Mavericks Freezing About Once Per Week

[steiney]

Hello all!

Is anyone else experiencing their copy of Mavericks freezing up roughly once per week or so? I know there was the whole keyboard/trackpad freezing issue when Mavericks was first released and that it has been resolved since, however I find that my copy of Mavericks freezes up on average once per week, and it is really infuriating. Almost everything I do these days is either done in the cloud or auto-saved routinely, so I don't think I've ever lost work, but it is just annoying having to restart.

I ran 10.4 for about three or four years, and it literally crashed 2-3 times in over that period, and then I upgraded to Snow Leopard, and it would crash maybe every six months or so on average. Now, dealing with Mavericks crashing so much is taking one of the huge incentives of running OS X away.

I'm reaching out to others on here to try and figure out if it's a common problem or if something app/process I have running on my computer is to blame.

I seem to recall there is a way to look at some system log that could possibly tell me what is causing the crash each time, but I am not knowledgeable enough to know which log that is or where to find it.

If anyone has insight or advice for me, it is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

steiney

 

[Intell]

What Mac is this? In what way is it freezing?

 

[steiney]

What Mac is this? In what way is it freezing?

Thanks for the reply. It's a late 2013 rMBP 2.6GHz i7 with 16 GB RAM.

The way it seems to freeze is that one app or menu bar utility will freeze, and then the "force quit" menu will not be able to be brought up. For a minute after a freeze I can still switch apps, but then that will stop as well, and within a minute or less the whole system is frozen and the only way to get past it is to do a hard restart.

 

[h9826790]

Thanks for the reply. It's a late 2013 rMBP 2.6GHz i7 with 16 GB RAM.

The way it seems to freeze is that one app or menu bar utility will freeze, and then the "force quit" menu will not be able to be brought up. For a minute after a freeze I can still switch apps, but then that will stop as well, and within a minute or less the whole system is frozen and the only way to get past it is to do a hard restart.

Is your RAM bought from apple? 3rd Party RAM may cause this issue.

Of course it may course by some buggy software as well.

My Mac Pro running 24/7, and it never has this problem.

May be you can try some standard stuff first e.g. repair permission, reset PRAM and SMC.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

Mavericks Freezing About Once Per Week

The room temperature is probably too low.

 

[steiney]

Is your RAM bought from apple? 3rd Party RAM may cause this issue.

Of course it may course by some buggy software as well.

My Mac Pro running 24/7, and it never has this problem.

May be you can try some standard stuff first e.g. repair permission, reset PRAM and SMC.

Interesting. Thanks! Well at least that tells me that it is probably due to some third party software I have installed. I figured I would have heard grumblings about it already on MacRumors if it was a problem with the OS.

I will try repairing permissions, and reset my PRAM and SMC, however I seem to remember some log file that specifies which process has caused a given crash. Is that a thing or am I misremembering?

 

[yjchua95]

Thanks for the reply. It's a late 2013 rMBP 2.6GHz i7 with 16 GB RAM.

The way it seems to freeze is that one app or menu bar utility will freeze, and then the "force quit" menu will not be able to be brought up. For a minute after a freeze I can still switch apps, but then that will stop as well, and within a minute or less the whole system is frozen and the only way to get past it is to do a hard restart.

I think you mean 2.6GHz i5, 16GB RAM.

Mine's the 2.8GHz i7, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, but my rMBP doesn't freeze at all.

I think you might need to repair disk permissions via Disk Utility and perhaps a PRAM and SMC reset. If all these don't work, try a clean install.

 

[steiney]

I think you mean 2.6GHz i5, 16GB RAM.

Mine's the 2.8GHz i7, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, but my rMBP doesn't freeze at all.

I think you might need to repair disk permissions via Disk Utility and perhaps a PRAM and SMC reset. If all these don't work, try a clean install.

No, it's an i7. See below. Your MBP is one generation before mine.

I've reset the PRAM and all seems well for now. I'm going to post back after a week or so with an update. I also repaired the disk permissions.

 

[yjchua95]

No, it's an i7. See below. Your MBP is one generation before mine.

Image

I've reset the PRAM and all seems well for now. I'm going to post back after a week or so with an update. I also repaired the disk permissions.

Mine's the late-2013 2.8GHz i7 (13" rMBP). Are you on a 13" or 15"? The only 2.6Ghz i7 I've got is the quad core in my other rMBP, a 15" late-2013 with 16GB RAM and 2GB GT750M. I don't have any issues with that 15" of mine either.

 

[steiney]

Mine's the late-2013 2.8GHz i7 (13" rMBP). Are you on a 13" or 15"? The only 2.6Ghz i7 I've got is the quad core in my other rMBP, a 15" late-2013 with 16GB RAM and 2GB GT750M. I don't have any issues with that 15" of mine either.

Mine is the 15" version. Quad-core. It's the maxed out current 15" rMBP, except the SSD is ony 512GB.

 

[yjchua95]

Mine is the 15" version. Quad-core. It's the maxed out current 15" rMBP, except the SSD is ony 512GB.

Ah, all right. It's identical to my 15" rMBP except for the SSD.

I don't seem to experience any freeze ups though. Did it happen after you installed some third-party software?

 

[steiney]

Ah, all right. It's identical to my 15" rMBP except for the SSD.

I don't seem to experience any freeze ups though. Did it happen after you installed some third-party software?

I can't really determine exactly when it started and I frequently try out new software I come across, so it's hard to say what software would be causing the freezes. I tried looking through the diagnostics logs, but the only crash logs I could find were for OpenVPN, however my computer was freezing sometimes when I was at my office and I do not run my VPN while at my office, so that pretty much rules out OpenVPN as being the culprit.

Like I said before, I've reset the PRAM and repaired my disk permissions, and although it hasn't even been 24 hours yet, everything seems to be fine since then. I'm going to give it a week more and see what happens before taking any further actions.

 

[steiney]

Well, I had another freeze on day two. This time at the lockscreen. However, the problem might be solved now and I am thinking it was an issue between Little Snitch and OpenVPN. Little Snitch popped up and update dialog today, and in the release notes it mentioned the one of the issues fixed was a problem with some types of OpenVPN connections. This makes sense a the culprit because when I looked through my system diagnostics logs previously, the only crash logs I could find were for OpenVPN. So, hopefully, now that Little Snitch has been updated, the problem is solved. Again, I'm going to give it a week before making any conclusive statements, but at least I've got hope!