strange system freeze

D

deesto

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I was trying to switch between applications on my MacBook with Apple+Tab in OS X 10.4.10, and suddenly, while I saw the list of icons on my screen for each open application, the system locked up. Strangely, the mouse still moved on the screen, even though I couldn't click on anything. But nothing I did with the keyboard had any effect. I had to shut off my MacBook and restart it.

What is the "right" thing to do in terms of the best way to recover from this sort of thing? Is there a log that can tell me what happened?
 
Console should show what was happening. It's in Applications/Utilities folder, and it should contain information about what happened when it crashed.

As long as your filesystem is HFS+ (the default in 10.4) it should autoheal itself at startup. You could also do a startup in safe boot (holding shift down until login screen) to have the system verified properly, or alternatively see if Disk Utility (same Utilities folder) would find anything to repair.

If in doubt of what Console says, post some lines what you see before the last shutdown. :)
 
Here is first line in system.log:
Oct 4 10:37:16 jd-mac cp: error processing extended attributes: Operation not permitted

Everything afterward came form the reboot after the crash; same for console.log. system.log.0.gz has some information from today but didn't seem to contain anything from the time of the crash either. :(

I was wondering if some application caused the crash, but there aren't any recent application crash logs. This same thing happened only once before, a few months ago.
 
This just happened again, and it doesn't look like anything from the crash was entered into the system or console log. :(
 
Hm. Copying something gave the error... what were you doing? Were you copying manually something or which programs were running? Just switching the applications?
That 'cp' could be from any application .. :(
 
Just switching applications, that's all. :( In fact, I was still switching and hadn't selected an app to switch to in either case. I had a bunch of apps running, and I happened to notice this time that a new email appeared in Thunderbird just before the freeze, but that's all I know.
 
Could be some particular application combination, somehting in your user account or something with the OS.
Have you tried quick tricks like repaired permissions?
Does this occur in another user?
 
Haven't tried any quick tricks... what is the repaired permissions trick? Might it help?

I only have one user account on this machine.
 
You can repair permissions from Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. Creating another user would help determine if the problem is from a local, or a system attribute. Also, is this happening when certain apps are running? How and what are you switching?
 
Tell us as much as you can about your machine. Model, OS version, RAM, free disk space, peripherals attached to the machine, applications installed (besides the apps that came with the machine), etc.

Doug
 
Do you use an external screen?

Apple's forums have no real answer, but some were fixed after sending it in to Apple (new logic board).

Some say a patch will be released this month..
 
My machine: OS X 10.4.10, MacBook, 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM. Peripherals attached: the first time it crashed, just the monitor (see below); after that, a USB Apple Keyboard and a USB Mighty Mouse were also attached.

The non-default apps that were running at the time include Firefox, Thunderbird, Adium ... that's probably it. X11 and Terminal were also running.
Do you use an external screen?
Yes: I've been using an external monitor (Dell 2007WFP).
 
What do the console crash logs say (/Applications/Utilities/Console) about the crashes?
 
Satcomer said:
What do the console crash logs say (/Applications/Utilities/Console) about the crashes?
Click to expand...

There were no entries between the instant the system crashed, and when I decided to restart the system. As far as I can tell, nothing got logged.
 
Have you installed any third party RAM or anything like that?

I am afraid this might be the time you wish you had AppleCare.:eek:
 
You get one year of AppleCare from purchase date, regardless of purchase location. Even if you buy a NIB apple older than one year, from a third party you still the free year if you mail in a receipt, I believe. This problem has been happening to a handful of laptop users, all with external displays. I would bring it in.
 
This is a similar problem to what we had with an iMac! M

y girlfriends iMac was working fine and freezes just like your mac seems to have done and last time it happened, we had to restart it and it wanted the recovery discs inserted. Whilst in the recovery process, it would not find the hard disk at all! I don't want to alarm you here but if your symptoms are similar to ours, i would suggest back everything up A S A P.

This was about 3 weeks ago, but because the iMac was under warranty the PC World folks refused to look at it but just replace it so your mac may have a different problem but I thought i would just suggest that to you now. of course, I have never had that problem on my Mac, only ever had one strange freeze on Mac in about 3 and a half years of using them
 
No, no third-party hardware. I did have the DVD drive and keyboard chassis replaced during the first month I had the MacBook, but that was done by Apple.

What could be causing this?

I think eric2006 and White-Knight are right: maybe I'd better bring it in for repair. :(
 
It could be anything. It could even be the noise on your power lines that is causing it. Do you live in the city or the country?

I've seen it freeze a computer. I've personally had an issue with this but with my experience, whenever i lost power, i would blow a power cord. After replacing the power cord, it would boot up again.
 
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