only ever install the first iteration of a major OS X release - in this case, Mac OS X 10.11 - otherwise known as El Capitan.
having been burnt in previous major releases by dot 1, dot 2 (etc), incremental releases - I now keep the original OS X on a stick - and if my Mac starts playing up to the point of frustration, I simply backup my home folder, do an erase and fresh install from said stick, reinstall apps and then home folder contents.
a nice afternoon exercise, then, hey presto, a fast snappy Mac.
don't believe all the bulls**t about 'security updates'.
if you keep an eye on things, empty caches in Safari and clear all history regularly - all should be sweet.
I personally avoid Chrome, Firefox, etc and use DuckDuckGo in Safari as my search engine of choice.
a bit laborious here in Australia, yet it's still good
Hey guys, I think I found out what's tickling this bug on my system. Of course, every case is different, but... for me it was running two Time Machine disks at once.
I added a second Time Machine disk that I keep at work, and would occasionally bring home so I could have an offsite backup. I realized that my hangs started when I began doing this. The fact that the hang would always happen when a Time Machine backup was due to start tipped me off.
I removed the second disk and the hangs have completely stopped! \o/ Offsite backups can still be done, I just have to add the disk when I bring it home, run the backup manually, then remove it. A little more inconvenient, but at least I can avoid this annoying bug.
Hopefully this is the case for some of you too and you can stop the hangs until Apple fixes the bug. Good luck!
I added a second Time Machine disk that I keep at work, and would occasionally bring home so I could have an offsite backup. I realized that my hangs started when I began doing this. The fact that the hang would always happen when a Time Machine backup was due to start tipped me off.
I removed the second disk and the hangs have completely stopped! \o/ Offsite backups can still be done, I just have to add the disk when I bring it home, run the backup manually, then remove it. A little more inconvenient, but at least I can avoid this annoying bug.
Hopefully this is the case for some of you too and you can stop the hangs until Apple fixes the bug. Good luck!
My issue was finally resolved I believed it was fixed when I upgraded to sierra but I cant remember