Chosen Solution
This is a 2.53 unibody from 2009, which has been having many issues. It seemed to start around the time of the 1.7 firmware update but the system has since been rolled back. From a cold boot I can work (browse the web, email) for maybe 20 min, until safari or firefox will begin to start stalling. Almost like there is a network hang or disk hang. After maybe 30 sec it will resolve. But after a while the system will just completely lock and give me the pinwheel of death. If I reboot right away it will give me issues right from boot time. If I let it cool (but it is not really even hot), it will work again from cold boot. Hardware test came up clean and was able to perform the extended test. I have also been able to re-install the system a few times on different disks, so it is does not seem to be an overheating issue. Any thoughts? Logic Board gone bad? Thanks Update This happens on a fresh install. Cocktail would have nothing to address. Ran CPU tests on it today, and ran fine. Worked on it for a little but and all good. Put it into target disk mode, copied data to it, no issues. Rebooted into the OS, crashed (pinwheel of death). Rebooted, no longer saw the drive. Bad drive you say? This has happened with 3 separate, known working drives. Put the drive on a USB sled and works fine. Could it be a bad cable? really, if so, I would think it would just not work at all, not intermittent
I have had the same issue since I got my MBP. The only solution I have been able to find so far is downgrading the firmware to 1.6. That forces Sata I speeds instead of Sata II, so it is slower, but at least it works. I have considered replacing the cable, but just haven’t done it yet.
Regardless of your denial of a heat problem, I think you’re wrong. Time how long it takes to start locking up using processor intensive programs. Download SMC fan control which has a temperature monitor and observe what it’s doing. http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/230… Now take out the heat sink and clean the vents and reapply thermal paste.
I have read about this issue on many forums. You need to replace your HD cable. Look on Apple forums and you will see many people that had these issues. Just replace the HD cable and you should be fine. It seems that these machines suffered from a defective HD Cable.
Download and run Cocktail to clean caches. Leave 20% of your HD free for temp, VMem and swap files. Delete the .plist files for these apps and reset them.
It sounds like you’ve already done a good job trying to isolate the fault. It sounds like it’s definitely a problem with the disk system (somewhere in the chain of things…). If you can find your original OS X install disks, try running the Apple Hardware Test right after it crashes (when you say normally it wouldn’t see the drive after rebooting). Another thing to try would be to put one drive into a USB sled and boot off that, then put a hard drive inside and stress the internal drive by putting some movies on there and playing them off the drive (or something). Open up Console.app and look for any error messages relating to the drive – if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to watch it lock up the movie player without killing the rest of your system. In the end, I’m afraid you’ll end up having to replace the logic board, but it’s worth trying the above to pin it down.
I’d the same problem a bit more than one year after buying my MacBook Pro. Replacing my harddisk for a WD Scorpio Black 500 GB with 7200rpm was the solution. The original 250GB hdd, now only used in an external case for parking some things on, stil has some problems.
