MacBook Pro 2.33 is always freezing

I have a 2.33Ghz 17" MBP (2006). All went smooth until the HDD became faulty. It was replaced within the warranty with a 250Gb Samsung HDD (to save time I bought a 250Gb samsung disk and I don't use the replacement disk).

Since then my laptop regularly freezes. Sometimes it runs weeks - with sleep when I don't use it - sometimes after a few hours it just stops responding. It happens relatively often after recovering from screensaver.
In the rest of the cases the CapsLock light can be swithced on/off for a while, but I can't use the computer

Till now I couldn't figure out any event that causes these stops.

I ran the hardware test (after booting from the original dvd) for 18-20 times consecutively in extended test mode, but it didn't find any problem.

Anyone has any idea or suggestion?

PS: nowadays when I try to play World of Warcraft it may stop responding in 2 minutes.

 

could be the battery. have you tried taking out the battery and running it with only ac adapter?

 

I gave it a try ... I had now a blanking screen - the keyboard still responded so I could shut down the computer.

Since then testing continously ... any more ideas? Before I'd replace the hdd.

UPDATE: today it did tha blanking again. For now only the backlight of the lcd faded ... after sleep I could continue.

 

So I used World of Warcraft for testing:

1. without battery I had my screen blanked 3 times. after closing the lid the computer recovered, there were no freezes.
2. with battery attached the computer warmed faster and FROZE completely (no capslock whatever) activity.

Do you think a new battery could solve this problem or its about warming? Or any other HW component?
Right now it doesn't seems to be reasonable to (ex)change the hdd, there are no signs indicating if it was faulty!

HHHEEELP

 

I would test in a new test user. If the issue occurs again then you know its system wide and your looking at an Archive and install preserve. or an Erase and install.. and if it happens again its hardware.

 

Erase and re-install in the only way. If it happens again you have a hardware problem.

 

... maybe I'll give it a try - anyway this begun after a fresh install :-(
((mostly I'm afraid of HW problem even if the test can't find any))

... I'll be back ;-)

 

Meh I wouldn't worry about it. Call Apple Care I will set up the replacement lol jk.

 

Today it'll be test day. All day we'll run the apple hardware test ... I don't realy belive if anything would turn out, but I still give it a try.

Anyways. I did it long ago and I can't remember if it should "heat up" so munch my MBP? (in the middle of the test above the keyboard it is realy hot)

... fingers crossed

UPTATE: the test was run 8 times in almost 3 hours. No trouble detected - even if the computer was realy hot during some periods of test. Now I have the new 85w supply ... some more test and archiving. Some local expert suggested, that this is liklely a mainboard problem

 

ATM:
- I ran apple HW test 8 times. there were no errors, the computer warmed significantly.
- I installed AppleJack and did all repairs and also user specific cache clearing.
- I ran memtest (co-installed with AppjeJack) for like two hours without any errors.

I booted up, logged in with a rarely used user. Things were fine. I started WOW for more extensive testing. The computer rebooted without any warning, so I rebooted again.
Then I could play (test ) for at least 15-20 minutes without any trouble ... then I went to sleep, 'cos it was too late.

Today I ran diskutility, that finished without errors, but in the meantime for 30-60 sec I could only observer the small round rainbow circling (I was already thinking what to put in the fresh crashreport ... )

Todays schedule is normal use + maybe an hour of extensive testing...

UPDATE: strange, but if I don't force the fan for higher RPM (smcFancontrol), then the computer may stop responding after reaching the 72-73C (160F) temperature range...

 

Sounds like corrupt RAM to me (or overheating), but the hardware test 'should' find corrupt RAM in your system.
If you have some spare RAM or a friend with the same kind of RAM, you could easily do a swap test. Or if you have 2 sticks in the machine, try taking each one out and seeing if the problem still occurs.

 

Some time is spent since then. The laptop was stable, things were fine. Then I upgraded to Leopard (10.5.8) smoothly. // the only app I had to upgrade was Parallels Desktop //
When I finished "just in case" I ran DiskWarrior and Applejack on my system. Hard to tell if it was the upgraded/reinstalled apps, or the "repair" programs, but the computer became again hell unstable, froze all the way.

In the end I upgraded my Coctail license and it seems to fix all troubles around

Once I had a crashreport too, that suggested some disk oriented problem, I couldn't figure out if it was software, mainboard or disk oriented problem

 

If this is truly a late 2006 with a X1600 GPU.. this post doesn't apply... but people get versions mixed up sometimes, so it pays to double check..

Had a friend with a 17" with a geforce 8600 (which are known to be faulty), and lock ups and everything kept happening, with screen screw ups.. weird artifacts or just blanking of screen. Apple quickly blamed it on the 8600, and she had them swap out the logic board, and it worked fine after that.... its 2 I've sen with 8600s that had weird issues that worked after a logic board replacement, wether it was the 8600 on there or not, its the main guts of the computer.

If it is a faulty 8600 and out of warranty, it pays to ask, cuz often Apple will still freely repair out of warranty issues when it was a major case like all the bad 8600s were.