Spinning wheel crisis unlike any other -Help!

[spon1080]

Hi Everyone

I've just joined to see if any one can solve my problem. My 2006 Macbook pro, upgraded with 3 GB Ram and 128gb Crucial SSD is hanging up with the spinning beach ball of death every time after precisely 1 hr 00 secs.

After manual shut down with the button, it re-boots as normal in 55 seconds, is superbly quick, no problems until the hour is up. So far I have replaced the LH Fan, removed fluff blocking the fan vents, replaced the paste on the heat sink with Arctic 5 so running totally cool and silent.

Fixed minor problems with the hard drive using the scary black ops page with white writing, sorted out disc permissions, cleared cache in Safari, looked at kernel panic and k ext files. I've also tried booting of the old drive connected externally which predates the issue but still crashed and ran the macbook last night with no programs or apps running and it still froze after precisely 1hr.

Any ideas? should I do a clean install and start from scratch?

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Yep

Hi Everyone

I've just joined to see if any one can solve my problem. My 2006 Macbook pro, upgraded with 3 GB Ram and 128gb Crucial SSD is hanging up with the spinning beach ball of death every time after precisely 1 hr 00 secs.

After manual shut down with the button, it re-boots as normal in 55 seconds, is superbly quick, no problems until the hour is up. So far I have replaced the LH Fan, removed fluff blocking the fan vents, replaced the paste on the heat sink with Arctic 5 so running totally cool and silent.

Fixed minor problems with the hard drive using the scary black ops page with white writing, sorted out disc permissions, cleared cache in Safari, looked at kernel panic and k ext files. I've also tried booting of the old drive connected externally which predates the issue but still crashed and ran the macbook last night with no programs or apps running and it still froze after precisely 1hr.

Any ideas? should I do a clean install and start from scratch?

I would say go for the clean install and see then load back apps one by one until you get the problem again that'll tell if it's software related.

Of course a 2006 macbook is pushing 9 years old almost unheard of for any laptop so it could just be dying.

 

[maflynn]

Any ideas? should I do a clean install and start from scratch?

Try that, but being so old, its quite possible that a hardware failure is occurring. Be sure to back up your data just in case. You may have a small window of time to ensure your data is safe.

 

[cjmillsnun]

Try resetting the PRAM and the SMC

 

[spon1080]

Thanks for the responses - Backing up daily - already reset the SMC but have just tried resetting the PRAM - interesting as I have had some start-up defaults which haven't launched and this morning the font size was massive on google translate - could suggest PRAM issue and will know for sure in less than an hour!

 

[spon1080]

No luck with the PRAM reset - froze on the hour as usual !!

 

[spon1080]

Solution Found!!!!

Hi All

It turns out the problem was the firmware on the Crucial M4 SSD which defaults to quitting after 1 hour. Cloned the drive with SuperDuper on to a 500GB HDD and now the MacBooks running like a dream!

Solution courtesy of Jean-Marie at Mac.net in Annecy France. Cheers!!