Macbook pro freezes up, mouse won't even move

[scovilletech]

Hi,

My old 2007 macbook pro that I have been using has started freezing up after I tried to burn some ISO's to disc. The burn failed froze things up. I restarted and now my whole system freezes after a few seconds once the login screen appears. Sometimes I can login before it freezes and sometimes I don't even get to enter my password.

I verified the disk and it is and was good. I repaired permissions as there were several errors there. Both of these were done using the recovery partition.

Any ideas on what to do next. My mac skills are young, so be as specific as you can and much thanks for that! It is running OS X mavericks.

Thanks!

 

[trevm999]

Hi,
I verified the disk and it is and was good. I repaired permissions as there were several errors there. Both of these were done using the recovery partition.

I'd still start with a real hard drive test. Boot to a Parted Magic disc and check the SMART status, or pull the drive. Cloning the drive with gddrescue is a good way to do a full read test while backing up your data. Unfortunately those guys don't have easy access to the hard drive but opening them up is fairly basic.

You can check them RAM too (swap out if you can) sometimes Memtest works on Macs, sometimes it doesn't. You can also aquire the AHT for it to test the RAM. If you have known good volume to try to boot to, that is a good idea too.

 

[SilverLeaf]

I'm not a Mac guy, but isn't this one of those models that is prone to drive cable problems?

 

[scovilletech]

I forgot to mention that I put in a 256 GB samsung SSD, so the drive is a brand new solid state one. Will try memtest.

 

[trevm999]

Do you have any other drives with OSX on it that you can boot to?

 

[scovilletech]

I don't. I had a usb mac drive that I had an install image on, but I just sold that unit to a client a couple weeks ago and had not yet restored the image to my new drive. I will have to do that this weekend from my wife's mac.

 

[trevm999]

You could connect via firewire to your wife's mac in target disk mode then see what happens when you boot to her drive (make sure you have a backup because if your RAM or something is acting up it could corrupt it) However, it is probably simpler to remove your hard drive and boot to it via USB on your macbook first to see if it is a problem with the HDD cable or controller. You could use your wife's mac to boot to your drive to see if it is corrupted but disk utility didn't corrupt it.

But before that, what happens when you use safe boot?

 

[Digital Sage]

MacBook pros around that time have problems with the graphics chip loosing contact with the logic board... Does the computer still sound like it's operating after the freeze - ie: Hdd access, etc... I've found this in a few models that freeze right after engaging the gpu and entering login or desktop

Which MacBook Pro is it ? (A12xx)

Do you know what gpu it has?

I suspect gpu problem or memory...
But do the boot to external Hdd test first, even a installer DVD is fine...

There are certain ISOs available online - good just for a test. Snow leopard upwards would be fine.

 

[johnrobert]

How long have you had OS X mavericks it might be the problem being so new, but sounds more like a logic board problem

 

[e2346437]

How long have you had the SSD in there? If you add an SSD to a Macbook you have to turn on TRIM support. If you don't, it will behave as you describe.

Eric

 

[trevm999]

I suspect gpu problem or memory...

My bet is on gpu, just based on personal statistics. It seems that sooner or later it goes on the macbooks from that era.

 

[scovilletech]

Speaking about the gpu error, I replaced the logic baord in this one due to that. No display and no boot.

The SSd has been in about a month and a half and working fine up to this point. I did a fresh install of OS X mountain lion on the ssd, would it not automatically enable TRIM?

I tested memory with memtest86 (didn't know that a mac would boot the ultimate boot cd, so that was cool to learn, but it makes sense, because it is Intel hardware).

Memtest showed no memory errors. Tried to run seatools or something like that for the samsung brand drive, but they did not work properly.

 

[scovilletech]

booting to safe mode fives the same thing, frozen mouse and can't login.

 

[trevm999]

I did a fresh install of OS X mountain lion on the ssd, would it not automatically enable TRIM?

Nope, only works for apple drives. You need a third party utility, Chameleon is one option.

Swap ram. Boot to a known good OSX volume (wife's iMac or make one) using USB or Firewire. Boot to drive using another Mac. Then disconnect everything you can from the logic board and try to boot.

 

[Digital Sage]

Speaking about the gpu error, I replaced the logic baord in this one due to that. No display and no boot.

The SSd has been in about a month and a half and working fine up to this point. I did a fresh install of OS X mountain lion on the ssd, would it not automatically enable TRIM?

I tested memory with memtest86 (didn't know that a mac would boot the ultimate boot cd, so that was cool to learn, but it makes sense, because it is Intel hardware).

Memtest showed no memory errors. Tried to run seatools or something like that for the samsung brand drive, but they did not work properly.

Let's get this right, you've already replaced the logic board to address the GPU Problem? Just now, or previously? Because it really sounds like GPU problem, especially the safe mode producing the same result.

 

[Digital Sage]

How long have you had the SSD in there? If you add an SSD to a Macbook you have to turn on TRIM support. If you don't, it will behave as you describe.

Eric

Really? I've done a few SSD upgrades on my own (Macbook Pro, 2008 & Mac Mini 2011) and never bothered with even thinking about Trim...

 

[Markverhyden]

Speaking about the gpu error, I replaced the logic baord in this one due to that. No display and no boot.

The SSd has been in about a month and a half and working fine up to this point. I did a fresh install of OS X mountain lion on the ssd, would it not automatically enable TRIM?

I tested memory with memtest86 (didn't know that a mac would boot the ultimate boot cd, so that was cool to learn, but it makes sense, because it is Intel hardware).

Memtest showed no memory errors. Tried to run seatools or something like that for the samsung brand drive, but they did not work properly.

Who did you get the LB from?

 

[scovilletech]

OK, here's the full story:

Back in July, this guy brought this macbook in with no boot; no tone and no display, I reflowed the chip and it fixed it for a while. I suspected that he would not come get the machine due to my price and he thought he had a windows machine, yes seriously! I have been itching for a mac myself and so about the middle of August, I bought myself a Samsung SSD and put it in there and loaded OS X 10.8 on it. I kept his drive, that way if he did show up, I could swap it back and he would be good to go. It's a good thing that I played around with it, because the reflow didn't hold. I tried it again and it worked for about 2 weeks, then quit again, so thinking that it was mine now as it has been 60 days now which is in my terms and conditions, I ordered a replacement logic board from powerbook medic and put it in. It has been running solidly since then. I also have been using it with a laptop cooler as it gets hot.

So the ssd has been in there since the middle of August. I just upgraded to mavericks last week when it was released. This failure happened 2 days later.

I plugged his old drive in via usb and booted the mac to it. It runs fine with no freezeups.

 

[Digital Sage]

Which OS did you revert back to? Interesting it freezes up in both the Safe Mode Boot (edit) & Mavericks... SImple solution - it's pretty much the first thing i test onsite when i fix a mac. Plug in the external drive with OSX and see if it boots. Easy to show the customer what's happened. Glad you got it fixed!

 

[scovilletech]

The Os that was on the original user's drive was 10.5.8. It worked fine there and I can even see my files and folders on the ssd which is still inside.

It's not fixed, though, because when I boot back into the SSD, it freezes. BUT is freezes at different times, like this time, I was able to login and get to the desktop, even move the mouse over the dock and see the icons enlarge, I got a couple notifications and as I was moving the mouse to them, it froze. Even closing the lid did not put it to sleep, locked up tight.

I guess I may just need to backup the little stuff I have on there and reload the SSD from scratch? Obviously something got corrupted in the OS somehow as booting to the old hard drive ruled out all hardware, as it worked fine.