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MBP 13" (July 09) freezing up often

K

KrazzJoe

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 24, 2009
5
0
Hi there!

So I've had this gorgeous Macbook Pro for under a month and this problem has actually been happening since the beginning. I thought maybe I just expected too much finally getting a decent machine after coming from an old Toshiba laptop, but this is definitely worse than the performance on my black plastic macbook from 2007.

I'm seeing beach balls once every five minutes at least but often once a minute, sometimes even when I'm just watching a YouTube video or reading a text document in Safari.

Sometimes the lockup is with a beach balls but often everything just stops and a beach ball isn't even shown.

I heard about the recent firmware update but I just have the standard 160gb 5,400 rpm drive.

Any ideas?

I'm also having trouble deleting some files. Whenever I plug by 1TB external in some files appear in the trash that cannot be deleted (not even with option or fancy terminal tricks). But the problem persists even when the drive isn't plugged in. Recently, this has happened with a folder on my main drive to. Where I will delete it and it will disappear but wont delete and eventually it just ends up back on the desktop.
 
I've been having similar problems with my 13"MBP. Just this morning I tried the SMC reset procedure detailed in this post:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8050524/

...and have been working all day today without a single beachball/freeze.

Knock on wood I guess, but this seems to have addressed my issue, at least temporarily.
 
Try these 3 procedures

1. repair permissions
2. reset pram
3. reset smc

Usually fixes any problems

Hope it works for you
 
Bigabouli said:
Try these 3 procedures

1. repair permissions
2. reset pram
3. reset smc

Usually fixes any problems

Hope it works for you
Click to expand...

Sorry... I didn't get it~
What does it mean??
1. repair permissions
2. reset pram
3. reset smc


PS: I have no problem of my MBP 13" with Apple SSD :p

Did u change your hard disk or RAM??
 
My friend (zoolaine on the forums) has the same problem with her new MBP. She figured out if she shut it down and kept it off for the entire night, it'll not freeze or anything for about 2 weeks.
 
AFAIK, it's mostly people with SATA 3.0 Gbps HDDs who experience this problem.

This is because the MBP 13" supports no more than 1.5 Gbps.
 
I can speak to the files in the trash can...

Those are on the external drive, and the external drive was formated for Windows or created in Windows. You can connect it to a Windows machine, go to the trash there and delete the files for good.

You may want to backup those files on drive, and partition and format it with your Mac... BUT only if you plan to use it only with your Mac. If you plan to use it with both, you need to format in FAT I think. I would guess it's in NTFS or the wrong FAT now (I don't remember for sure how that worked). Just read about it by searching on Google. You will find an article somewhere that tells you what to partition and format it with if you plan to use with both Windows and OS X.

Anyways, the beach ball issue. Do you have a lot of files and programs open? Check how much RAM you're using with Activity Monitor. Also check the swap. If both of those are fine, and you're not using a bunch of apps, it's a drive problem. It could be the cable, the drive, or the mechanism that allows the drive to stop spinning when dropped/moved.

Good luck.
 
Scottsdale said:
I can speak to the files in the trash can...

Those are on the external drive, and the external drive was formated for Windows or created in Windows. You can connect it to a Windows machine, go to the trash there and delete the files for good.

You may want to backup those files on drive, and partition and format it with your Mac... BUT only if you plan to use it only with your Mac. If you plan to use it with both, you need to format in FAT I think. I would guess it's in NTFS or the wrong FAT now (I don't remember for sure how that worked). Just read about it by searching on Google. You will find an article somewhere that tells you what to partition and format it with if you plan to use with both Windows and OS X.

Anyways, the beach ball issue. Do you have a lot of files and programs open? Check how much RAM you're using with Activity Monitor. Also check the swap. If both of those are fine, and you're not using a bunch of apps, it's a drive problem. It could be the cable, the drive, or the mechanism that allows the drive to stop spinning when dropped/moved.

Good luck.
Click to expand...

On the hard drive issue this is what I vaguely figured and after doing some searching it was confirmed basically in the way you did. Thanks a lot. It's annoying as hell in the back of my brain to have a trash that's never empty.

And on the Beach Ball the three step thing seems to have worked though it is doing some locking up at the moment that's worrying me. I really don't want to have to restart and do that every day. This isn't my enthusiast windows machine :)

On the issue of a hard drive again. If it's formated for the mac does it work faster and more seamlessly with the machine?
 
KrazzJoe said:
On the issue of a hard drive again. If it's formated for the mac does it work faster and more seamlessly with the machine?
Click to expand...

Just realized the answer is of course here, because this trash issue probably wont happen. Other than that?
 
torbjoern said:
AFAIK, it's mostly people with SATA 3.0 Gbps HDDs who experience this problem.

This is because the MBP 13" supports no more than 1.5 Gbps.
Click to expand...



haha, the ignorance is quite funny.


Even if you have an SSD you're going to have a hard time on most of them saturating the 1.5 GB/s range as it is. If you don't have an SSD you're not going to get close anyway.

And a firmware update a couple weeks after the 13" MBP got released upgraded the interface to 3.0. It was a driver not being ready by launch issue, and it was resolved rather promptly. Funny how so many people still bash the 13" because of its supposed SATA ineptitude.

My 5400 rpm 250 GB stock hard drive will do me just fine for another year or so until SSD capacity and price reaches a range that I can afford. After that, a 8 GB ram upgrade will happen when the price is reasonable.

I wouldn't be surprised if I had this machine running just fine 5 years from now.
 

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The intermittent random beachball terror is a widespread problem that affects all the 2009 MBPs (13", 15" and 17"), not just the 13". I have the same on my MBP 17". On Apple's forums there are several threads about this issue, one is over 120 pages long.

Basically what happens is that the whole system becomes unresponsive for 20-30 seconds with varying intervals (typically a few times / hour) and the hard drive goes quiet. Once this happens you can do little but watch the spinning beachball, until the HDD starts chattering again and everything unfreezes.

Here's a video showing what it looks like: http://vimeo.com/5854152

At first it was thought to affect only users of Seagate 7200 RPM drives, but it'll happen with all drives, stock or custom. It was simply more noticeable with the Seagate drives because when they were hit by the random freeze there'd be a loud click + beep. Apple later released an update that removed the weird noise, but the random 20 second freezes are still there.

Here's one thread about it (it's over 120 pages long... it starts with the HDD beep + click thing but later evolves into being about the random 20 second beachball terror (which ironically happened to my MBP moments ago as I was in the middle of typing 'beachball').

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2049659&start=1815&tstart=0

Another related thread

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2054387&tstart=0&start=945

Another one about MBP 13" freezing up...

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2087489&tstart=0

Yet another, this one about the MBP 15"...

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2103941&tstart=15


The only known workaround is to downgrade the EFI firmware from 1.7 to 1.6, which will also downgrade the SATA speed from 3.0 Gbit/s to 1.5. On the June '09 MBP 17" there is no workaround because it had 3.0 Gbit/s SATA from the beginning so it didn't need the update that fixed the 1.5 Gbit/s limitation.
 
Anuba said:
The intermittent random beachball terror is a widespread problem that affects all the 2009 MBPs (13", 15" and 17"), not just the 13". I have the same on my MBP 17". On Apple's forums there are several threads about this issue, one is over 120 pages long.

Basically what happens is that the whole system becomes unresponsive for 20-30 seconds with varying intervals (typically a few times / hour) and the hard drive goes quiet. Once this happens you can do little but watch the spinning beachball, until the HDD starts chattering again and everything unfreezes.

Here's a video showing what it looks like: http://vimeo.com/5854152

At first it was thought to affect only users of Seagate 7200 RPM drives, but it'll happen with all drives, stock or custom. It was simply more noticeable with the Seagate drives because when they were hit by the random freeze there'd be a loud click + beep. Apple later released an update that removed the weird noise, but the random 20 second freezes are still there.

Here's one thread about it (it's over 120 pages long... it starts with the HDD beep + click thing but later evolves into being about the random 20 second beachball terror (which ironically happened to my MBP moments ago as I was in the middle of typing 'beachball').

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2049659&start=1815&tstart=0

Another related thread

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2054387&tstart=0&start=945

Another one about MBP 13" freezing up...

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2087489&tstart=0

Yet another, this one about the MBP 15"...

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2103941&tstart=15


The only known workaround is to downgrade the EFI firmware from 1.7 to 1.6, which will also downgrade the SATA speed from 3.0 Gbit/s to 1.5. On the June '09 MBP 17" there is no workaround because it had 3.0 Gbit/s SATA from the beginning so it didn't need the update that fixed the 1.5 Gbit/s limitation.
Click to expand...

Well this is ****ing lame.

It's exactly what's happening to me. Something better be done. I guess I'm glad it's a firmware issue (maybe) but I'm worried if it's taken so long.

thanks a lot for the resources
 
had the previous non unibody 17" which was fine, this new one is definitly beachballing alot..using stock 500gb 5400rpm hdd, what gives :confused:
 
Anuba said:
The intermittent random beachball terror is a widespread problem that affects all the 2009 MBPs (13", 15" and 17"), not just the 13". I have the same on my MBP 17".

...
Click to expand...


felt. said:
had the previous non unibody 17" which was fine, this new one is definitly beachballing alot..using stock 500gb 5400rpm hdd, what gives :confused:
Click to expand...


What?! Is the 17" really affected? I purposely got the 17" because I knew the 17" wasn't plagued with beachball syndrome.

I had the Jan 09 unibody 17" 2.66 that was smooth sailing and without frequent random beachballs (with a 500GB Western Digital Scorpio hard disk). Then swapped over to the June 09 17" 2.8 a short while later and while briefly on the stock 500GB Hitachi drive also didn't notice any inordinate beachballing. I later installed the 500GB Western Digital Scorpio and all's still fine. Beachballs are a rare sight and not random - starting 5 apps at once can give the beachball but that's to be expected.

The mid 09 17" should not be lumped together with the 13" and 15" because while those two got a firmware update that is probably the cause of this freezing, the 17" never had that update.

But to answer the OP, yeah, it's probably the firmware update that's giving you grief. Or at least the interaction between the firmware and the hard disk installed.
 
Thinking about returning my new MBP because I"m having this very same issue. Beach balls occuring during normal web use in Firefox with few app's open and one or two tabs open. This is unacceptable. My previous MBP (15" Penryn edition) never did this. Shame because I love my 13" MBP, but this is just unacceptable. So frustrating to see the beach ball for no reason.
 
I only get freezing while watching video, usually in QT. There is a multi-page thread on the Apple forums as well. We've been collecting data during the freeze and sending it to Apple techs. Hopefully something will come of it.
 
Just returned my 13" MBP. It's a shame because it's a great laptop. But this issue is a very real one and it's complicated. I've come across a series of threads regarding it both here and on Apple's discussion boards.

Surprised the big tech sites have yet to report it. Hopefully Apple will address it in the near future.
 
Seriously, why isn't this issue getting more publicity? It seems to be very widespread. When it was discovered that MBP 13/15 had a crippled SATA interface with 1.5 Gbit/s, it took about 48 hours before it made headlines on every damn Mac site on the planet. With a few million MBP owners staring at a beachball all day long, this should be frontpage news and Apple should be responding.
What?! Is the 17" really affected? I purposely got the 17" because I knew the 17" wasn't plagued with beachball syndrome.
Click to expand...
Oh, it is. I have it on my MBP 17" from June '09 and plenty of MBP 17" owners have posted similar stories on Apple's forum. It could be a different issue with the same symptoms, though, but I doubt it... the behavior is exactly like in the videos posted by owners of the smaller systems.

I had it for weeks, then I followed some advice on the Apple forum to do an SMC reset, a PRAM/NVRAM reset and switching to 9600M permanently... it's been working great for a few days, but it's a dumb method because there's no telling which of these things that helped. If it's related to the 9400M, good luck to MBP 13" and entry level MBP 15" owners...

(...you bought the MBP 17" specifically to avoid a bug?!)
 
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