Several users of newly released MacBook Pro (April 2010) models reported frequent stalls/hangs, accompanied by the spinning beach ball progress indicator, under varying conditions. The problem appears to be hard drive-related, and occurs most frequently with the standard 320 GB 5400 RPM drive, but is also occurring with the 5400 500GB and 7200 500GB drives.
When this problem occurs, the hard drive becomes unresponsive for up to 30 seconds. During the stall, all applications will stall and or cease to properly function, but the mouse cursor can still be moved. CPU usage does not spike.
Several users have reported that the issue occurs frequently when playing World of Warcraft. It can also occur when transferring a large amount of data to/from the internal hard disk or after waking the laptop from sleep.
Traditional fixes, including re-installation of Mac OS X, resetting PRAM, turning hard drive sleep off, and diagnostics via the Apple Hardware Test and/or disk checking tools such as TechTool Deluxe have proven unsuccessful.
Possible Fix: Turn off Bluetooth. Oddly, some users have reported that simply turning off Bluetooth resolves this issue. To do so, Simply access the Bluetooth menubar item and select “Turn Bluetooth Off” or open System Preferences from the Apple menu, click Bluetooth, and uncheck the box “On.”
If you are experiencing a similar issue, please let us know at info@appletoolbox.com.