[Macpartners] Mac Diagnostic Tool Recommendations

[Rocklyn E. Clarke Sr.]

Hi Macpartners,

Thank you to everyone who responded to my original 4/1 post!

I actually experienced a series of progressively worse crashes on my MacBook Pro towards the end of January 2013 and was eventually unable to recover at all.  I took my laptop to the Braintree Apple Store and they eventually replaced my logic board.  Apart from losing access to some registered software whose vendor is no longer in business, the new logic board seemed to have fixed my problems until now. Apparently my machine had some additional issues beyond it's logic board.

I would have responded sooner, but I had another bout of Mac trouble and in the process of getting my machine up and running I lost several emails including all the ones that were a part of this thread!  After I recovered your emails, I got very busy with my own work, so I'm only now getting back to all of you.

Thank you John for your excellent questions!  The answers are interspersed below.

I recently downloaded and ran Cocktail (http://www.maintain.se/cocktail) and have seen significant improvement in my Mac's performance.  I'll consider further action if the problems return and Cocktail doesn't help.

Thanks again!

Rocklyn


On Apr 1, 2013, at 1:05 PM, John Hawkinson <jhawk at MIT.EDU> wrote:

> Rocklyn E. Clarke Sr. <rclarke at MIT.EDU> wrote on Mon,  1 Apr 2013
> at 12:59:28 -0400 in <6BAB54F2-E0CB-4D37-8BB1-F53EAAD99504 at mit.edu>:
> 
>> I have a MacBook Pro running MacOS 10.8.3 and I find that at least
>> once a week my system becomes unresponsive and I need to reboot
> 
> More details would be helpful here.
> 
> What apps are running?
OmniFocus, MacJournal, iCal, Contacts, Mail, iPhoto, iTunes, Safari, OmniOutliner, Accordance (Bible software), Microsoft Excel, etc.

> What is the nature of the unresponsiveness?
Mail freezes, other programs become extremely slow and resist quitting.

> Does the mouse still move?
Yes!

> Cmd-Opt-Q/Force Quit?
Force quit sometimes fails too.

> Beach ball?
Yes!

> Does the machine ping on the network?
I'm generally at home (ex MIT staff, current pastor), but will give this a try next time.

> Does the caps lock led toggle when pressed?
I didn't try this, but will if the problem recurs.

> How much RAM?
> How old a MacBook?
> etc. etc. etc. etc.
I purchased the machine in 2011

Hardware Overview:

  Model Name:	MacBook Pro
  Model Identifier:	MacBookPro8,3
  Processor Name:	Intel Core i7
  Processor Speed:	2.3 GHz
  Number of Processors:	1
  Total Number of Cores:	4
  L2 Cache (per Core):	256 KB
  L3 Cache:	8 MB
  Memory:	8 GB
  Boot ROM Version:	MBP81.0047.B27
  SMC Version (system):	1.70f6
   Sudden Motion Sensor:
  State:	Enabled

> 
>> after which I go into recovery mode and run disk utility to repair
>> the drive.  Disk Utility finds something to repair at least 50% of
>> the time.
> 
> This is normal and probably unrelated to your problem.
> Though the details of what it reports matter -- what are they?
> Frequently the OS's packing system's idea of proper file and directory
> permissions gets out of sync with reality, leading to irrelevant and
> meaningless "repairs."
> 
> --jhawk

Thanks - this is helpful to know!

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