System-wide freezes caused by Safari, other browsers (#3)

Pulling Ethernet cable can restore normal operation As previously noted, terminating network activity (via disconnecting an Ethernet cable in most cases) will alleviate the system-wide freeze and temporarily restore normal system operation in numerous instances of this problem.

Users who are experiencing this variant of the problem often see the following error message in their system logs:

• Aug 29 06:57:09 -MyMacName- mDNSResponder: Repeated transitions for interface lo0 (127.0.0.1); delaying packets by 5 seconds

One poster to an Apple mailing list writes:

"As soon as I unplugged the ethernet cable, the machine became responsive again. The keystrokes pressed while the computer was in "deaf mode" were executed and the computer appeared healthy as ever within a single second. It then fell into sleep as it should have done five minutes before, and could be awoken normally."

A MacFixIt reader adds:

"Just had this problem happen yesterday for the first time. Saw this article and was ready to just pull the ethernet cable if needed. Also had terminal - top running. Interesting that someone mentioned abcnews.com webpage up as I could have had it up also (watching hurricane coverage), the first time it happened.

"I kept abcnews.com up (in Safari) among other pages and it happened again. I was still able to IM with someone, but all the other problems appeared. Also interesting, taking screenshots, I could see screencap entries appearing (all with 0% cpu usage) for each press cmd shift 3 or 4 (with spacebar). No screenshot would occur (one single one would happen after pulling the cable)."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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