[Le Flaneur]

I was ready to attribute a freeze that occurred yesterday to cosmic radiation or other inexplicable accidents, but unfortunately I've experienced it two days in a row, under rather similar circumstances: I was switching between apps! The first time, it was via command-tab, the second by clicking on the Dock (the app icon just remained highlighted). And frankly, the freezes involved switching to the same Cocoa app (DEVONThink Pro). I do have use SpellCatcher X, which is an input method, but I don't think I have any other SIMBL-type stuff.

Now yesterday, my machine had been running for 16 days without rebooting, but today it had been running (obviously) for only a few hours.

The freeze itself is rather strange: the system menu clock doesn't update, I have no keyboard control except for cursor movement via the trackpad, but my PowerBook will sleep and wake up if I close and open the lid. Nothing interesting is in the system or console logs.

What could be a causing a freeze of this type? Is there any other way to unfreeze the system without telnetting in? (which has never worked for me)

BTW, my hard drive is less than half full, and after the force reboot, I've run Disk Utility and DiskWarrior 4 each time (the first time, minor volume header damage was repaired, which I suppose can be expected).

[analogika]

I'm not seeing this.

Do you have anything installed that requires the APE extension (such as any Unsanity Haxies, ShapeShifter, Uno, etc.)?

If so, THROW THEM OUT (or get used to the fact that almost any time you have weird and unexplicable problems after an update of pretty much anything at all, they will be the cause).

Seriously.

If you don't, I don't really have an easy solution for you, sorry.

[Le Flaneur]

No Unsanity stuff, but I do use something that relies on MenuCracker: MenuMeters. I tend to suspect USB, but no devices were connected when the freezes are occurred. Is it possible for USB stuff to cause instabilities/freezes which actually only occur later?

[Le Flaneur]

I've been thinking some more about these freezes, and I wonder whether USB might be involved. There were some major changes to USB in 10.4.9 and 10.4.10, weren't there? I've had some problems with USB in the past ... Now when my two freezes occurred, no USB devices were actually connected, but there *had been* devices connected earlier. Have you guys ever seen a situation where a USB device caused a problem which only manifested itself sometime later?

[Catfish_Man]

There are three "common" (not terribly common, but still far too common) freezes I know of that affect many Macs:

1) lookupd crashing. Symptom: programs won't launch, then things begin to beachball one by one. Solution: dshadow.com: Unlockupd

2) command-tab freeze. Symptom: total freeze while switching apps. Solution: ???

3) 10.4.10 wireless kernel panic. Solution: install the 10.4.9 version of IO80211Family.kext (being sure to chown it to root:wheel)

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Le Flaneur 

No Unsanity stuff, but I do use something that relies on MenuCracker: MenuMeters.

MenuMeters run fine here.

[CatOne]

I never had any problems with MenuMeters in ~3 years of use, so it's probably okay.