MacBook 2010 (white) freezing during boot up with 4 Gb RAM

Question

I have a 13" MacBook 2009 (white) with 4 GB RAM installed by Apple. I upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard without a hitch. However, when I upgraded to LION, the computer initially started to freeze sporadically during regular usage then simply froze just before the login screen every time it was rebooted. I took it in to the Apple Store and th Genius staff kept it for 2 days. They tested the RAM. Turns out that the MacBook only recognizes 2 GB of RAM now. Doesn't matter which 2 GB stick I put in which slot, it freezes on boot up. The computer boots up fine with either 2 GB stick in either slot. I would obviously prefer to have the computer run with all 4 GB. I have tried all the steps identified in the article "Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup" http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2570 to no avail, including the last step, "Perform an Erase and Install installation of Mac OS X as a last resort." I have searched through the Communities and tried all the suggested fixes. Nada. I have also upgraded to 10.7.3 which came out last week and retried all the steps. Again, nothing. Has anyone had a similar problem and, more importantly, found a fix? FYI, the computer is no longer on Apple Care and so replacing the motherboard is not an option. Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi Linc Davis, here are the results:
MacBook-de-Renee:~ Renee$ kextstat -kl | awk '!/com\.apple/{printf "%s %s\n", $6, $7}'
MacBook-de-Renee:~ Renee$ sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple/{print $3}'
org.x.privileged_startx
org.postfix.master
org.ntp.ntpd
org.cups.cupsd
com.vix.cron
com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper
MacBook-de-Renee:~ Renee$ launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple/{print $3}'
org.x.startx
org.openbsd.ssh-agent
MacBook-de-Renee:~ Renee$ ls -1A /e*/mach* {,/}L*/{Ad,Compon,Ex,Fram,In,Keyb,La,Mail/Bu,P*P,Priv,Qu,Scripti,Servi,Spo,Sta} * L*/Fonts 2> /dev/null
/Library/Components:
/Library/Extensions:
/Library/Frameworks:
AEProfiling.framework
AERegistration.framework
AudioMixEngine.framework
NyxAudioAnalysis.framework
PluginManager.framework
TSLicense.framework
iLifeFaceRecognition.framework
iLifeKit.framework
iLifePageLayout.framework
iLifeSQLAccess.framework
iLifeSlideshow.framework
/Library/Input Methods:
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins:
Flash Player.plugin
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin
JavaAppletPlugin.plugin
OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin.plugin
Quartz Composer.webplugin
QuickTime Plugin.plugin
SharePointBrowserPlugin.plugin
SharePointWebKitPlugin.webplugin
Silverlight.plugin
flashplayer.xpt
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
/Library/Keyboard Layouts:
/Library/LaunchAgents:
/Library/LaunchDaemons:
com.apple.remotepairtool.plist
com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist
/Library/PreferencePanes:
Flash Player.prefPane
Flip4Mac WMV.prefPane
/Library/PrivilegedHelperTools:
com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper
/Library/QuickLook:
GBQLGenerator.qlgenerator
iWork.qlgenerator
/Library/QuickTime:
AppleIntermediateCodec.component
AppleMPEG2Codec.component
Flip4Mac WMV Advanced.component
Flip4Mac WMV Export.component
Flip4Mac WMV Import.component
/Library/ScriptingAdditions:
/Library/Spotlight:
GBSpotlightImporter.mdimporter
LogicPro.mdimporter
Microsoft Office.mdimporter
iWork.mdimporter
/Library/StartupItems:
/etc/mach_init.d:
/etc/mach_init_per_login_session.d:
/etc/mach_init_per_user.d:
Library/Address Book Plug-Ins:
Library/Fonts:
Library/Input Methods:
.localized
Library/Internet Plug-Ins:
Library/Keyboard Layouts:
Library/PreferencePanes:
MacBook-de-Renee:~ Renee$ osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get name of every login item'
iTunesHelper, Dropbox
MacBook-de-Renee:~ Renee$