Mountain Lion - Constant Freezing


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So ever since I upgraded to Mountain Lion, I have been having constant freezing. Around 4 times a day or so. The only thing I can do is move the mouse. Keyboard does not work, I cannot click on anything, I can just move the pointer around.

My screen kinda goes a little snowy for about a millisecond and then I cannot do anything. Normal Lion and Windows 7 never freeze on me.

Is anybody else experiencing something similar?

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Did you perform an upgrade or erase & install?

Upgrade

What sort of Mac are you running (model, age)?

Late 2010 Mac Pro. 6-core with 8GB of RAM. 2 SSDs and 2 1TB HDD

Open up Disk Utility and check the disk. That doesn't sound like expected behavior.

I already did. It did not help.

So I changed the power settings to NOT put hard drives to sleep. I download a lot of TV shows and Movies on iTunes and it obviously will not fit on my SSD, so my library is on one of my storage drives.

So far I have not had any more incidents. Hopefully that fixed the problem. I guess when running something on iTunes (even music) from my storage drive, it was having trouble with the hard drive after it went to sleep? What is weird though, is the audio would keep on playing. If I was watching a movie, the video would stop, but the audio would keep on going.

  • 1 month later...

Was disabling the hard drive spin down the fix for this?

I have the exact same machine and am now having the exact same issues (right down to the milisecond screen glitch prior to lockup, but sound continues). Running Mountain Lion. This didn't start until I installed a PCIe SSD on the box, but I have an older HDD partition with Lion and it runs fine (with the SSD still installed). Very frustrating as is does it even with simple web browsing.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide.

Brian

Yeah, SSDs + Mountain Lion can cause problems. If turning off sleep doesn't work, check that there isn't a firmware update for the drive. My Macbook would lock up every time I closed the lid in Mountain Lion with a OCZ SSD, firmware update fixed it.

  • 1 month later...

I have the similar problem afer upgrade from Lion and then after clean install of ML.

When I using monitor and switch to disk usage I notice that disk is freeze frequently 15-30sec and then works until randomly freezeing again.

I tried disk utility with no success.

Disabled Spotlight - no success.

Then launch Console app and when I click in (left side) System Log - there was totally freeze and I need to hard reset.

My solution:

If you experience the same (your mac freeze after select system log in console):

- hard reset with holding shift - it cause safe boot

- launch terminal

- delete system logs and other logs by this command:

sudo rm /var/log/*

(you will need admin account type)

-reset with box 'open windows after boot' unchecked

I have no doubt this issue come back but temprarly machine works smoothly. I leave Spotlight disabled, cause I didn't use it and it release a little more power from my mid2009 mac book air.

I hope it helps a little but seems tha freezing is common for ML upgraders and real cause is not known.

--

Robert

  • 3 weeks later...
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