Frozen Display

[pedz]

About once a month or so for the past year plus, my screen will freeze. The sequence is that just as it turns the display off due to inactivity, it is progressing to the screen saver but has not made it there yet, if I touch a key to wake it back up, it will just hang with the screen "black" but I can see the mouse.

If I go to another system, ssh into the laptop, and do a shutdown, all that works. I don't know enough about Mac stuff to debug it and find out where the hang is.

I've left it in the black state for a half hour plus sometimes and it never comes back. If I really pester it like doing command-tab to switch between the applications, I will eventually get the spinning beach ball.

I do the usual "check permissions" when the system comes back up but generally I can't say I've really figured anything out.

I *think* every time, it is running on battery power (if that is a clue).

Do others have this issue? Any idea if there is a fix for it?

Thank you,
Perry
Early 2011 MPB 10.7.5

 

[DeltaMac]

Only happens about once a month? That will be a challenge to try to discover an actual fix. You'll need to wait several months to see if some change really helps.
Here's one possibility: Change the Energy Saver prefs/Battery tab settings so that the display and sleep "time-out" are not close to the same interval.
You could even set the "Display sleep" for OFF. Be sure to change that only for the "battery" tab, especially if you think it only happens when running on battery. The "Power Adapter" settings can probably stay unchanged.
My suggestion would be to turn off screensaver completely - it's not an important event, anyway. Even if you want the screensaver, you can always set a screen corner for that, so you can make the screensaver come on manually, if you want that.
Screensaver OFF will also help you decide if that is part of your issue.