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Macbook start-up freezing

P

Problem Child

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 8, 2007
14
0
Hello :)

I've been having some slight concerns with my new macbook I got in January and thought you guys would be best to ask before taking any action. It's my first ever mac which I saved alot for so I didn't think there should be this problem.

My Macbook is the white C2D 2ghz, 1gb ram 80gb hard drive.

I've been having problems with it when starting up first time after only and hour or so. Usually this happens when on battery but not always. The mac freezes up at start up alot of the time in different ways, here some I noted down:

  • Complete freeze nothing responding (reboot 2-3times until it started working)
  • spotlight freezes
  • camera (isight) light came on when startup then cam doesn't work until reboot
  • Froze on widgets page (another reboot)

This has only happens recently, mostly when taking my mac to school. I didn't think restarting it 2-3times at the start of lessons sometimes was a good idea.
I've done a hardware test and everythings fine there, should I do a repair using the mac disk or any other ideas why this is?
The camera one happened yesterday and that's the first time it has.

Thanks ;)
 
Yikes. That sounds pretty weird.

Did you install any third-party apps that mess with your system? Anything bizarre that can change power-management settings, boot-up screen, anything like that? I guess maybe you should run a RAM-check as well...
 
More things to try

I would zap the pram and reset the power management unit. Have you notice any noise with the hard drive? We have 48 MacBooks and I have replaced four hard drives so far. The RAM would be good to check too. It might not even hurt to take out the RAM and reinstall it. I did this on one of our machines and it started working again.

Les
 
Nope no noise. It's weird because it froze on first start up this morning on the widgets which meant I had to restart, the rest of the school day starting up and other stuff has been fine.

I would zap the pram and reset the power management unit.
Click to expand...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238
Zap the pram?

And how do I got about reseting the power management unit. I'll be happy to do all this aslong as I don't lose any documents or things I've installed.

Thanks for your help guys ;)
 
A hardware failure is the most likely reason for this behavior, with RAM being the most likely hardware culprit. You can run the hardware test (the disk came with your MacBook). It may find a fault, but this is not guaranteed even if you've got a hardware issue. Also, after any freeze/kernel panic, the hard disk should be checked for corruption with Disk Utility or fsck in Single User Mode.

Bottom line: since this Mac is almost new and under warranty, I'd bring it to Apple for service.
 
Ok thaks for the advice I've done a hardware check and it's found no problems. I'll do what you've said and if it doesn't stop doing it within a week, I'll contact apple. Thanks :)

Update: I've just done a disk check using the apple install disk and it fixed a minor error on the header volume which was there. I think this problem may have started after I got rid of my bootcamp windows partition. This may have sorted it as it seemed to load up faster and better than before, with no freezing. If it hasn't worked I'll try the "zap the pram" thing.

If that doesn't work I'll then contact apple asap, thank for all your help guys :)
 
all those things happen on my macbook too! how do you reset the power management unit?
 
I have just done that actually.

Turn off the macbook, un-plug it and remove the battery, hold down the power button for 5seconds, then put the battery back in and start it up. Previously I've zapped the pram, done a disk check, and now this. It still happend earlier today so I can't say for sure whether the power management thing has fixed it.

If it doesn't does anyone recommend saving my files and applications and doing a re-format and install of mac OS X?

Or should I just call apple up before resorting to re-installing OS X?

The problem usually occurs when on battery, don't know if its to do with the differnet power setting for plugged in and battery, as it has frozen when I tryed turning up the brightness. It mostly happens when I've not used the mac in a while say start up in the morning or in the day at school.

I'll do some restarts now to see if it happens.
 
Ok thanks for your help, now I've done all things suggested in the topic, I'll use the macbook for another few days then if the problem keep re occuring I'm going to call apple.

Update: I thought it had worked, but no, I put on the login option aswell for start up and today at college it just wouldn't respond it froze, looks like a call to apple then.
 
Update

The problems were down to the windows bootcamp partition, I did an archive and install and put on a new windows partition, works great now.
 
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