MacBook freeze due to kernel error

N

nyuszika45

Registered
It may be one of those "everyone knows that" issues, but I don't. My 2 year old MacBook Pro is freezing occasionally for the last 4 days. It is doing this less often when I turn off the active corners (because it flickers when it freezes and the flickers look as though it is switching very fast between the screen and the dashboard or pictures used for the screen saver and the cursor acts like it is stuck to one corner with a rubber band, i.e., I can move it but it bounces back there)... but it still happened with the screen saver on.

If I do a restart with ctrl-s, it appears that I have an incorrect block count for file pcscd.pub, 17 rather than the 16 it should be, okay. it gets repaired and I'm off, until it happens again.

Does anyone have any idea what this conflict might be that is causing this? It just began on Sunday (10.10.10), but I did a complete erase and reinstall then brought back my data from the 8th - and it remains.

Is there a virus?

What is this, please? Does anyone know? What kind of root cause analysis can I do to find out?

Thank you,
Doug

Update:

while working, suddenly the screen begins "shimmering", looking like a briefly flashing page as noted above; nothing responds as though there is a key stuck but nothing is stuck that I can see. I turn it off, then on with ctrl-s pressed - do an fsck -fy and the diagnosis comes up as an incorrect number of thread records (4, 36104) - that is the first time I've seen that explanation. The fault is corrected and I reboot the Mac and here I am.

I do not understand what is going on. Suggestions would be appreciated, please.
 
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I use the time machine - but this unit is only 2 years old! I know that may not matter, but to die at such a young age... seems like such a waste. And I'm sure there is no warranty or guarantee.
 
It's likely just the hard drive. Hard drives do fail - which is one of the reasons that you back up your data, or backup your entire drive.
You would fix this by replacing the hard drive, and restoring from your time machine backup.
 
But I've run the internal first aid test which gives me an "OK"; and every time I run the fsck -fy (cute names) it gives me a message that says the HD is OK...

Is there something I'm missing?

Is there another diagnostic I can/should run, please?
 
The errors coming up while checking the disk every time could be because the freezes are just hosing up the directory structure, so naturally this can be construed as the drive is flaky. Your macbook pro wouldn't happen to be a 15-inch 2.4/2.2ghz, 15-inch early 2008, or a 17-inch 2.4ghz model would it? If so it might be because of the faulty NVidia GPU issue that these units have.
 
I think so anyway. I found that technical issue late yesterday and checked out my MAC and it is that exact NVideo GPU! And the freeze of the software is always accompanied by this "shimmering" or very fast page imaging which could be the video unit. thank you - now I get to trudge down to the Genius Bar - but far better than buying a new hard disk!

I'm glad to see that at least there is concurrence in the potential problem that won't mean more money at this time. Whew! I think - I'll wait and see. Thank you.
 
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