Macbook Pro Keeps Freezing

[FinalxxDistance]

Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this, feel free to move if it is. I've recently started having issues with my Macbook Pro. It's a little over 4 years old now and this is really the first time I've had an ongoing issue with it. A few days ago it started freezing and I've had to manually shut it down. Just in the last day I've had to do that twice, and it's frozen a total of 4 times. The two other times I didn't have to shut down I just waited for a bit and then it unfroze.

Also, today when I tried to do a backup I kept getting the spinning beach ball when I tried to plug in my backup drive. Eventually it did work, and it did let me back up my harddrive. Once the backup finished I ejected the drive then plugged it back in, again I got the beach ball. I tried a different drive, that one didn't freeze but it did take about a minute for it to show up on my computer. Does anyone know what could be happening or what might be the cause of this? Any help is appreciated.

 

[Consultant]

Boot from external drive and see. I have a boot partition on my backup drive.

If you don't know how, make appointment with Apple Store Genius Bar and they'll take a look at your computer.

 

[FinalxxDistance]

How much would it cost to have them just check my computer to see if something's wrong? My insurance with them ended last year.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you have an Apple store nearby, you might have the Genius Bar check it out for a quick evaluation.

The "spinning beach ball" might indicate an internal drive with problems, but it could also be an indication of some process "hogging" all the CPU time (and effectively "stopping the machine cold" until the process is finished).

Next time the computer is acting slow, see if you can open up "Activity Monitor". Click "CPU" and see if a process is using a high percentage of the CPU...

 

[Weaselboy]

Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this, feel free to move if it is. I've recently started having issues with my Macbook Pro. It's a little over 4 years old now and this is really the first time I've had an ongoing issue with it. A few days ago it started freezing and I've had to manually shut it down. Just in the last day I've had to do that twice, and it's frozen a total of 4 times. The two other times I didn't have to shut down I just waited for a bit and then it unfroze.

Also, today when I tried to do a backup I kept getting the spinning beach ball when I tried to plug in my backup drive. Eventually it did work, and it did let me back up my harddrive. Once the backup finished I ejected the drive then plugged it back in, again I got the beach ball. I tried a different drive, that one didn't freeze but it did take about a minute for it to show up on my computer. Does anyone know what could be happening or what might be the cause of this? Any help is appreciated.

Start Disk Utility and select your drive then click "Verify disk" and tell us what you see.