Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Mac Pro freezes daily!

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Mac Pro freezes daily!

    Hi Everyone,

    Been having a problem with my Mac Pro lately. It's a 2009 model Mac 3.1 with dual Intel Xeon processors.

    Recently I did an overhaul of the computer and upgraded the RAM, graphics and installed an SSD as well.

    After upgrading the RAM to 12GB (genuine MAC RAM) and graphics card to BFG GTX285 896MB (Mac edition card) and also installing an Intel 80GB SSD, my system has been a very fast beast!

    However, after installing the SSD I cloned the old drive to the SSD and thats when issues started. My computer would freeze, but freeze in a strange way. I could still move the cursor, access the menu bar, and the music on Spotify would still play etc. The clock was still running along.

    I just couldn't "click" anything, and the spinning twirly "hourglass" was what the cursor looked like (equiv of windows loading hourglass).

    The only way to get the system to run again was to completely shut it off by the button and reboot. The system would be fine again then. It has become a daily occurence now and getting annoying - happens after using the MAC Pro for a period of time - like say an hour. The first half an hour will be fine, even if I'm doing CPU intensive photoshop stuff.

    I installed OSX Mavericks clean from scratch yesterday (downgraded from EL Capitan) and it's happened less, but it has happened once so far!

    Anyone know what could be happening? My fingers point to a software issue at this stage as it's not a "hard freeze" since it still plays music and cursors move as it "freezes".

    Thanks.
    Don't find love, let love find you. That's why its called falling in love, because you don't force yourself to fall, you just fall. - Anonymous

    #2
    Re: Mac Pro freezes daily!

    Update: Just after I posted this. I removed the Microsoft webcam and the Belkin USB hub out of curiousity as it froze, and it unfroze itself?! I also removed the USB AOC (Displaylink) monitor too.

    I will update this later and see if it still freezes.
    Don't find love, let love find you. That's why its called falling in love, because you don't force yourself to fall, you just fall. - Anonymous

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Mac Pro freezes daily!

      Just about every computer I've had would get that way. It acts like it's lost part of a program and gets caught in a loop and can't go on until it finds that missing bit. I've always installed windows again and that cures it. Never had a mac but I've heard like a honda they never break and never get old.
      sigpicThe Sky Is Falling

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Mac Pro freezes daily!

        Originally posted by rhomanski View Post
        I've heard like a honda they never break and never get old.
        Must be some magical Honda you've heard of there. My Honda is opposite to that!
        Don't find love, let love find you. That's why its called falling in love, because you don't force yourself to fall, you just fall. - Anonymous

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Mac Pro freezes daily!

          I know, I was poking a little fun at the people who say Japanese cars are more reliable than any other. It was revealed years ago that they are just better at hiding their problems. They would under report and actually honor the warranty so the people wouldn't report it. It would be nice if the big three honored their warranty. A friend bought a Dodge in 1996. At 48,000 miles the transmission went out. It had a 50,000 mile warranty and they tried to prorate the repair. Only charging her $2,100 instead of $2,300. She had to pitch a fit on the dealership floor but she got it done for free. Then she traded it in on a Toyota. Lordy.

          I do hope you have better luck with it though, and the Mac.
          Last edited by rhomanski; 04-02-2017, 11:04 AM.
          sigpicThe Sky Is Falling

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Mac Pro freezes daily!

            Just out of curiosity, did you try replacing the thermal paste on the CPU and maybe video card? I don't have a lot of experience with Mac's. Was the BFG GTX285 896MB new? I've found generally speaking that sometimes the thermal paste on the video cards are subpar and I tend to remove the heatsink and replace the thermal pad / paste with Artic Silver 5.

            My experience with Macs so far has mainly been their laptops or their touch screens, which didn't have upgradable video cards, but with IBM compatible PCs, when adding or upgrading hardware, I make certain I go to the manufacturer's website and download the latest drivers, and not use what comes on the CD. Could this be a drivers issue?

            Thanks!
            -- Law of Expanding Memory: Applications Will Also Expand Until RAM Is Full

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Mac Pro freezes daily!

              Looks to me like you have some incompatibility between your SSD and OS X. Specifically, power management: your Mac put to sleep the SSD to save energy, then cannot wake it up again when needed.

              As a workaround / test, you can go to System Preferences - Energy Saver and untick "put the hard disk to sleep when possible". If I am right, that should get rid of the freezing.

              Or, if you have the time, clone your system to a spare HDD, then run it from there for a couple of days to see if doesn't freeze again.

              Usually this is a bug in the firmware of the SSD. You may want to search if there are known issues with your specific SSD model and firmware version, even if not running on a Mac.

              You can make some diagnostics, including enabling TRIM with Chameleon SSD Optimizer ( http://chameleon.alessandroboschini.com) if you are running OS X betweeen 10.7 to 10.10.3

              Hope this helps.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Mac Pro freezes daily!

                Hi Everyone, it's been a while since this thread.

                I managed to get to the bottom of this and it was bad RAM the whole time. I ran it off just the new Kingston sticks I put in there and it had been solid since.

                However, the whole computer got replaced in December 2017, with a newer Mac Pro (2012 model). All is good now!
                Don't find love, let love find you. That's why its called falling in love, because you don't force yourself to fall, you just fall. - Anonymous

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Mac Pro freezes daily!

                  Glad you got it sorted, I was just about to post suggesting that it sounded like a RAM issue! Cursor issues and weird 'lag' are common signs of RAM issues - although of course, they can also be caused by other factors, but testing the RAM is usually a good starting point.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Mac Pro freezes daily!

                    a Linux live-disk with memtest86+ on it would have found that.
                    you should do this test whenever you upgrade or change ram anyway.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Mac Pro freezes daily!

                      Originally posted by stj View Post
                      a Linux live-disk with memtest86+ on it would have found that.
                      you should do this test whenever you upgrade or change ram anyway.
                      I ran memtest while running OSX, as in it ran inside OSX - didn't show any errors for hours at the time. I guess this was probably the wrong way to do things but it was worth a try at the time.

                      I dunno how to even run a Linux live disk on a Mac computer. Even reinstalling the OS was a pain in itself - took me ages to figure it out. I needed a wired keyboard since the wireless one won't let you go into the boot menu as BT doesn't initialize until the OSX starts.
                      Don't find love, let love find you. That's why its called falling in love, because you don't force yourself to fall, you just fall. - Anonymous

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Mac Pro freezes daily!

                        so mac still uses open-boot or whatever they call it??
                        i thought they used a normal bois with x86 cpu's

                        i know it was a pain with ppc based macs.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Mac Pro freezes daily!

                          Originally posted by stj View Post
                          so mac still uses open-boot or whatever they call it??
                          i thought they used a normal bois with x86 cpu's

                          i know it was a pain with ppc based macs.
                          It uses some UEFI thing - I dunno the exact name. But I do not see any "BIOS" unlike Windows computers where you can select/tweak boot devices etc.

                          The only thing I see is a "Boot menu" with a GUI graphic picture of the "boot items available" which allows you to select what boot device you want and that's it... nothing else. No extra options... nothing yada yada.
                          Don't find love, let love find you. That's why its called falling in love, because you don't force yourself to fall, you just fall. - Anonymous

                          Comment

                          Working...
                          X