Macbook Pro crash: perpetual bouncing icons, beachballs of death

[EvryDayImShufln]

Hey

I have a 2.2 SR MBP. Just now it crashed on me: every time I clicked on a program icon in the dock, it just kept on bouncing for about 5 minutes until I decided to power the thing down manually. It has happened to me a couple of times before, but the other times it fixed itself after a minute of so and started responding again.

The processor also started heating upL it hit 76 degrees C before I shut it down.

Has anybody seen this before? Any suggestions to what the problem could be?

 

[nikhsub1]

Well 76C is hot but still ok if the CPU is running at 100%... Perhaps a reinstall of the OS would solve your issues. Hard to know if the crashing OS is causing the load on the CPU or if the heat is causing the issue, I seem to think it is the OS though.

 

[EvryDayImShufln]

But I just reinstalled it a few days ago I think

Is there any sort of hardware diagnostics I can run that anybody knows about?

 

[iMan G5]

Insert install disk and hold "D" I think.

 

[EvryDayImShufln]

Very weird, I put in the Leopard disk (unless maybe I should put the tiger disk that came with the MBP?) and I hold D, and the computer boots up normally.

 

[mchank]

The Hardware Test is on the disk that came with your Macbook; Disc 1 Install.

 

[Sun Baked]

1. Boot in safe mode, see if the problem goes away. This will take awhile.

1a. Might need to make a new user if it boots fine in safe mode, and see if the problem is still gone.

1b. Might try trashing all the apple preferences in you problematic user to see if the issue is a bad preference.

2. If boots and you can run the console.app or system profiler -- check the system.log and crash/error logs in your thrashed user account. Something might be out of control.

About all I can think of if you are not running a system/gui hack.

Note: Some people have seen an out of control Spotlight, that never finishes indexing. Which will peg the CPU activity.

 

[jeff^d]

Hold down "C" when you restart, not "D".

 

[product26]

running leopard? installed the 10.5.1 update? repaired permissions lately?