Aug 08, 2017 How to Fix a Frozen Mac. The pizza wheel. The beach ball. The spinning pinwheel of death. Whatever you prefer to call it, the rainbow-colored ball that pops up on your Mac's screen and refuses to go away is a bad omen signaling that your. In this feature we look at what to do when your Mac freezes, the spinning beachball/rainbow wheel starts up, or you can't move your mouse or curser, can't use the keyboard, can't force quit, can't.
Active8 months ago
My Mac laptop is freezing like age old windows laptop since I have upgrade my mac os to mac os high sierra.
Mac details : Mac book pro retina mid 2012
It just freezes and i am forced to restart my laptop, (it never ever happened before) Is any one facing this problem, how to fix it ?
Steps done :
- Run complete diagnostic test
- Reset smc
- Reset nvram from thislink
johanssonjohansson
6 Answers
I was faced with the same dilemma, it seemed like my MacBook Pro (mid-2015) was 'freezing.' I stumbled across a the fix to it after seeing your post - you can read about it here: https://jrgarrigues.github.io/2017/11/05/high-sierra-freezing/
The gist of the linked article is this:
Reset your NVRAM and the SMC [System Management Controller]
First reset your NVRAM.
Turn off your Mac. Then turn it on and hold Command+Option+P+R while the computer is booting up. You will hear two chimes or on newer MacBook Pro models you will see the screen come on and go off twice.
Turn off your Mac. Then turn it on and hold Command+Option+P+R while the computer is booting up. You will hear two chimes or on newer MacBook Pro models you will see the screen come on and go off twice.
Now, shut your computer down again and reset the SMC [System Management Controller].
With your Mac off, press Shift+Control+Option and then hold these keys while pressing and holding the power button for 10 seconds.
nohillside♦With your Mac off, press Shift+Control+Option and then hold these keys while pressing and holding the power button for 10 seconds.
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AFKAFK
The first rule of troubleshooting, 'isolate and identify.' In other words, if you have added any hardware to your Mac over the years, remove it. I have seen RAM now recognized as 'bad' by a new OS where it worked fine with the previous OS.
The comments about Safe Mode also apply as that disables third party additions to your computer. Hold down SHIFT while booting, when the Apple logo appears release shift. Booting takes longer in Safe Mode, let it do it's thing. If your Mac stops freezing then something you installed is broken under the new OS.
The 3rd thing I would try is one of the OS 'cleaning' tools. I use Onyx (there are others, that's my favorite). Download it, and run the automation tool, then reboot your Mac.
Let us know the results by editing your question to indicate what you have tried.
Steve ChambersSteve Chambers16.5k22 gold badges2020 silver badges4343 bronze badges
I was having the same issue on High Sierra 10.13.3 after I migrated my system to an external SSD with APFS formatted as a BOOT DRIVE. Since the migration, I get lots of freeze and restart issues after an hour of usage or not waking up from sleep. After running ONYX (the latest), its been running like a charm, no issues so far after 14 hours of usage and switching between multiple applications.
- First try Running Onyx (Free download) maintenance Script if that doesn’t solve theproblem, then:
- Second, go into recovery mode (Restart, then press Command R until you see the apple logo) and reinstall High Sierra, thismay correct some issues with the OS.
EliEli
Not sure what your model you have but I hope this helps someone. So for me I had an intermittent freezing even after performing restores several times and replacing the hard drive. I was getting an intermittent prohibitory sign basically a circle with a line through it. The resolution was replacing the hard drive cable. I couldn't believe it but the whole time it was the hard drive cable. I would suggest ruling out software issues by just performing a simple reinstallation of the OS. If that doesn't work more than likely your issue is hardware related. I replaced the hard drive still same issue replaced the cable all good now
MikeMike
This is about nsmb.conf file:https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/nsmb.conf.5.html
Szabo LaszloSzabo Laszlo
We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer; explain why your answer is right, ideally with citations. Answers that don't include explanations may be removed.
Add the below to your
/etc/nsmb.conf
file. It fixed the problem for me.Source: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT205926
Community♦
sweakleysweakley
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Crashes and freezes in OS X are mercifully rare, but they do occur. Fortunately, most of them can be resolved readily; and even though a crash or freeze may have any of numerous causes or symptoms, the same procedure works for troubleshooting most of them.
Crashing apps
Your first step should be to determine the scope of a problem. Is just one application having difficulties, or is the whole system affected?
Send a report, or not: If an app quits unexpectedly, you know that it's at least part of the problem. App crashes are usually accompanied by an error message. If you see one of these, click Reopen to send Apple a report with details about your system configuration and what went wrong, and then relaunch the app. Or click OK to send the report without relaunching the app.
If you don’t want to send Apple information about crashes automatically, go to the Security & Privacy pane of System Preferences, click the lock icon, and enter your username and password to unlock it. Then click Privacy, select Diagnostics & Usage, and uncheck Send diagnostic & usage data to Apple. After you do that, the options in the crash dialog box change to Ignore, Report, and Reopen; only if you click Report is information sent to Apple.
Spinning beach balls and other bad signs
Sometimes, however, an app freezes but doesn’t quit. If your symptom is an unresponsive Mac—perhaps featuring the dreaded spinning wait cursor, sometimes refered to as the 'spinning beach ball' or as I like to call it, the “spinning pizza of death” (SPOD)—you’ll need to narrow down the cause.
Switch to another app: Try switching to another app—for example, by clicking its Dock icon or pressing Command-Tab. If other apps respond, and especially if the SPOD appears only when you hover the pointer over a window or menu belonging to the app that was in the foreground when your Mac stopped responding, try force-quitting that app. One way to do this is to press Command-Option-Esc, select the app in the list that appears, and then click Force Quit. (Sometimes you may need to repeat this once or twice to get the app to quit.) If this force-quitting succeeds, try relaunching the app. More often than not, that will be enough to bring the app back to life.
If relaunching (or force-quitting and then relaunching) an app doesn’t do the trick, if none of your apps respond, or if your mouse pointer is frozen, move on to the following steps—try each one, in order, until the problem goes away.
Restart: If you can choose Restart from the Apple menu, do so. If not, press Command-Control-Eject (the Eject key looks like an upwards-pointing arrow with a line underneath it) to force an immediate restart. If even that doesn’t work, press and hold the Power button until your Mac shuts down, then press the Power button again to turn your Mac back on.
Check disk space: A startup disk that’s extremely low on disk space (10GB or less) can lead to slowdowns and worse. Delete some files (or move them to another disk) to make more space. For help, see “Seven ways to free up drive space.”
Try another document: If an app always misbehaves when a particular document is open, try closing it and opening a different document. A damaged or corrupted file could be the source of the problem.
Update your software: Make sure OS X itself, and any apps you use regularly, are up to date, because a software update may have fixed a crash-producing bug. Choose Software Update from the Apple menu to update Apple software and anything downloaded from the Mac App Store; for anything else, use the app’s built-in software update feature or download the latest version.
Disconnect peripherals: If you attached any new devices recently—especially USB devices—try disconnecting them. Restart and see if the problem recurs. If not, the device may be faulty or, more likely, it may require updated software or firmware. Contact the device’s manufacturer for assistance.
Disable plug-ins: If the app that’s crashing includes any extensions, plug-ins, or other extras, try disabling or removing them to rule out the possibility that the add-on software is the culprit.
Try a safe boot: To disable certain software that loads at startup and to run cleanup processes that may resolve random gremlins in your system, try a safe boot: Restart your Mac, and, immediately after you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key until the gray Apple logo appears on the screen. If the problem goes away, restart again normally and try again.
Repair your disk: Disk errors can lead to all sorts of problems, crashes included. Try using OS X Recovery and using Disk Utility’s Repair Disk feature to look for and fix common disk errors.
Run Apple Hardware Test: Apple Hardware Test is a special utility you can run to test your Mac’s logic board, RAM, graphics board, and other components for errors that could lead to crashes and worse. Apple’s support site has complete instructions for using this tool.
Add RAM: If your Mac has a small amount of RAM (say, 4GB or less) and has available slots to add more, try increasing your RAM. Extra RAM can speed up many operations on your Mac and can reduce the likelihood of crashes and hangs related to running out of memory.
If you try all those things and continue to have crashes or freezes, contact the app’s developer (if it’s a single app) or Apple (if the problem is system-wide) for further advice and assistance.
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