[Captain L]

A couple of months ago, my dad got a new iMac to replace his 2006 MacBook Pro (17 in). So he gave the laptop to the rest of the family to use. When he had it, it worked fine (aside from being slow). Now, it has problems. It freezes a lot, where you have to restart the computer to fix it. It is running Mac OS 10.6.8 (newest version). I keep the computer updated, I repair disk permissions, I reset the PRAM (suggestion I found online), and nothing is working. Do you know what the problem is, or how I can fix it?

[Alehbeer]

First, make sure you have a 100% backup at another location, eg. not on that computer.

I haven't worked on MACs in several years, but here is some stuff to get you in the right direction.

• Check to make sure you don't have any crud such as viruses, malware or programs that constantly need attention. Also make sure that whatever is being run on it has room to breathe, eg. it is above minimum requirements.
• Make sure that your RAM is good. Make sure your capacitors are good. Clean out the fan and remove dust.
• If you have an IT friend, you could have them see if the hardware is definitely the problem by testing it out with a Linux LiveCD. Make sure it is a LiveCD and not to install, rather load it into RAM. Make sure you have it for the right architecture, eg. PPC versus IA32/64 (you didn't specify if it was one of those Intel Macs or not), and that the kernel is compiled for whatever it is. You can do some nice detection stuff like that.
• If you find it is completely software, you may need to reinstall the system. Note that if you are running a newer OS version than the machine was designed for you may run into speed / requirement problems...
• etc

[theocas]

Did you check the Activity Monitor (it's in /Applications/Utilities/) for any processes that take up lots of CPU (select "All Processes" from the popup in the toolbar) and order the list by CPU usage percent. If that doesn't give you any good results, check the Console app (also in /Applications/Utilities/) for any hints as to why this may be happening.

I hope this helps you somehow, if not - get an external hard drive or some other storage media to back up all your files (I reccommend against backing up the Apps in /Applications/, some need their installers to function properly, which reeks of bullshit if you ask me) and then just wipe the entire thing clean using the install disc that came with the MacBook and just run a fresh install. Fixes problems in 99% of cases. If it's still slow and crashy, you might have a hardware issue, at which point I'd sign up for a Genius Bar appointment. They'll take a look at it and will likely tell you what's wrong and how it's fixable - it might just be that your computer's dying.

Also, what types of freezes are they - is the system clock and apps frozen, but you can still move the mouse, or is the mouse also frozen, or do you get an overlay on the screen telling you to hold the power button (that'd be a kernel panic.) You might also want to try to boot up into verbose mode, do that by powering the computer off, and holding Cmd(aka Apple key) and V when you press the power button and keep it held until you see white text on a black background instead of the Apple logo without the little spinny.

[SwissCM]

2006 era Macbook Pros had some rather nasty overheating problems (an Apple trademark). Part of the reason is that they applied way too much heatsink paste onto the CPU and GPU. Reapplying that properly may help. You could also try using a third party utility to crank the fan speed up, since Apple keeps the fan speed very low by default in order to keep down noise and increase battery life.

[coder12]

Captain L, on 04 July 2011 - 09:07 PM, said:

A couple of months ago, my dad got a new iMac to replace his 2006 MacBook Pro (17 in). So he gave the laptop to the rest of the family to use. When he had it, it worked fine (aside from being slow). Now, it has problems. It freezes a lot, where you have to restart the computer to fix it. It is running Mac OS 10.6.8 (newest version). I keep the computer updated, I repair disk permissions, I reset the PRAM (suggestion I found online), and nothing is working. Do you know what the problem is, or how I can fix it?

I think the issue may be 10.6.8, actually. It's incredibly buggy on older hardware from all of my tests. We've installed it on our old staff 2007 MacBooks at the school I work for and it's always locking up etc... You may want to try downgrading to 10.6.7 and see how that works. Just my $.02 :P