Mac OS X Lion freezes often in help related activities

Question

Hello, Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 freezes often on my 13-inch, Mid 2009 MacBook Pro. It seems it's (almost) always related to some activities with help system - it mostly happens when I use search input field in Help menu of any application or sometimes if system help viewer is opened.
The freeze is little bit strange. Typical symptoms are
mouse doesn't freeze, but cursor changes to spinning wheel when it's placed over application which caused freeze
frozen application doesn't respond to any input
it's possible to switch to another application with mouse or keyboard shortcut
any other application appears to be working correctly (mouse cursor is not spinning wheel at least), but UI interactions (with mouse or keyboard) get it to the same state as described above
applications can't be forced to quit, even with keyboard shortcut
finally, all applications and OS X freezes, mouse cursor still moves (even using Magic mouse), but nothing works anymore. Only solution is to switch MacBook off and on
I tried to delete Caches/* in /Library and ~/Library, but it didn't help. My MacBook is upgraded to 8 GB RAM with Kingston DDR3 modules (choosed via Kingston compatibility tool) and Kingston SSDNow V200 Series 256GB SSD disk (trim enabled with Trim Enabler). Crashes are probably not related to RAM upgrade, but it may relate with SSD installation (but I'm not sure when they appeared first).
Freezes almost don't happen in other situations than described.
Any ideas what could cause these problems? Thank you.

Answer 1

I am having similar problem with my machine, a Mac Pro (1,1) with Kingston V200 256GB SSD installed. It is fairly random when it chooses to freeze up, and you described it exactly-- I can still move the mouse and select programs, but nothing is happening, requiring me to do a hard reboot. I have noticed the past few instances it seems the trigger might have been an unattended alert box from Apple Mail (asking for a password) which I didn't see until getting home from work, so it could have been sitting there for hours. Not addressing the alert box holds up all the other Mail processes and I guess it just snowballs (?)
Anyways, I'm thinking the problem is this particular Kingston SSD (the V200). I have another Kingston SSD (the SSDNow V Series SNV425-S2/128GB) which I was using as the boot drive and it has worked flawlessly since I installed it. Later, I got a good deal on the V200 and decided to use it as a secondary drive to hold my working data, for things such as my huge iPhoto library file. Not long after installing the V200 I noticed the problems starting, and after a lot of troubleshooting I noticed this pattern with iPhoto:
If I had just booted up and was using the computer actively and then launched iPhoto, everything was fine. If the computer went idle for a while and then I launched iPhoto, I would get an error about it not being able to write to the iPhoto library (remember the library was housed on the V200). After many trial and errors I found that the solution to this was to use Disk Utility and unmount the V200 (sometimes having to force eject it), then remount it, and then I could run iPhoto fine.
And then of course there were times when I was just trying to browse the V200 in the Finder and it would cause the system freeze as described above. It seems like the drive somehow goes to sleep and then you just can't get it to wake up and it causes all sorts of problem. Whenever I have to hard reboot I run FSCK in single user mode, and I've been getting this error notice a lot:
AppleAHCIDiskQueueManager::setPowerState(0x1c7b1600, 1 ->2) timed out after 100892 ms
SATA WARNING: Enable auto-activate failed.
However, it will finish the disk check and say the disk is OK, with that "File System was Modified" note. Then when I run the check again it goes through with no problems.
I ended up doing a warranty exchange with Kingston and got a new replacement drive (as opposed to them refurbishing the drive I sent in). I am now using the new V200 as the boot drive, which is turning out to be a bad idea, but I kind of wanted to test it out.
I read on this forum that it might have been my Icy Dock adapter case, which is used to fit the SSD into the Mac Pro hard drive sled, perhaps a faulty case causing the problems. But when I installed the replacement drive I nixed the Icy Dock and have it directly connected, and the problems still remain. I had used TRIM enabler at one point but turned it off long ago to troubleshoot, so I don't think that affects this problem.
Incidently, while I was waiting for Kingston to send back the replacement V200, I was using an external firewire drive in its place as a secondary data drive (ie. the drive housing my iPhoto library) and never had any problems or freezes.
So that's my woes. I can't pinpoint it exactly or definitively but the evidence I have points to something screwy with this particular Kingston SSD model. I am going to contact them again and see about returning it for a refund. If anyone has any helpful information or insight I'd appreciate the info.