Snow Leopard Freezes

I have:
Mac OS X
version 10.5.8
Processor 2.1 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
I am trying to install Snow Leopard from a disk I received from Apple. It gets to about 15 percent installed and then goes to the blue Apple screen with the bar clock and freezes up overnight. Please help.
I would like to eventually get to Lion. I understand I need at least 2 GB of Ram. I saw directions online to do this myself. Is this something I should tackle? If I upgrade should I do 2 GB or 4 GB?
Any other advice?
Thank you.

If you didn't add any hardware or software, it likely means the Snow Leopard either wasn't retail, or there is a hardware issue with the computer. If the hardware test detects none, and it is a retail release, then your suspect is likely the RAM*:
http://www.macmaps.com/badram.html
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Similar Messages

Snow leopard freezing every hour at the same time

Hi all,
I've been having freezing problems with my macbook pro. I'm running 10.6.4 and have noticed that every hour to the exact minute, my computer will be unresponsive for approximately 30 seconds to a minute, and then returns back to normal.
The time that it freezes will vary from day to day, ie some days it will freeze at 7 minutes past the hour all day, other days it will freeze at 19 minutes past the hour every hour.
This has only been happening for possibly the last month, and I have no idea what is the cause. I've used console to see if get any error messages, but nothing is coming up. I'm not using time machine. I've tried restoring disk permissions.
I'm not sure whether this is a macbook pro related thing or a snow leopard related problem so excuse me for posting this in both forums.
Please help!

random_chu wrote:
Unfortunately I can't currently find my snow leopard install dvd (seeing I've moved houses twice since I've installed it)
You're likely to need it, sooner or later. If you suspect hardware problems, for example, the +Apple Hardware Test+ on it is tailored to your Mac's hardware. If you can't find it, AppleCare will send you a replacement for a nominal charge.
If the file system on your HD is ok, and the hang occurs at exactly 60-minute intervals, then it must be related to some periodic process running on your Mac.
I'd have expected another message in your logs. There may be something that doesn't show in Console's +All Messages+ selection.
In the Console sidebar, select your system.log file; it's the first one shown in the Files folder. The I/O message should be there; confirm that they occur every hour, and see what other messages are near it in time. Again, if theres's anything dire-sounding, copy and post here.
Also open the various folders, looking for one or more named HangReporter. If you find any, look inside. Each process that generated a log there will be named in the sidebar, along with the date & time. That may provide a clue (please don't copy a whole log here; just the beginning page or so).

Firefox Makes my MAC 10.6.8 Snow Leopard Freeze Often

I'm using a MAC Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and Firefox 10.0.1. Over the past month, I've had terrible problems with either Firefox freezing or my entire computer freezing when I was using Firefox. Then I have to do a Safe Boot and start all over, losing what I was working on or looking at. Can someone please tell me what the problem is? I tried going back to Safari but I like Firefox better. But I can't have my computer freezing every few hours like this. Thanks.

-> [[Firefox hangs]]
Check and tell if its working.

Snow Leopard Freezes, Reboots, Crashes, Kernel Panics

I have a Unibody MacBook Pro 15 inch, late 2008. I got it with Leopard, and I had absolutely no problems at all with it until I stupidly upgraded to Snow Leopard in September 2009. Since then my computer crashes a lot. Here is a list of problems I've had so far, most of them on seemingly random occasions:
- Kernel Panics (happened around 2 times, both while rendering a video in Final Cut Pro)
- Complete system freeze where the screen freezes on the last thing displayed, the last sound played keeps looping (if I'm in the middle of a Skype conversation or listening to music, for example) and nothing will react (including mouse, caps lock, eject key, the system won't even sleep when I close the lid) requiring a hard reset by holding the power button (happened at least 3 times). This has sometimes happened when all I was doing is listening to music on iTunes, I wasn't even touching the computer, and all of a sudden I just hear the last half second of music looping forever.
- Complete freeze where the mouse would still move, but the system would reboot automatically after a few seconds (happened once or twice)
- Reboots without any warning (happened around twice)
Basically these are my major problems, and all of these have happened in 10.6.1 and 10.6.2, except the kernel panics which have not happened (so far) since I updated to 10.6.2.
I have tried repairing permissions, it didn't change any of the above behaviours.
This is what I noticed:
These problems happen regularly, around one or two times week.
_*The problems only seem to happen when I set my computer to use the dedicated graphics instead of the integrated graphics*_ via "System Preferences > Energy Saver > Higher Performance". If I set that setting to "Better Battery Life", then the problems don't seem to happen at all.
However, I use Photoshop and Final Cut Pro a lot, so I need to set the graphics to +Higher Performance+. Dedicated graphics is one of the reasons I bought this computer, so setting it to Better Battery Life isn't a solution for me.
As I've said before, I'm running OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2, and my machine is a late 2008 Unibody MacBook Pro with 4GB RAM and processor of 2.53 GHz.
I have performed an upgrade to Snow Leopard from Leopard, as opposed to a clean install. Trying a clean install of either Leopard or Snow Leopard will be my last resort if nothing else works, however, I am asking you whether you can think of anything else to solve my problems without having to do a clean install, as it would require lots of work and it would be a big hassle for me.
Thank you very much.

I am having the EXACT same problem, however I have an iMac (24"display, 2.93GHz, 4GB ram.) I think I've narrowed it down to Quicktime, but can't figure out a solution. I have both Quicktime Pro (7.6.3) and the version that comes with snow leopard - Quicktime 10.0.
Here is a list of applications which have been running during a freeze, shutdown or restart.
-iDVD
-Quicktime 7.6.3
-iMovie
-Safari (only when playing video)
-Adobe soundbooth (one time only)
I've tried everything from permissions repair to a clean SL re-install to everything in between.
Any ideas out there??

Snow Leopard freezes over time

I've been using Snow Leopard (upgraded from leopard) for 2 days now. One thing I discovered is that, when I'm working on a few applications ( like Adium, Firefox, Pages, and etc. ) , the app which I'm working on started to freeze. When this happen, what ever window I click from then on will freeze too ( this includes finder as well because I'm trying to force quit applications ).

If you have not run Disk Utility and used +Repair Disk Permissions+ since upgrading to Snow Leopard, you may want to do that as a first step.
Then, to further isolate your problem, create a new admin user account in System Preferences Accounts pane.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/8235.html
Log out and log in to the new account. You will be using default user preference settings and only standard processes will be running in the background (unless you installed third-party software that runs at the system level). Try whatever causes the problem in the new account, and note if it recurs.
I have done this for the several minor issues I ran into, and in the new post-upgrade account, there was never a problem. Then, I did some more detailed trouble-shooting in my pre-SL user account to figure out what was causing the problem (usually a preference file that I had to trash).

Snow Leopard Freezing showing GPU Debug in Console

I recently updated my iMac from Leopard to Snow Leopard and it began to freeze. I have reset PRAM, SMC, fixed the fonts and looked for anything suspicious in the console. When it freezes there is no obvious crash. It freezes in Safari, Finder and even in Console. The mouse moves, but I cannot do anything. Last freeze shows the time machine icon in mid spin. Console reports npvhash=4095 then GPU Debug info start and hundreds of lines of information. I had this happen on an older machine and the video card was failing.
There is so much chatter about this being related to Snow Leopard, I am wondering if I upgrade to Lion it will all go away?!?
How can I tell if indeed the video card is bad? It is out of warranty and I would like to do as much trouble shooting on my own as I can before, I take it in.
We did not see quite the same behavior in Leopard. Just endless beachball spinning and a few forced restarts. I figured a good clean out of caches, etc would solve the problem along with an OS update.
Thanks for any help and advice in advance,
Debbie

singerdf wrote:
I need to know more about what Safe Mode suggests when things no longer freeze there. I understand only apple stuff is on and only the minimal amount.
This is what Safe Mode is.
In particular what let your computer run normally in this situation is that many of the kernel extensions (aka drivers) are not loaded.
That also means that your Mac is not running at its best performances.
The good news is that at least runs.
I don't know how much this can help in determine the culprit, but have you run Apple Hardware Test?
The first Mac OS X Install Disc that came with your iMac, also contains the Apple diagnostic.
Insert the disc. Turn on the computer, and press D until the diags starts. Follow the on screen instructions to run the tests.
A brief note before ending this post.
Yesterday evening I was watching a streaming video in Google Chrome. When I installed Lion, I purposely didn't install Adobe Flash Player. So I use Google Chrome that has Flash Player incorporated inside the program itself to display internet sites with Flash contents.
After about twenty minutes the screen freezed. The mouse cursor turned into the "spinning beachball of death". The audio continued to play normally.
The /var/log/kernel.log file, uncovered the usual bunch of lines relating to the GPU
Dec 7 21:22:27 rfc-1918 kernel[0]: ** Device in slot: SLOT--1 **
Dec 7 21:22:27 rfc-1918 kernel[0]: ** GPU Debug Info Start **
Dec 7 21:22:27 rfc-1918 kernel[0]: 0x000094c8
Dec 7 21:22:27 rfc-1918 kernel[0]: 0x000000d6
Dec 7 21:22:27 rfc-1918 kernel[0]: 0x00000001
Dec 7 21:22:27 rfc-1918 kernel[0]: 0x00000018
Dec 7 21:22:46 rfc-1918 kernel[0]: 0x00000000
Dec 7 21:22:46 rfc-1918 kernel[0]: 0xc0016900
Dec 7 21:22:46 rfc-1918 kernel[0]: 0x0000008f
Dec 7 21:22:46 rfc-1918 kernel[0]: ** GPU Debug Info End **
About your question, "What I am going to do".
Well. As I wrote, this issue is not so frequent in my case. Also I planned to buy a new iMac next year around march.
But I sincerely hope next Lion update (10.7.3) could patch this misbehaver.

Snow leopard freezes when I open Itunes

I have a a Mid 2007 iMac, 20" screen 4 Ghz memory, 250 HD that originally came that with 10.4.10 that I have upgraded to 10.6.3. The computer would freeze up on me occasionally on start up. but pmce rebooted it would run fine. However, the freezing became more frequent to the point that I ran a hardware test first, which it passed. I re-imaged the imaged the machine with the original 10.4.10. The computer did not freeze when I opened Itunes, however, when I put 10.6.3. the computer is freezing when I open Itunes.

I think you might be a bit confused. You can update from 10.6.3. to 10.6.8 without cost, and indeed running software update should have done that for you.
There is no issue with running iTunes on Snow Leopard (10.6.x). If you're having problems, the most likely explanation is that you have some 3rd party software that is causing the issue. In order to determine what that is the first thing you should do is remove everything from your login items and then restart the mac.
To remove your login items, go to
 > System Preferences > Accounts | Login Items
Select everything in the Login Items list and hit the minus '-' button underneath the login items list. Do NOT check the 'Hide' button. That has no effect.
After clearing the login items list, restart your mac and test to see if the problem remains. If so, post back and we''ll do the next step.

Snow leopard freeze

Hi there,
I have looked in the forums for an answer to my problem to no avail, when i upgraded to SL a few weeks ago, my applications would freeze, i reinstalled with no change, i then restored from time machine to Leopard and performed the install again, still no change. My solution was to erase and install fresh. This seemed to work fine, for a time at least, until i tried to upgrade the software and rebooted the system. After the reboot, the same thing occured. I once again erased nd installed, and now it has happened again.
When i start up in safe mode, everything works, the computer connects to the internet and can talk to my apple TV. However without safe mode i am told by network settings that it is connected to my wireless, has an IP address etc but safari/firefox never loads, software update never completes etc...
I have heard of similar problems in these forums, however they seem to rectify themsleves after a certain ammount of time, when i get app freezes, they stay froze and render the computer unusable. I have repaired the disk via disk utilities and repaired permissions, I am getting to the end of my tether as i need my mac for work...
Can anybody help out? I am willing to try anything!
Many thanks,
Rupee

i dont however have enough HD space spare to repartition and back up the drive,
Whoa, let's back up a second here! Are you saying that you don't currently have a backup?! If so, that takes precedence. You must get a working backup ASAP. If you aren't sure how to do that, check out my [Mac Backup Guide|http://www.reedcorner.net/thomas/guides/backups>.
When you mention a reinstall, do you mean just over the top of the current setup with the Snow leopard disk?
No, I do not believe that would do you any good at all. If it turns out to be necessary, you would need to erase the hard drive, repartitioning it at the same time (no need to create multiple partitions) and then reinstall the system from scratch. Then, you would want to reinstall applications from scratch (after verifying that they are SL-compatible) and import data manually (not using Migration Assistant) from the backup. You would need to import only those settings files you absolutely have to... re-create as many settings as you are able to.
I followed the link and had a good read, but i am still struggling to find anything that could be the problem...
Applications, from the sounds of it, have been ruled out. If no non-Apple apps are loading at startup, and your problems continue when you have not launched any non-Apple apps, then that's not a likely option. Make sure, though, that there isn't anything in /Library/StartupItems/ or /System/Library/StartupItems/.
Kernel extensions (kexts) are another possibility. They are found in /System/Library/Extensions/, but there are many there by default, so it would be extremely difficult to find any that may have been installed by a third-party program. Check the documentation for all the apps you've got installed to see if any of them might have kexts installed and remove those.
Fonts could also be a problem. Open Font Book and choose Edit -> Select Duplicated Fonts, then choose Edit -> Resolve Duplicates. You may also want to select all fonts and then choose File -> Validate Fonts.
Other than that, there's not a lot on that list of things that safe boot does that seems likely.

Snow Leopard freezing and slow wireless

I installed Snow leopard, installation went fine since then my computer will randomly freeze for increments of 30 seconds up to a few minutes. Happens on iTunes, Quicktime and safari. I also find to have a very slow wireless connection since the installation. Any ideas?

strange, my wifi's as fast as it normally was.
machine is: macbook 13.3" unibody 2ghz, 4gb ram
wiped it clean beforehand, installed SL fresh then restored my work via time-machine on install
Cocktail's a good util to customize your wifi speed, although it won't work on SL
My machine is set to 64bit mode though, however to be honest the 32/64 bit is a mystery at the moment, seems the kernel remains at 32 whereas the rest can happily go to 64bit with 64bit apps running happily against 32bit ones.
May want to time-machine your work, install fresh and restore from time machine. just use a usb-portable or huge memory stick, will only need to do it once.
Michelle's machine has the same problem (core duo macbook white), going to look at that tomorrow, will post if i solve it

Snow Leopard freezing up

I upgraded to Snow Leopard, and sometimes text starts freezing. When I type, it is EXTREMLY delayed, and I have to wait for it to finish appearing on my screen before I do anything. I have to shut everything down and restart. What is the problem? And is this fixable? If not, Snow Leopard is the Vista of apple, and I'm downgrading.

I am still experiencing freezes at various points of using Snow Leopard. My latest attempt was to remove old startup items from my Library. I found old Adobe CS2 files and a Retrospect file named "RetroRun" Check this directory for old files and remove them, then restart. /Library/StartupItems/
Below is a list of everything I have done thus far. I used AppZapper to remove many applications and/or located files manually to remove.
1. Time Machine backup of drive.
2. Clean install of Snow Leopard.
3. Transferred Applications, Settings, etc. from Time Machine backup via Snow Leopard.
4. Reinstalled Logitech Control Center via manual install. (Google for Instructions)
5. Started noticing random freezing and Airport problems
6. Deleted Airport settings via Network Preferences, restarted and reset Airport.
7. Deleted all HP All-In-One printer files, startup items, etc.
8. Booted from Snow Leopard install disk, ran Disk Utility, repaired permissions and repaired disk. Several permissions repaired, disk was listed as o.k.
9. Deleted all FontExplorer X files, startup items, etc.
10. Set MobileMe to sync "Manually"
11. Removed any SIMBL files. SIMBL enables plugins for Safari and should be upgraded or removed.
12. Removed any old files from /Library/StartupItems/ in which I found old CS2 files (I use CS3 now) and RetroRun (a retrospect startup file.) I removed both of these files and restarted.

Snow Leopard freeze after restart before login

After a save of a garage band file my mac froze. Hooked to external hard drive. Tried restart and at login the cursor moves but not able to login when I click on test or me icon. I recently upgraded to snow leopard and I photo and I tunes crashed and di a clean reboot which solved everything snf noe this. Any ideas? I'm dead in the water here.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
snf noe
Please correct your typo, so we can understand you.
Message was edited by: a brody

Snow leopard freezes but works fine in safe mode

I have been using snow leoprad and it hangs after login to the system (from the first one/two minutes). But it works well in safe mode . So far the things I have tried are - repair the disk permissions, verify the disk , created a new user account etc. But I'm not getting a soluion. Please help!!

Hmm, that's not good. Running out of "moving parts".
No third party add ons but works in safe mode only! Here's the apple article on what happens during a safe boot.
Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?
Since third party stuff is rulled out you would think it would be one of the other things mentioned that may be corrupted. For example, /System/Library/Fonts, font cache. In other words, font related.
Not sure what to suggest at the moment and it's my bed time.
Maybe look at OnyX (Maintenance, Rebuild) and rebuild the dyld shared cache and look at other stuff in OnyX that might need rebulding (Cleaning, Fonts, delete font caches).

Snow Leopard Freezing...lots of troubleshooting...still stuck

MBP unibody, 3.06 core2 duo. 8 GB ram. 500 Gig 5400 RPM drive. OSX 10.6.2
Symptom:
Starting about four weeks ago, my system slowly spins out of control - dock/finder/force quit become some of the first apps to fall. This ends in a freeze - UI responsive (mouse, some window movement) with the eventual need to force restart (holding down the power button) It's so bad that I'm constantly running the Console and Activity Monitor to see if I can find some clues.
It has been intermittent - with no fixed pattern of Apps running. It seems to take at least 3-4 hours for it to occur - but has gone longer than 19 at least one.
Initially, a some of the restarts resulted in the system thinking it needed a firmware update. This hasn't continued, but it was a very strange symptom.
I ran Techtool's full set of tests: Ram, drive integrity, Smart status. Passed.
Big obvious things: Permissions, Disk Util, Disk Warrior. FSCK. Onyx (and cleared all the major caches.) Font book's font check and Keychain's first aid.
When I took my system to my local dealer, we pulled my drive (as they give me a replacement.) The problems happened on the replacement system (with my drive in it.)
The dealer ran Apple's full suite of tests (including a couple of overnight tests) and still nothing; We added my HD back and it still passed all Apple tests.
OS Repairs that have failed:
I've tried a combo update.
I've done an Archive & Install.
I've tried a Clean install and moved over key parts of my user- documents, music and photos. *I added back my preferences & some key Application support items.* I star this because it leads me to believe that it's related to my specific user.
We replaced my HD with a new one and I did a time machine restore. Since none of the above system updates made a difference - I felt it was better to work on my full system.
Things I've removed:
Orbicule/Undercover, VMWare/Fusion, Glims, Little Snitch.
Jumpcut, evernote
Blueharvest, Pinpoint, Mouse Locator.
I think it's specific to my user - but I can't really be sure; the problem is very much intermittent. Just creating another user won't necessarily show the problem - the system has run over 19 hours without a crash. I'm really resistant to this because it doesn't show where the problem came from.
I thought it might be related to iTunes, my iPhone, Adium, Safari or Sleep, as each of these seem to have triggered it.
I pulled corrupt extensions (that Onyx wouldn't read) and items that mdimporter (spotlight) had trouble with (mostly some IMAP attachments)
I've spent all day running/quitting/sleeping the machine trying to CAUSE the problem. I can't seem to - and I'm at a complete loss.

You've probably already figured out what the cause it (user preferences seem likely), and there aren't too many shortcuts to dealing with isolating which plist is causing the problem. I see this type of issue most often with an upgraded OS with imported settings from the past (already corrupt or incompatible versions).
Repairs are usually a process of elimination for people who get intermittent problems like this.
You may have a program launching when you login to the machine that's causing the problem and can turn them off by going to System Preferences/Accounts/Your_account/Login Items and selecting the items and then the - button at the bottom of the list to remove the item.
You can move your ~/Library/Preferences to your desktop and restart your machine so that the folder will be recreated when you log back in. If the problems are gone you can add some the the plists back into the original folder and restart to see if the problem returns.

OSX Snow Leopard freezes MagicDraw

After installing OSX 10.6 my MagicDraw application (version 14) freezes during startup while creating the main window ... does anybody know what's going on or even better how to solve this?
Many thnx
Uslu

Hello u:
Welcome to Apple discussions.
As you know, that application is developed by a third party. I visited their web site and it appears that your version is several behind their current release.
I suggest you contact the software developer to resolve your problem.
Barry

Snow Leopard freezes with iPhoto

Hi everyone,
I'm using a Mac Pro with 10.6.6. I'm also using iPhoto 11 (9.1.1). I have 13GB 667 MHz DDR2 RAM, with 2 x 2.66GHz Duel-Core Xeon processors and I have 160GB free of a 750GB main HDD.
iPhoto seems to be freezing my computer several times per day. Most times, it just freezes everything except the mouse for several seconds. This can happen whether I'm opening iPhoto, trying to enlarge a picture within an event, or even just attempting to scroll through events. Also, it appears that if I leave iPhoto open for an extended period, when I return to my computer it runs slowly and will occasionally have the graphics. . . uhmm, shredded? Yeah, not sure how to describe it, but lots of bright colored horizontal stripes and you can just make out some of the windows on the screen. Sometimes that clears up long enough to let me restart the computer properly, sometimes I just have to force the computer to restart.
I've tried doing an archive and install, but no luck. I've even tried getting a virus scan, but it doesn't detect any problems. Does anyone know what else I should try?
Thanks,
Lawrence

An intermittent problem that can't be reproduced at will is going to be very hard to track down, whether it's caused by hardware or software. The corrupted graphics display strongly suggests a problem in the video subsystem. I think what I'd do is first try running for a while from a clean, freshly installed system on an external drive. If you still have the problem, then it's definitely hardware. Then I'd wait until the display was acting up again and take it in that state to an Apple Store or other authorized service center.
Just for your information, although repairing permissions is often recommended in these forums as the solution to just about any problem -- usually by people who don't know what permissions are or what it means to "repair" them -- it's almost always a waste of time, and could potentially cause data loss if the device being "repaired" is failing. If you're going to do it, you should back up first. You don't have to boot from the installation media; that's only necessary for directory repair, which is something different.
A corrupted display will never be fixed by repairing permissions.

Snow Leopard Freezes

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