Comments on: OS X GUI lockup with Command-Tab

By: jwagon

jwagon — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:38:18 +0000

I still have this problem as well. I’ve had it for years, first with a Powerbook G4, and now with a MacBook Pro. I’m pretty sure it is related to multiple displays, as I have never noticed a correlation between the freeze and any particular application or other action. Also, the multiple display and display detection functionality on Apples has always been buggy, similar to the sleep/wake functionality. Seems to me that these are both pretty fundamental operations to a laptop, and given the longstanding bugginess of both, you’d think they’d have addressed this by now. I guess that’s just me venting, but I laugh anytime someone says, “Apples never crash”. Bullshit.

Anyway, for me, it only happens after

1) I’ve been connected to an external monitor, then slept the machine, disconnected from the monitor, then sometime later awakened the machine and worked on it for awhile.

2) #1 + another sleep, then reconnecting to the external display, awakened the machine and started working.

I would say #2 is the way it happens about 99% of the time.

By: Deansj

Deansj — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:05:37 +0000

AAAH!

I’ve been having this problem at work and it’s very frustrating because I typically have 10-15 users ssh’ed into my machine. Shutting down the machine is a HUGE hassle.

I run firefox because of the quicksearches, filemaker pro 8, Quiksilver, TextWrangler, and typically have 3-4 Terminal windows open watching small scripts. I also host a small local MySQL database which only I use.

The first time this happened I was able to get the machine back by ssh’ing in and killing the Finder. This time I killed the Finder and Dock, and no results.

I’m on a G5 quad-core intel (2.4 ghz?) with about 6GB of RAM (mostly third party) and am dual monitoring. The machine is about a year old. It also has trouble waking up from sleep if a user is not logged in, e.g. I can’t log out when I go home and leave it on the login screen or it won’t wake up and nobody can ssh in.

By: Jonas

Jonas — Fri, 16 May 2008 08:13:42 +0000

Aargh!
I’m having the same problem. New mbp dual core, leopard. And it seems to be only the GUI that crashes; the mouse works fine (though nothing is clickable..) and the computer does not seem to work very hard at all.
I can access a running web server on it sans probleme while it’s in “lock mode”…
I do use an external monitor, might that be the problem?

By: Frank

Frank — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:35:31 +0000

I have this problem since I regularily use an external monitor in dual screen mode. Do you use an external monitor by any chance, people?

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:33:59 +0000

oh right. and i’m using a 15′ 2.2ghz intel duo w/2gb ram. new as of aug ’07

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:33:03 +0000

Alright.. I’ve been having issues with the GUI lately as well. Not so much app switching, but sometimes..and actually, alot lately.. i’ll be using safari or Itunes and the window will freeze.. mouse still works, but can’t grab ahold of the top of the window and move it, OR in itunes, i’ll go to click a song and it’ll act like i clicked a song 10 lines above.. Kinda odd.
My first thought was firefox, but then again i haven’t been using firefox lately since there seems to be some bug in the latest release which is an absolute pain in the neck.

By: Chad

Chad — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:38:29 +0000

WOW. I’m so glad I’m not the only one experiencing this. OS X hums along just fine for WEEKS at a time and then, when you happen to be working on a paper and have 10s of resources open simultaneously and you just happen to switch apps, BAM! and your computer is locked.

There is some pattern of disk activity. Does Apple even acknowledge this issue? I’ll check the Console but I doubt there will be any significant information logged to it.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:34:16 +0000

I haven’t had this happen under Leopard, but that has plenty of it’s own issues.