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Screen keeps freezing, worse than a PC.

P

Politis

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 10, 2010
125
0
If I wanted my screen to freeze every other day I would have bought a crappy PC.
I bought my hugely expensive MPB late 2010. I have added no apps, no games, no heavy programs.
The screen of my MBP keeps freezing when the internet is on. This happens 3-4 times a week. When it happens I can still move the cursor but nothing happens. Sometimes when the screen is frozen I click the dim button and it can take 5 minutes before it dims. If I am playing a tune on youtube the tune carries on playing to the end.
I was told this is a memory problem. The Apple geniuses carried out a test and said everything was fine. Well, it is not. I have now force quit my laptop over 100 times.
Any suggestions?
 
What version of OSx are you running?

Have you run a diagnostic on the HDD?

I would run the Activity Monitor to see what's taking up the CPU cycles.

Are you using safari?

Have you tried using Firefox or Chrome?
 
I do what you suggest

1/I am using OSx 10.6.8

2/ I do not use Safari because its layout is bad. My MBP freezes with Chrome and with Opera and I think it also froze with Firefox.

3/ Activity Monitor. Most of my space is free (green)

4/ I run regular diagnostics on HDD and it indicates no problem:
It says, "The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK."
 
I wish I could Bruno09 , but when it freezes I can only move the cursor (the little black arrow). I cannot click on anything. My only choice is to press the power button and then start the computer again.

Is there a combination of keys I can press to do something?

----------
Bruno09 said:
When the Mac freezes, launch Activity Monitor, choose : "all processes".

Select the %CPU column, like this : http://hpics.li/47c1838
Post a screenshot please.
Click to expand...

Not sure how to upload
 
Not sure if this can work in your case, but you can give it a try :

Add Activity Monitor to the login items, so that AM will always be running.

When the Mac freezes, use Cmd + Tab to access Activity Monitor.

If you are unable to make a screenshot, take note of the 3 or 4 first processes.

We will see who is the "culprit".
 
Or start activity monitor before connecting to internet then resize the browser window so that the activity monitor window is fully visible as well as the browser window. then it will not matter if you can't move the cursor..just look for apps taking up a lot of cpu time.
 
Badrottie said:
10.6.8 is good but it is old. Can't you upgrade to the latest OSX? :apple:
Click to expand...

I really don't think this matters if he hasn't added any new software it should run the same as new they don't degrade because they get old. Just if new software wont work on old OSX.
 
I had similar issues with an SSD. The Curcial M4. It all disappeared when I replaced it with a Samsung 830.
So it might still be the HDD. Try running a full scan, reinstall, or if you can try a different HDD from some other computer. Test the memory too.

It is like it was for me it has nothing to do with process load. Because those even at 100% don't lock down the notebook quite like that. It some some sort of memory lock, some bug. I clone from one SSD to the other and the problem still disappeared so at least for me it had nothing to do with software.
 
Politis said:
If I wanted my screen to freeze every other day I would have bought a crappy PC.
I bought my hugely expensive MPB late 2010. I have added no apps, no games, no heavy programs.
The screen of my MBP keeps freezing when the internet is on. This happens 3-4 times a week. When it happens I can still move the cursor but nothing happens. Sometimes when the screen is frozen I click the dim button and it can take 5 minutes before it dims. If I am playing a tune on youtube the tune carries on playing to the end.
I was told this is a memory problem. The Apple geniuses carried out a test and said everything was fine. Well, it is not. I have now force quit my laptop over 100 times.
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

13" or 15"?

HDD or SSD?

You should post the specs
 
[HDD or SSD?

You should post the specs[/QUOTE]

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro6,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i5
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s
Boot ROM Version: MBP61.0057.B0C
SMC Version (system): 1.58f17
Serial Number (system): [not relevant info here]
Hardware UUID: 9C54FFCB-C259-5D6D-B017-7E8A8AB407E5
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled
 
MCAsan said:
reinstall the OS...or wait for Mavericks later this month and do a clean install
Click to expand...

I have reinstalled the OS and Apps from the disks that came with the MBP. The problem persisted. I was told it was probably a memory issue. The Apple guys want me to leave the MBP with them for three weeks so they can make it crash and find out what it is, but, hey, that's a long time. I will keep an eye on Mavericks.
 
That's too bad...I remember having this with my Dell laptop and it was caused by background programs. I'm making the move from PC to MBP and this causes concerns.

My dell laptop is generally okay for now except when I watch Youtube videos - then it sucks up all available resources and I have to reboot. Very frustrating - happens on both Chrome and Firefox.
 
As you say it freezes "when the internet is on" - could it be the dreaded Flash player locking up when you are watching YouTube or similar?

And, when it freezes, but you can still move cursor, can you hit CMD and TAB to get out of the internet browser (Chrome or Opera)?
 
agaskew said:
As you say it freezes "when the internet is on" - could it be the dreaded Flash player locking up when you are watching YouTube or similar?

And, when it freezes, but you can still move cursor, can you hit CMD and TAB to get out of the internet browser (Chrome or Opera)?
Click to expand...

WTH is up with Flash rendering a $2,000 machine useless. I've upgraded, changed settings, etc and that's one guaranteed, reproducible failure.

How do you guys get past it.
 
agaskew said:
As you say it freezes "when the internet is on" - could it be the dreaded Flash player locking up when you are watching YouTube or similar?

And, when it freezes, but you can still move cursor, can you hit CMD and TAB to get out of the internet browser (Chrome or Opera)?
Click to expand...

I can move the cursor but that is all. Sometimes it's the arrow cursor and sometimes it turns into a beach ball (spinning multi coloured ball). I can hit any other button but nothing responds, not the CMD, not TAB, not nothing.

It only happens when the internet is on. For instance, a usual trigger is when I scroll down Facebook and then it freezes. But it can happen when fb is not on.
 
I had a similar issue on a 2008 model that was completely solved by a new hard drive. A high quality solid state drive would probably make the biggest difference.

It could also be faulty RAM, which is a fairly cheap thing to replace/upgrade these days.
 
Sounds like a failing hard drive.

Backup if you haven't been doing that already. Look into replacing the drive with a new one. Don't bother with Apple on this one since they'll just charge you more for the replacement.
 
Free memory had virtually disappeared.

OK. I followed some of the advice here.
I have had the Activity Monitor permanently on. Just now my MBP froze again and my free memory, which shows as the colour green in the 'system memory' pie chart, was almost invisible. It was around 21MB or less I think.

The heaviest MB consumer on the chart was, 'Opera Renderer 848.5 MB'

But my MBP has frozen with other servers and even once without the internet on, though the internet pages were open.
 
Last edited:
one of my coworkers has a 2010 mbp as well, and he's had an inordinate amount of trouble with it too. might just be anecdotal, but i feel like i hear about a lot of issues with the 2010 machines.

that said, if i had to make a guess, since your hd diagnostic came back ok and your ram usage is redlining, i'd say ram is likely the culprit. still, seems ****** that you're stuck having to buy stuff just to see if it helps.

good luck
 
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