Screen freezes, arrow still moves.

[iMas70]

I've been having a problem with my screen freezing lately. The arrow still moves but I can't do anything else. I believe it only happens when I'm using Safari. Don't recall it happening any other time. It's almost daily sometimes. I have to manually shut the computer down then restart it. Everything works fine until it happens again. I was looking at a site five minutes before this post. Went to scroll up quick then it happened again.

Any ideas?
Thanks!

 

[treekram]

I've experienced the same thing recently on my 2012 Mini and I'm pretty sure that's never happened to me until recently. It started happening, maybe once a day, for several days straight but it hasn't happened for several days now. There was also a thread on the El Capitan forum (I think) about the same problem - but in that case, the very specific things they were seeing in the logs was not was not what I was seeing.

For me, the problem was likely Flash in Firefox. I know this because I would go to one of my other computers, log in to my frozen computer, kill the Flash plugin in Firefox and the computer would unfreeze. (There was a recent Firefox update which might have cleared up the problem.)

If you only use Safari and you have Flash, I suggest disabling it and seeing what happens. In Safari, go to Preferences, select the "Security" button, press "Plug-in Settings", and uncheck Adobe Flash.

Even though you use Safari and my problem is with Firefox, I have both opened at the same time. Until I disabled Flash in Safari, I was getting kernel panics (WebKit was the process running when it happened according to the logs). So an improvement at least. I just received notification of yet another Flash update a few hours ago - maybe they fixed it.

I don't know if El Capitan 10.11.4 helps or not, I have not yet updated from 10.11.3. I'll need to look for the other thread - I saw it and when I looked later, it wasn't there or I wasn't looking properly.

 

[iMas70]

I usually have Safari, Chrome and Firefox open for different websites but it's only happened while using Safari. I just unchecked the Adobe Flash so I'll see if that changes anything.

Something that I've been seeing for months is the Java update. It seems like that screen pops up every few days, Sometimes I do it and sometimes I wait a week or two.

 

[treekram]

Since you mentioned that you have multiple browsers opened ...

The funny thing is that while killing the Flash plugin in Firefox would unfreeze the computer, I think that in at least a couple of instances I was just coming back to a Safari tab after not using it for a while that the computer froze - and it did it shortly after I started doing something in Safari. Make sure you're up-to-date on Firefox and Flash and see what happens.

As for Java, I'm not aware of it being mentioned much in relation to browser issues that cause big problems (freezing, kernel panics).

 

[treekram]

I applied the latest Flash update (21.0.0.197) this morning and Safari was working fine but after a couple of hours away went to Safari, clicked on a link and had a kernel panic (caused by the Safari process this time, not WebKit). The Flash update had reactivated the Flash plug-in. I turned it back off. So what ever issues Flash has had recently in relation to my issues is not solved by the latest update. (The Greek chorus says stop using Flash altogether but a subscription site I use uses Flash so I use it in Firefox.)

 

[ActionableMango]

(The Greek chorus says stop using Flash altogether but a subscription site I use uses Flash so I use it in Firefox.)

Chrome does Flash natively without requiring the Flash browser plug-in. It works much, much, MUCH better than the plug-in.