Types of 2011 MBA freezing

[tuna]

I have been experiencing some trouble with my new MBA. It freezes at least once a day requiring a hard reset. I was wondering if other people are experiencing the same freezing experiences as me so I will describe how its been happening to me:

1: I will try to wake the computer from sleeping (open the lid) and it will be a completely black screen except for my cursor. I can move it around but there's nothing to click on. Nothing happens. Must force a reset.

2: I will try to wake the computer and I will get the login screen, but my cursor will be a pinwheel and I can't do anything. Nothing happens. Requires forced reset.

3: I will wake the computer from sleep, successfully enter my password and load my desktop, and then a few moments later the whole thing will freeze except my cursor movement. Apps are unresponsive, and I am unable to quit them. Sometimes I am able to get the force quit menu up, but then it won't force quit anything and I won't be able to get another up. Sometimes I am not able to get the force quit menu up. I can hover my cursor over my hidden dock and the dock will appear, but then I won't be able to launch any of the applications. Requires forced reset.

Anyone experiencing these sorts of freezes? Or something substantially different?

 

[theIlluminati]

Mid 2011 Air crashing

G'day. My 2011 13 Air has this black screen when waking up and I still have wifi issues after the latest update. Only had it couple weeks. I have a Samsung SSD, i5 1.7Ghz. Hopefully Apple release another update in a timely manner. I take it's possible the HD 3000 gpu drivers.

 

[ZBoater]

Can you give us an idea what other software you have loaded? I am not experiencing those freezes so I wonder if there is something running in the background that could be causing them?

 

[minnus]

I had my Air 13 - i7 for about a week, and it froze on me twice. It is an entirely different type of freezing.

For me, I would simply be browsing the web or using Adium (Instant Messaging) and it would abruptly freeze. Everything is frozen - screen, cursor movement, keyboard (toggle Caps lock did not toggle the green LED that is embedded in the key), everything. No rhyme or reason as to why it would freeze. I had even left it in its frozen state for half an hour in hopes that it would come back. In the background, I had the iStat Pro running. I also had uTorrent inactive in the background.

I actually ended up returning the machine, since my $1700 machine had other flaws as well (squeaky keyboard, uneven gray gradient on the edges of the screen - the manager at the Apple Store said 'you got me there' when I mentioned it to him - though I am not entirely sure what that had meant).

I can't lie though, every time I use a Windows laptop, I am caught trying to do gestures - OS X just made it so smooth and convenient.

 

[tuna]

Can you give us an idea what other software you have loaded? I am not experiencing those freezes so I wonder if there is something running in the background that could be causing them?

Aside from Apple software, the only things I can think of that could be causing it are Dropbox, JiTouch, or Sophos antivirus. They are the only non-Apple processes that I know of that are running constantly. I also usually will have Google Chrome up, I don't know if that could be causing it.

Everything is fully updated to the latest software.

I was able to run all these things on a 2011 13" MBP with Snow Leopard without problems. I didn't get a good chance to test the same MBP after I loaded Lion onto it, I got my MBA soon after.

 

[KPOM]

These are not the same types of freezes that are common. From my experience, they are a little like the ones I was getting on my 2010 MacBook Air. Apple wound up replacing the logic board, which solved the problem. I'd schedule a Genius Bar appointment.

 

[macfly4]

I started another thread on this because i have been getting the same thing. doesn't happen for me on waking but just randomly while browsing. completely unpredictable.

 

[Abstract]

I have similar problems when waking from sleep (opening the lid), but my computer doesn't beachball or hang. It's just laggy. Sometimes it'll take around 5 seconds to get to the login screen (I've set up my system to require a password after waking from sleep). It's not so bad, but I have never had a Mac laptop take so long to wake from sleep.


There's a way to change how OS X puts your Mac to sleep, but I don't really want to tamper with the Sleep Mode used by OS X because those older OS X sleep modes changed the way OS X handled user information before going to Sleep mode (i.e. your open apps, the text you typed but didn't save in your open Word document, the song you were playing in iTunes when you closed the lid, etc). Using a different mode changed how all this user was stored --- whether it was stored in RAM only, in both RAM and the harddisk, or in both RAM or harddisk. Remember, HDDs are slow and RAM is fast.


Changing the sleep mode could speed up or slow down your system when going to sleep, and waking from sleep. I don't know if those modes really apply now that we have SSDs.