Several users of newly released MacBook Pro (April 2010) models reported frequent stalls/hangs, accompanied by the spinning beach ball progress indicator, under varying conditions. The problem appears to be hard drive-related, and occurs most frequently with the standard 320 GB 5400 RPM drive, but is also occurring with the 5400 500GB and 7200 500GB drives.
When this problem occurs, the hard drive becomes unresponsive for up to 30 seconds. During the stall, all applications will stall and or cease to properly function, but the mouse cursor can still be moved. CPU usage does not spike.
Several users have reported that the issue occurs frequently when playing World of Warcraft. It can also occur when transferring a large amount of data to/from the internal hard disk or after waking the laptop from sleep.
Traditional fixes, including re-installation of Mac OS X, resetting PRAM, turning hard drive sleep off, and diagnostics via the Apple Hardware Test and/or disk checking tools such as TechTool Deluxe have proven unsuccessful.
Possible Fix: Turn off Bluetooth. Oddly, some users have reported that simply turning off Bluetooth resolves this issue. To do so, Simply access the Bluetooth menubar item and select “Turn Bluetooth Off” or open System Preferences from the Apple menu, click Bluetooth, and uncheck the box “On.”
If you are experiencing a similar issue, please let us know at info@appletoolbox.com.
Sadly, this issue is not a new one gor mbp:
it goes right back to the original intel (core1duo) machines years ago 🙁
steve jobs is interested only in shinny shinny –
QA is now a meaningless concept at apple.
I am affected by this malady. I noticed it since the update to 10.6.3.
I have one of the 17″ i5 machines with the 128GB SSD, and I have experienced this problem early on. I suspected that Adobe Updater was responsible. Disabled it. Not really sure what fixed it, but I have not seen that in the last days. I do not believe it is hard disk related, especially considering that I have an SSD.
I have a new 15″ 2.53ghz i5 MBP and am having similar problems with the HDD stalling and getting a spinning beachball. Not as long as 30 seconds, probably 10-15scconds.
I have also noticed that the HDD is very loud, making annoying/audioble clicks on access. This cant be right?
I have a brand new 15″ i7 MacBook Pro and am also getting the spinning beach balls hangs. I tried reinstalling the OS, safe booting, wiping caches, resetting PRAM, removing plugins, nothing worked. Finally I booted off an external hard drive and have not had a single stall in over four days. Seems related to the hard drive for sure to me. I am getting a replacment machine from Apple.
I just swapped from the a MBP 2.53ghz core 2 duo to the new 15″ 2.4ghz i5 and have also noticed frequent stalls and hangs. Not to mention I haven’t even ran any intense programs yet!! My core2 unibody was soooo much better, regret upgrading it.
This is definitely a HDD or logic board issue.
You would think Apple would have made their new MBP in top notch!!!
Oh Apple….you are starting to disappoint….
I have a new 15″ i7 MacBook Pro with the 7200rpm 500GB hard drive and have been experiencing the hanging problem, however if I boot into Windows 7 via Bootcamp the laptop runs flawlessly leading me to believe this is a software issue as it only seems to occur in Snow Leopard. If it were a hardware issue I’d expect to see some sort of manifestation of the problem in windows too.
Apple better be looking into this….there are many unhappy customers at the moment.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2407560&tstart=0
I’m having the very same problem.
Same issues here, 2010 i7 MBP. After trying everything Apple Care suggested without resolve, I tried cloning my hard drive to an external firewire 800 drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. I’ve been booting up using the firewire drive (hold option at boot sound) for almost 3 days now and have been hang-free. If that’s not proof enough, I don’t know what is.
I agree with M above, it’s got to be a software issue. Maybe SATA controller driver. Makes no sense otherwise. There can’t be this many people with this many variety of hard drives + manufacturers having the same issue for it to be physical disk related. I too have a Windows 7 bootcamp partition and do not notice any performance issues using it.
New 15″ i7 MBPro with SSD.
Sometimes hangs on Shutdown.
Always hangs on Restart after I have used various applications for a short time.
Console notes multiple anomalies with Adobe “ScriptingAdditions” software in the minute or so before a Restart that must be force quit.
I got this issue too.
I doubt that it is hard drive related because sometimes it happens even when 0 disk activity.
it could be a combination of issues, where disk is just one of them.
Still having this problem. It seemed to improve when I did a full install of Snow Leopard last year, but here it is again. Stalls for up to 5 secs, often, with spinning beachball. I may try another full re-install of Snow Leopard.
I have this exact problem. Lasts 15-30 seconds, everything stops including itunes. I have the 500GB 5400rpm i7.
Note, though, I do *note* have any hangups in Windows 7 via bootcamp, even with intensive use (modern games at highest settings through steam).
So take that as you will. =(
Experiencing the same issue on my all new MBP 13″…Annoying..Hoping Apple comes up with a fix!
My 15″ 2.53 also have the same issue.
The HDD is Toshiba. The clicking noise happened randomly, sometimes even when i didn’t do anything. I bought mine last week, and now the stall has become longer, usually it only takes about 5-10 seconds, but now sometimes it’s about 30 seconds and it’s totally freeze..
really annoying….
I am also having problems with HD speed. Using xbench I am getting a HD score of 43.31 where 100 is the ideal. This computer is only two weeks old. I traded in my old MBP (120gb HD) for this 320 gb model. Both dual core. Both 4gb mem.
Count me in, too. I just got this MBP, and I had a freeze while I was doing the TOTALLY processor-intensive activities of browsing Google Chrome and listening to music on iTunes. :/ Had to hard-restart the computer.
REALLY annoying. Went as far as buying an iPod Classic just to listen to my music since playing from iTunes gives me that maddening stall, even while playing music! Not sure what to do at this point. Would replacing the hard drive help? This MacBook Pro was shipped to me last June (2009 version) and I’ve installed all the updates and fixes.
Same here. Week-old 15″ MBP with all the standard bits (didn’t get a different hard drive or anything). It has been happening since I took the computer out of the box. It did it several times when I was attempting to migrate from my old mac so that ended up taking ages. Seems to quite often be when I leave the computer to do something (empty recycled bin, transfer files to USB, time machine backup). Once it freezes it doesn’t come out of it – the only solution is to restart with the power button. So frustrating and disappointing.
The stalls/hangs with MBP 13 disappeared the moment I switched off my Bluetooth.
Has anyone here on Apple Toolbox heard any more details on this issue? I’ve got the Snow Leopard Graphics Update 1 installed and rarely have bluetooth on, yet I’m still experiencing frequent hangs.
Just applied the latest two updates, security and graphics I think. Now I’m having this problem all the time – very frustrating. I’m on a mid 2009 MBP w/ the 500GB 5400RPM hdd.
My one month new Macbook Pro 15″ i5 500G has been experiencing stall whenever running iPhoto and Aperture3. And one or twice when using Word. I lost my unsaved files after force-turn-off (hold power button down for 4 sec).
It might also be the sound card driver!
check out this fix for stalling/freezing mbp’s
http://macbookprofix.blogspot.com/
I have a summer 2009 MBP, and turning off the sudden motion sensor was the fix for me on all of this. It had gone from occassional to darn near constant.
SMS disable by OS version:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1934?viewlocale=en_US
“simply turning off Bluetooth resolves this issue”
That means that I can not longer use my my wireless mighty mouse? Great! 🙁
I have an iMac 24” I did clean install (Snow Leopard) all Updates are already installed and yesterday got the “Beachball” (freeze) while scrolling down in Firefox.
First time was unexpected so I wanted to be sure about this issue, so I decided to reproducce the problem again, so I change the scroll speed in “system preferences” open Firefox again and deliberately scroll down fast and BOOM! Beachball freeze again! Argggg!
The mouse moves with the Beachball cursor, but nothing responds…
Maybe has to do with the mouse that works with Bluetooth, I will switch my Bluetooth off today and go back to the regular apple mouse.
Hey, as I said, I turned Bluetooth off, now I’m using my regular mighty mouse, and so far everything works fine, even when I scroll down VERY quickly…
Hopefully is the problem fixed…
turning off the sudden motion sensor worked for me… after
2 years of owning a macbook and being laughed by other mac users I
found the solution… thank you very much……….
Macbook pro..standard machine 13″ is about 6months old….
same problems for most of its life. Freezes up and can only be
resolved with forced quit…At its worst safari won’t even load and
songs stop and start when playing in iTunes. Never have bluetooth
on and problems are occurring during light activities such as
browsing etc. Freezes are becoming more frequent… is there a
permanent fix to this. Mac is not reinforcing my decision to switch
from PC.
mine’s a standard macbook, mid/late 2009 and suffers this a
lot lately, I’ve just disabled the ‘harddisk sleep mode’ when i’m
plugged into a power outlet, and that seems reduce the problem at
least half of the occurences. I’ve still seen some spinning balls,
but only 1-2 seconds, and no longer for up to 30-40 seconds as was
the case the last couple of days. Fingers crossed.
I am having the same issue. Actually I just received my macbook pro 15”, 2.53ghz from an apple service provider with a new 500gb hd to replace my 250gb crashed one, as well cable cord for the hd in the motherboard, payed 220€, but my mac shows same issues as before with the crashed hd. I have to power-shut it down every 10 minutes. I am very unhappy with this…
“I am having the same issue. Actually I just received my macbook pro 15”, 2.53ghz from an apple service provider with a new 500gb hd to replace my 250gb crashed one, as well cable cord for the hd in the motherboard, payed 220€, but my mac shows same issues as before with the crashed hd. I have to power-shut it down every 10 minutes. I am very unhappy with this…”, – even no force-quit can work.
Same issue. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly when it would happen. At first, I only noticed it while playing online Windows games via Parallels. I blamed it on Windows or Parallels and just stopped playing those games. Once I really started getting into home videos and using iMovie, I now notice it with that as well. I paid for the premium support and the Apple tech talked to me on the phone. Neither he nor his supervisor had any clue which tells me that they don’t bother to keep up with these types of forums. They recommended that I reinstall the OS. I’m not opposed to that, but I hate that standard response for any problem they can’t answer. I’m going to try the “turn off bluetooth” option although I believe this renders my Magic Mouse useless. Anything is better than reformatting, reinstalling, etc for nothing.
Started experiencing the same issue yesterday in MBP 13 2.4 2010 unibody. My MBP is 4 months old and no previous problems. Yesterday I purchased BH-905i Nokia bluetooth headset and thats when it all started. First the computer froze with Skype. After rebooting I got the spinning beach ball and rebooted again. Now I got the 4 language warning telling me that I had to restart by pushing the power button. Turned off bluetooth and everything seems normal for now.
Confirmed, the crashing/freezing issue is caused by bluetooth. I had the said headphones paired and it started crashing. Latest crash occurred immediately after wake-up when it informed that it couldn’t use headphones as an audio device (since they were turned off). I clicked turn bluetooth off and immediately got they “grey curtain” and message to turn the computer off. After restart bluetooth was still on, I turned it off, and ever since no problems.
So dear Apple, It looks like, I’m another user of your product, without proper solution of this hanging stuff!!!
Why is Apple not producing a fix??? Are you not able to do it? Buy a Macbook Pro and cannot use it complete???
What kind of a crap is that?
“Apple crap?”