Archives for February, 2010
Tweets for the Week
- New blog post:: Woes of MacBook Pro Unibody Owner http://bit.ly/bI3RWI #
- Of all the Apple OS X Aqua desktop pictures, I still think the "Panther Aqua Blue" is the best of the bunch. #
- OH: "If you don't have time to do it right now, when will you ever have time to do it over later?" So true… #
- Finished taxes for older son. He owes $1 to the state of CA. It's going to cost the state at least 10x that to process the form. #Califaila #
Woes of MacBook Pro Unibody Owner
A little more on my MacBook Pro woes…
Since I’ve had this machine, a MBP Unibody 2.6 Ghz / 4 GB RAM purchased in September of 2009, I’ve had to back it up, completely wipe the internal HD, and restore 5 times. Two of those times, I’ve completely zeroed the drive for extra measure. I even tried starting entirely from scratch once hoping that would finally fix my issues to no avail. In that time I’ve ended up with a “keys out of order” error more times than I can remember. Running a single user “fsck” at boot usually cannot fix the problem. I had to lay out $100 for DiskWarrior to finally resolve that. Still, through all of that, I seem to keep coming up with issues on this unit. I’ve never had this much trouble with any Mac I’ve owned–ever.
Here are the symptoms that eventually lead up to the disk to going bad: When putting the machine to sleep for more than an hour by closing the clamshell, upon waking by re-opening it, the MBP will spontaneously log itself out, sometimes only once, other times it will happen multiple times in a row (I think I counted 5 logouts once). Usually, after all that excitement, any app that I try to launch will immediately crash. I do not keep any apps running when putting the unit to sleep anymore. I’ve lost too much work because of it. Twice I’ve gotten kernel panics instead of spontaneous log outs. It is far more likely that this machine will wake with an issue than not.
Logs allude to crashed threads in windowserver, CoreGraphics, as well as a video driver (not sure which right now). I’ve tried removing every single system add-on that I’ve ever installed, but still have problems. I’ve also cleared every single cache I can get my hands on and then some, but still have problems.
Right now, I’m testing the memory using Memtest. When I left for work this morning, it had not found any problems yet. If it were as simple as a bad memory module I’d be thrilled — but to be honest, I’m thinking the problem lies in the 7200 RPM drive I had installed as a BTO option when I ordered it from Apple. It’s always seemed to be a little finicky.
Because of this lemon fresh Mac, I’ve lost countless hours, and have fallen way behind schedule on a project that I promised would be delivered a month ago. I’m finally giving up and visiting the Genius Bar at my local Apple store tomorrow. So far, I’ve had pretty good luck with them helping me solve issues with other machines. Hopefully they can with this one too. I just hope I don’t have to send it back to China to get fixed. That would put me another month (or more) behind schedule.
More to follow, I’m sure…
Tweets for the Week
- A full weekend of wipe-the-mac and start-fresh to finally track down a couple of buggy kernel extensions installed by Shimo VPN front-end… #
- Nice to be able to crack the clamshell open and not get logged out (sometimes repeatedly), or end up with unstable apps, or a kernel panic. #
- Verizon added another "app" (Slacker Radio) to my Blackberry w/o my say so at reboot. Don't like they do that, but can forgive for this one. #
- A true accidental business analyst here hoping for feedback on BA Boot Camp. Is it worth the investment? http://bit.ly/bzSWoc #baot #IIBA #
- 17 year old refrigerator slowly died this week. Hoping we can find same longevity in a current model. Wife thrilled. So is credit card co. #
- Have decided to downgrade to OS X 10.5. Experiencing too many issues w/ spontaneous logout. Lots of other 10.6 users seem to have same prob. #
- Um, yeah. That downgrade thing? Not gonna happen since the '09 unibody MBP's only run 10.6. Silly me. Haven't been paying attention again. #
- Instead, disabling EVERY system add-on I can get away with not having. Lean and mean, baby. Lean, and, mean… #
Tweets for the Week
- Bummed to learn the NFL Experience isn't running this year. Worked on it from XXVII – XXXIV. Always got a kick seeing my work on pre-games. #
- What are u more psyched for w the Superbowl? (via @eastd) Definitely the game. Should be a good one (finally). #
- Any #Quickbooks and #FileMaker gurus know the best format to have someone export from QB for importing into a FM solution? Options needed? #
- Just discovered {less} http://lesscss.org/ OMG. I'll never write CSS the same again… ever… #
- Got a boiler-room head hunter type call looking to fill other positions at day job. Probably time to set my LinkedIn profile semi-private. #
- Just received $25 "donation" (the max possible) for my humble little Mac utility. Always stuns me when someone chooses to be that generous. #
Secure Virtual Memory on OS X
Since the purchase of my 2009 MacBook Pro, I’ve had a nagging issue of anytime the machine sleeps for an extended amount of time (30 minutes or more), when I woke it, it would freak out and apps that ran fine before putting it to sleep suddenly start crashing on launch. The system would become so unstable that a full restart was required to get back on track. I’ve always chalked it up to a flakey machine, and that it was something I would have to live with.
Last night, when I cracked the MBP open, I was greeted with a nasty kernel panic which lead to a whole array of disk errors that could only be repaired using DiskWarrior (a huge shout out to Steve Basile (@xebrawerx) for the reminder on Twitter — this saved my bacon last night).
After rebuilding the disk directory, I decided to see if I could get to the bottom of the flakiness once and for all. I started off by disabling every “add-on” utility I had: Growl, TextExpander, Hazel, Default Folder X, etc. Then I got to digging around in the Apple control panels to see if there as a setting I was missing somehow.
When I got to the Security system preference, the “Use secure virtual memory” was selected. It got me thinking that if the VM was being encrypted, and when the machine is put to sleep that maybe something in memory (RAM) or on the hibernation disc image is changing which doesn’t match the encrypted VM somehow on wake, thus causing the machine to not know what’s where in RAM. It’s a stretch, but worth a try I figured.
So far, by turning off the “Use secure virtual memory” option — which I’d enabled in Leopard 10.5 without issue — the machine seems quite stable, waking without issue. As a (possible) added bonus, performance seems to have increased a touch since the virtual memory isn’t having to be encrypted on the fly.
More to follow if there’s anything worth noting — as in I was wrong in my assumption and my MBP is really a MBL (MacBook Lemon).
UPDATE: Nope. That didn’t fix it. Back to the drawing board. Thinking Genius Bar visit is in order for this weekend. Maybe bad RAM?
UPDATE 2: Decided to completely wipe the machine and do a fresh install of Snow Leopard, along with fresh installs of all applications. A pain in the backside, but the only real way to be sure it’s software related instead of hardware. More to follow…
-
Search
Flickr
