MBP really scary problem

[jeffy.dee-lux]

Hi,
I've got a mid 2007 MBP, 2.2GHz, 2GB ram, running 10.4.11.

I just had a seriously weird and scary incident. I was just browsing the net, having woken the computer from sleep after a short walk to school. After about 2 minutes worth of browsing, the computer totally froze, with no response from anything, track pad or keyboard, no force quit, no mouse movement at all. I gave it some time to gather it's thoughts, see if it would come out of this, and then after about 30 seconds, the trackpad starts responding, except backwards and in big jumps.
So the trackpad was inverted, meaning if I moved my finger down, the mouse on the screen moves up. By "big jumps" i mean I'd move my finger just a little, and the mouse would jump about inch or two across the screen. THis went on for about 10 seconds before it froze again, and i just forced the computer off by holding the power button.

Lately I've noticed I've had many many page outs, despite 2GB of ram. Just approximately, it'd be something like 200,000 page ins and 150,000 page outs after a day or two of uptime. I don't know if this could be related.

Unfortunately, I let my last chance to buy applecare slip by me while I was in Europe this summer, so this computer is no longer covered under warranty (been kicking myself in the pants ever since, I simply forgot when i bought the computer and thought it had been later on!)

Thanks for any help or suggestions!

Jeff

 

[hari-bhari]

i would try a reformat....

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

okay, I've been thinking about buying Leopard and doing a fresh install. Is re formatting an option when you insert the OS install disc, or is that an extra step you have to do first using Disk Utility while started up from the disk?

Thanks for the suggestion by the way, I'm just hoping that would do the trick, cause I wouldn't have thought trackpad problems like that would be related to anything on the hard drive, but I guess i could be wrong.

 

[convergent]

okay, I've been thinking about buying Leopard and doing a fresh install. Is re formatting an option when you insert the OS install disc, or is that an extra step you have to do first using Disk Utility while started up from the disk?

Thanks for the suggestion by the way, I'm just hoping that would do the trick, cause I wouldn't have thought trackpad problems like that would be related to anything on the hard drive, but I guess i could be wrong.

When you boot with the Leopard disk, you want not do the install, but instead go to the Disk Utility (its an option on the menu bar at one of the early screens. I would go in and delete the primary partition with the Disk Utility, then add back a new one. This will assure that you've killed everything on it. You might want to clone it before doing this just to make sure you can get back to where you are if for some reason you needed to.

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

When you boot with the Leopard disk, you want not do the install, but instead go to the Disk Utility (its an option on the menu bar at one of the early screens. I would go in and delete the primary partition with the Disk Utility, then add back a new one. This will assure that you've killed everything on it. You might want to clone it before doing this just to make sure you can get back to where you are if for some reason you needed to.

Okay, thanks or your advice, sounds like this'll be a hip Friday night.

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

Update: Kernel Panic

Just an update on this. I first tried running Disk Repair from the instal disk. It found some errors and fixed them, sorry i didn't take note of what it was. So I thought maybe I was in the clear. Later the next day (yesterday), while waking up from sleep, I had my first Kernel Panic, with the screen dimming from top to bottom and the message that the computer needs to be restarted.

I had definitely heard about kernel panics before, but didn't really know what they were. After about an hour of reading, I got pretty depressed, cause it seems to me that a kernel panic is just a general term for major f up SOMEwhere in the computer. Seems like these can be cause by just about anything! I thought there would be a general cure-all routine that you've gotta go through when you get one of these.

Anyway, I decided that rather than do a hardware test, or memory check (still has stock RAM in there), I'd skip right to the only cure I'm really able to do without going to Apple, reformat the HD. So that's where I'm at, getting back up to speed, reinstalling programs and stuff like that. So far so good, and the computer needed this anyway to clear out a bunch of old programs and stuff, the HD was getting full.

Recently I had done some things that were perhaps not super safe. I had just installed Parallels, and then uninstalled it when I bought Fusion instead. I resized my entire 20gig iPhoto library using automator to cut everything in half (select all, run workflow). And I had generally installed a bunch of programs over the past year and a half or so, some of which i decided to simply delete from Applications folder rather than go through a proper uninstall process.

Anyway, hopefully a fresh install will have cleared things up. The only other thing I can do myself and that I was planning on doing eventually anyway, is actually replace the HD. So basically, if this is anything other than HD-related (or i suppose bad ram?), I'll be stuck going to an Apple store with an expired AppleCare. bummer!

 

[m1stake]

You want to do a memory test. Just because it wasn't bad on day one doesn't mean that's still the case.

Good luck with your issue.

 

[bigdaddyp]

How?

How do you do a memory test on mac os?

Thanks
Jim

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

Thanks for the advice, I'll do a memory test when I get a bit of time next week, for now it's crunch time, hopefully the computer is alright with that.

Memtest OS X is what I've seen mentioned in a bunch of kernel panic threads:

http://www.memtestosx.org/joomla/index.php

Apparently it takes quite a long time, an overnight job.

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

okay, so I've reformatted and reinstalled everything. Everything was going pretty well until today, totally randomly, I was just reading a webpage, and the computer totally freezes.
I gave it about 2 minutes to try to get out of it, and eventually the mouse starts responding, but again it's all really slow. Not inverted this time, but it jumps in jerks, and only moves about every second or so. This is soooo rough! The computer's only 18 months old and it's really crapping out!

 

[tcphoto]

It sounds to me that you're going about this backwards. You were updating your OS and simply masking the problem. Are you using Time Machine on a regular basis and backing up your system? The first thing you needed to do was boot from your install disk and run Disk Utility and see if the problem appeared. If not, call or make an appointment at the Genius Bar. Yes, you needed to buy Applecare but it's too late. But, Apple has been known to help people out when it's borderline on time or a common problem.

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

It sounds to me that you're going about this backwards. You were updating your OS and simply masking the problem. Are you using Time Machine on a regular basis and backing up your system? The first thing you needed to do was boot from your install disk and run Disk Utility and see if the problem appeared. If not, call or make an appointment at the Genius Bar. Yes, you needed to buy Applecare but it's too late. But, Apple has been known to help people out when it's borderline on time or a common problem.

Running disk utility off the install disk was one of the first things I did. It found a problem with the disk, repaired it, but then I still had a kernel panic after that. That's when I decided to reformat.

I'm afraid that the problem I have is very intermittent and probably won't display itself if I bring it in to an Apple store. What kind of info should I bring in to try to show them my problem? Maybe the system logs from console or something??

Thanks for your advice about the Genius Bar, I'll give it a shot if this continues to persist.