MacBook Pro :: Hard Crashes Along With A Lot Of Slowdowns And Spinning Discs While Using Browsers?
Feb 11, 2012
Howdy -- I've been having some problems with a 2010 MBP. Some very hard crashes along with a lot of slowdowns and spinning discs while using the various browsers (usually some combination of Safari, Chrome & Firefox)... I ofren have M'soft Word open as well.
In some crashes, the cursor still works but that's it. Nothing else on the screen responds or reacts and I eventually have to hold down the power button. I'm using Lion, but I did exeperience some of these problems before ugrading.
After updating to Snow Leopard, I get the spinning circle thingy no matter WHAT apps I'm running every 5 mins or so. I've tried rebooting and everything - anyone else having this problem? If so is there a solution?
Quite a while back, I switched from Firefox back to Safari, because Firefox was driving me crazy with it's intermittent freezes and whatnot. Safari was so much faster and allowed tabbing to menu form fields (which I think Firefox still does not do). But lately, it seems like Safari just slogs through everything it tries to do. Google maps is painful. Loading up the CBS website earlier took over a minute, and not because of a slow connection.
The spinning beachball now appears on every click it seems. This is was Safari 3, so I updated to Safari 4 beta, and it doesn't seem much better. It's odd because it didn't used to be like this...It just sort of started out of nowhere. One thing I do notice is that my hard drive is just churning away with activity at these times. Any ideas what could cause such random slowdowns? Restarting does not help. It's just as slow afterward.
I noticed lately that my Macbook Pro (late 2008) can get pretty slow because of hard drive activity. Strange this is, there seems to be quite a lot of activity from time to time even when I'm doing next to nothing (but surfing and mailing). how I can diagnose/fix this? Or do I need more memory (got 2gb).
I have a Macbook 2.4ghz core 2 duo running Snow Leopard 10.6.2 and I've been having massive problems when uploading files both on a Wireless and LAN connection. When I try and upload to a site like myspace, facebook or anyother site with uploading options my upload times out and/or crashes the browser for a while (this is for larger files whereas photos don't upload in full). This seems to be primarily with flash/java upload options and happens when using Safari, Firefox and Opera. So far I've re-installed 10.6.2 and repaired disk permissions and also re-installed flash and none of these options makes any difference. I know it's not a network issue as it works perfectly on my 1ghz e-mac running Leopard Anyone got any solutions? It's completely baffled me.
I just bought a 13 inch macbook pro about 2 days after the keynote, and it came in on the 15th. I opened it up and it worked pretty good. I noticed I saw the spinning pinwheel a little more than I think I should. My cousin's macbook did it less frequently than my new macbook pro. It was happening when I opened iTunes or Safari. So a few days ago I opened up iTunes and I saw the pinwheel, but then it kept going, and going, and itunes froze up and crashed. After that it has happened several times. The same with safari and iMovie. I am sort of angry because I spent a good amount of money on this and I don't think it should be happening. I can live with it, but I certainly hope this isn't the norm! I switched to mac so things would be easier.
About a month ago Netflix started giving me problems while watching instantly. Audio wasn't syncing with video and it would skip and freeze. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Silverlight, but that didn't work. After corresponding via email with micrsoft silverlight support and a complete uninstall and reinstall of silverlight and testing it on other websites, we determined that silverlight is not the issue. I then tried Netflix support, which was terrible and of no help at all. Now Netflix crashes all browser (Safari, Firefox, & Chrome) upon loading. Netflix streaming works fine on all other computers in the house. I have all of the most recent updates of all browsers, I've tried repairing disk permissions and I'm running OS X 10.6.8 with all current software updates. I'm not sure what else to do.
Info:iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
I have a macbook pro and I have the OS X lion installed with all the latest updates to Safari etc. Lately my browsers have been acting up.
While I can access a lot of websites on my Safari there are other sites which do not load and I get the spinning beach ball before Safari crashes. My Safari also seems to take longer to load.
I have the latest Firefox 12 installed. When that starts up on the home page it crashes straight away after the obligatory spinning beach ball. I tried to trouble shoot Firefox but it wouldn't even open in safe mode before it crashed.
I also have Opera which doesn't even start up. So I uninstalled and upgraded to Opera Next. It doesn't even start up!
I have checked for plug in issues. I have up to date adobe flash player and java - unless there is some issue there. I also checked my DNS and it seemed clean of trojans. But I could or may have overlooked something.
I did use 'onyx' to clean my files but the trouble began before I used it. So now I am at a loss to understand why I am having problems with my browsers.
I'm not very technical but I have done my best to follow various threads around here to dismiss obvious causes.
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), Latest safari update.
I am desperate and really need an answer to this question. I have tried everything and had no luck.
I have a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012) running Yosemite. Whenever I close the screen, it will fall asleep like it normally does. However, the external light will only pulse once (instead of continuously), and then I can hear the hard drive begin spinning again. The external light then stays at a constant, but the screen does not light back up.
It's like the computer falls asleep, but then only the hard drive wakes up, and stays woken up. This fact causes my Macbook to eventually use up whatever battery power it has and get warm in my backpack. The only thing I can do to preserve battery power is to shut down the whole computer and boot it up every time I need it.
Also, on a side note. My computer seems to run much slower than it did on it's native Mavericks.
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)
My old and trusted 2007 MacBook Pro (10.6.8) has been experiencing repeated crashes for the last few months - the quick type of system crash where the screen goes blue and then the OS pops right back up but with all the applications shut down. I took it into the Genius Bar this week and after running a diagnostc on it, the rep said that my hard drive was failing and that was the cause of the crashes. They wouldn't replace the drive for me as it wasn't the orignal one (I had upgraded to a 500GB 7200rpm drive a little over a year ago).
That replacement drive was out of warranty (of course), so I purchases a new 640GB drive from another dealer and replaced it myself. I also made sure to make it a 5400prm drive this time as the 7200rpm just ran too hot for me and I though that could have been one of the reasons that led to it's apparently impending demise.
Anyway, less than 24 hrs from installing the new drive, the system just experienced another of those crashes. Now I'm at a loss. Can anyone possibly offer some advice?
I have had my first Mac for about a month now (iMac 24" 2.8, 4GB). I have started noticing in the last few days, a somewhat frequently appearing "spinning disk" (don't know what it is called, but in Windows-land they call it "clocking"). In any case, I never saw this when I only had 2GB of RAM. Nor after I upgraded to 4GB which was a couple weeks ago. But lately this is occuring enough to be a bit annoying.
I ran into a bit of weirdness last night when converting a bunch of Xvid encoded AVI's over to H.264 m4v's using Handbrake. The reason I'm posting here is I think there might be an issue with the hard disk. To begin with, it ran (using 2-pass, turbo first pass) fine, up to finishing the turbo first pass, then it'd hang for about a minute, then carry on with the 2nd pass, running at around 300-400fps (not bad eh!). At around 40-50%, the hard disk starts sounding like it's performing a lot of tasks, even if nothing else is running. fps drops to around 100, then dips down to 30 or so and stays there. Entire system becomes slow / unresponsive. Seeing as the source files and destination for the output were on the same 2Tb drive (25% full), I wondered if perhaps this was too much for one drive to cope with (I'd previously been ripping videos / DVDs to an External drive, and never had this issue). I wiped an external drive, loaded the AVI's, and used it as a source drive, so all my main OS drive had to do was write the file, rather than both read and write at the same time. Same issue, but only for the first file. After this, the whole process ran smoothly. I'm not sure if the issue might have been that I was also copying different files as well as using handbrake, but despite stopping all other activities, this problem persisted, despite reboots, for a while.
Over the last three months, the OSX side of my Mac Pro has been a pain to use. I say � OSX side � because my Bootcamp partition which is running Windows 7 on a dedicated Intel X-25M is running very smooth and is a pleasure to use. However, on the Mac side, the system is simply unusable. I have been getting endless beachballs and constant freezes when launching Safari, iPhoto and iMovie 09� (the latter is the worst). I�ve tried resetting my PRAM, resetting the video management controller and doing an archive install of Snow Leopard and nothing has helped. I�ve followed previous advice and tried cloning my SSD Boot Drive onto another HDD which was completely free in my system. Booting from the cloned HDD showed better performance i.e. no beachballs. However with time, the issue has started again. So it seems it is not related to the SSD but rather to the OS which makes me think that I will have to do a clean install of Snow Leopard. Now, my Mac HDD�s are set up as follows:
1: Intel X-25M 80GB G2 SSD Boot Drive 2: Hitachi 640GB Apple Stock HDD (clone of SSD Boot Drive) 3: Western Digital 1.5TB (Home folder located on this disk)
*Note: I�ve also tried creating other user accounts but it seems the problem persists on all user accounts. The problem is I will be starting a very important project with Photoshop next month and I want this problem to be solved. So I�m thinking this is my best option:
Secure erase my SSD with instructions from Macforums Reinstall Snow Leopard onto this drive Clone the Hitachi Drive onto the SSD
I came home for vacation and decided to reformat my imac g5 to get a fresh start. I backed up all my files, took out my leopard retail box, and was ready to go when I opened up the box, and noticed no disc. I have no idea where it went.I have the install discs from the computer when i got it, but it only has 10.4, so id rather not use them. I have the install discs from my macbook pro with 10.5, but I am pretty sure it will not work.So does anyone have any suggestions? Should I just go ahead and install 10.4 until and then just install 10.5 when i find it? (i really hate doing this, I hate having more than one version of an os installed)
For some reason my internal hard disk keeps spinning down (and back up always immediately) at what seems random times for no apparent reason, which results in a rather long pause in system response. For instance in the loading screen, when i hear what i believe to be my hard drive spinning down the loading bar (which would normally increase steadily) will stand still for about a minute or two and continue normally afterwards. This is the case for anything that needs to load, like when i'm starting itunes or any other program, if the hard disk spins down while starting up the program it will take a minute or two then start afterwards. Same goes for watching or listening to media, a slight pause will occur. I've also noticed that any commands given while in this "idle" state are stored and will execute afterwards. Like typeing a sentence. The problem started occuring after i got my used hard disk space over �100GB. The system suddenly started going really slow and with hitches, even tough the total capacity is 148,92GB. Simply deleting some data to put it under 100GB again resolved the speed and hitches, but then the the spin downs started to occur.
I've searched the internet for people having similar problems who've already gotten help but without luck. Since i think it's the hard drive i've used Onyx and Disk Utility to repair the permissions on my hard disk, which held the same results : the spin-downs cease after i do it, but every time i restart the spin-downs would simply occur again. Is there any way to solve this permanently? Utility : Bevoegdheden voor 'Macintosh HD' worden hersteld (Permissions for volume 'Macintosh HD' will be repaired.) Determining correct file permissions........
I've had my G5 for a couple years. I keep it under my desk, so I don't hear much from it, but I have noticed that the hard drive is constantly spinning. It's been doing it for as long as I can remember. Any ideas why, and whether I should expect a failure because of it?
I just got a new Mac Mini, and I notice that when it's in sleep mode, the hard disk is constantly spinning up and then spinning down again. It spins down roughly every thirty seconds, the power light starts blinking in the "I'm sleeping" pattern, but then the drive spins back up in a matter of seconds and the light is on constantly until the next spin-down. I've tried turning off the network, disconnecting the display, fiddling with the Energy Saver settings, quitting all programs, all to no avail. All updates are installed.
I have 4 external drives with about 12 volumes on them and it's literally spinning up a drive every 5 minutes, 24x7 when I am not even using the computer. Nothing weird is running, and it's clear the application is exactly Finder. (and rarely, fseventsd).Here is the output of
[code]....
Note the 02:10:12 "all drives spin up" event.That was opening a PDF in Preview. The PDF was in my home directory/Downloads on "Macintosh HD".The rest is entirely Finder; I was doing nothing at all. I'm hearing a spool-up literally every 4-5 minutes. I have essentially given up, and dismounted all the drives until I have need for something on one of them. Of course that kills Time Machine.
Since there is no rime or reason for these accesses, I am NOT impressed with the argument that "drives should spin 24x7, it's better for them".This is a home system, not a server. I know how often I actually need data off these drives - several times a day and many days not at all.So I should use a program to force them to spin 24x7 (by doing more unnecessary accesses)? That's like leaving a hot water faucet open 24x7 to deal with a glitch in an on-demand water heater.
I want the drives to spin down.And stay spun down.And then, when I choose to access something on one of the drives, or an application has something it's going to actually use the drive for (e.g. midnight backups) -- I want it to spin up. Simple enough?I am running 10.5 but my searches tell me Snow Leopard is worse, and Lion is worse yet.
When my iMac 27" is in sleep mode I have noticed that the hard drive spins up very regularly every 4 or 5 minutes. Also when placed in sleep, the monitor takes about 30 seconds to go black. It also wakes on its own for no apparent reason. No new software has been added, only normal updates, running Lion. Time machine backup is done every couple weeks.
I replaced my hard drive at the weekend in a mid 2010 MacBook Pro with a Samsung/Seagate 1TB 2.5 inch 5400RPM SATA II Hard Disk Drive. The install of the hardware went fine, and the computer recognised it no problem. I went through the process of formatting which again went ok, then I moved on to the restore of the old image from my time machine.
After the 4 hours or so it said restore successful and a restart was required - after the restart I am presented with the apple logo and spinning wheel and can make no progress beyond this point.
I have tried 3 restores now - all of which were 'successful' and have the same issue. I have checked the disk using the repair tool and there are no recoded issues so I'm at a loss.
I have an iMac7.1 with Intel Core Duo, 2.8 GHz, 4GB Memory. I'ts crashing occasionally without any related program start or running, or at least I never found out any relation between software or operating system. I had these with the old tiger 10.4 system and it's continuing with Snow Leopard 10.6 - This is what happens: Just in the middle of my normal work (sometimes I don't even do anything at all), I recognize that the harddrive stops spinning (I can tell from recognizing that the low humming noise from the drive just goes away). After that, I can click on active window, but see the spinning beach ball. No matter how long I wait, this is not changing so that I have to turn off the iMac by holding the power key for a few seconds.
After reboot, all works fine. Yesterday I had another crash just a few minutes after reboot. But in most cases it works fine for another day or two until it crashes again. I already ran DiskUtility (no harddisk errors found) and tech tool deluxe without finding any problem. In old Tiger 10.4 I needed to run a disk repair after each crash (obviously due to shutting down the system using the power switch), since Snow Leopard I never had to use disk repair after reboot. Maybe anybody can give me a hint if there is something I can do about that. Apple care don't help me much, because I don't have an apple store nearby and I don't own a car to bring the machine in.
wouldn't even load. It would just show the little blue "light" flashing on and off, as if Finder were launching, crashing, launching, crashing.After some deduction, I found the problem to be my USB WD hard drive. It used to previously work fine. It has only one partition on it, which is HFS+ formatted. Disk utility verify/repair reports that the drive is fine.
1. I plug in my 2.5" external hard drive. It appears in Finder. I can see the contents of the main directory. 2. The moment I CLICK on any folder/file, I get the beach ball and Finder crashes. This is the only time Finder crashes.I've searched the forums but all the results are old and no solutions have been found.
I just had the original 300 GB hard drive fail in my aluminum 24" inch iMac running the latest update of Leopard. I wasn't able to save it using diskwarrior (diskwarrior said it was some sort of mechanical failure) but I was able to recover most of the data from it by booting from an external hard-drive.
So I went out and purchased a brand new Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB drive. The install went fine, it found the drive partitioned it and installed Leopard successful. Then is crashed and disappeared when I left it alone to run all the software updates. I came back and the computer was stuck on "Restart Required" after downloading all the updates. I went to hit restart now, and the system just hanged, wouldn't do anything. So I hard powered down the system and restarted it. It came up with nothing, just stuck on the White Screen of Death. So I plugged the external drive back in and booted from it. Mac OSX couldn't find the drive and diskwarrior would crash if I tried to run it. I tried to boot up from the OSX start-up disk and it couldn't find the drive either.
So I took the case apart and made sure all the connections were solid and the drive was mounted correctly. Everything looked fine so I plugged it in and it started up fine. Finished the updates and the iMac ran great.
So I thought maybe it was overheating, so I've installed smcfancontrol and started to monitor the temp of the drive. I also took the mac apart again and sucked out any dust in the fans or vents. The drive never goes over a 105 F, so it doesn't seem to be overheating.
However, this is where the problem is consistent: everytime the iMac goes into sleep mode, it crashes and the iMac is unable to find the hard-drive again. Unless I unplug it completely for 5 minutes or so. Once I unplug it, it finds the drive and operates like a champ.
I think maybe there's an issue powering the drive back on? Anyone have any ideas?
And my follow up posting later that day:
Quote:
So I ran some tests just to see if was an overheat issue, hard drive malfunction, or sleep issue. I decided to start encoding a video, pulled up Word, Power Point, Excel, started downloading all 6000 mail messages off my server (I never delete my e-mail :-/), also started installing iLife 09, and pulled up a bunch of webpages in Firefox with multiple tabs.
However, I shut off all sleep mode options on the hard drive. I let it run for an hour and came back. Everything is fine, hard drive isn't locked up and smcfancontrol shows the hard drive running pretty hot (115 degrees) but not so hot I'm worried. So it's definitely something to do the hard drives going into sleep mode and not powering back on. It's also weird that I have to leave the computer completely unplugged for 10-15 minutes before the drive is recognized again.
So turning off sleep seems to be my work-around, however, this shouldn't be a long term solution. I'm worried that there is a bigger issue with the iMac, but I'm not sure what would cause this. I've been a PC guy for years, this was my first Mac, and honestly I don't know enough about the inner workings to narrow this down. I would assume this would have to do with the motherboard in some way? But I'm not sure how you would even test it.
I have a 2006 iMac with Intel processor and 2 GB RAM running Leopard.
First problem - Hard crashes during Mail (rarely), importing video to iMovie from Canon HV20 video camera (almost always), and when rendering a DVD in iDVD (almost always). Message on log is "This call is deprecated and should not be called any more."
Second problem - Won't burn audio CD's or DVD's. Used to be fine. Now says "laser can't calibrate to the media" or similar. Have tried assortment of discs.
I mainly use the computer for iTunes, email, and making fun movies to send to relatives or for school projects.
I am running the above OS on my clamshell iBook Currently ive got IE 5.1 as my browser, but its not displaying pages properly, and facebook refuses to use it! I also have tried iCab, but is seems horribly slow to load anything. Any suggestions for a better browser for me?
All of my browsers keep freezing up after 5 minutes or so of use. The time amount is very random really. This is true for firefox, chrome, camino, and I think safari. After I quit I usually have to force quit and trying to reopen brings the "already open" error.I know to delete .parentlock to restart but they just freeze again. Not sure if it's my recent OS update or something else. All broswers are up to date.
I have recently noticed both my browsers (safari and firefox) are running slow, they seem to lag and I get the loading dial up with just general browsing. My other apps CS5, VMware etc are running fine.
