A mate has an early 2010 MB Pro running Mountain Lion where, after startup, the desktop loads but freezes thereafter until the lid is closed and reopened. Menus won't drop down from the menu bar or, if they do, no command can be selected. Nothing will launch from the Dock and "magnification" does not occur.

I've Googled the issue and there seem to be many lid related problems (one Apple Community topic is 9 pages!) although none really match this one. The fact that closing and reopening the lid solves the problem suggests that it might be a sleep issue. I've fiddled a bit with the settings in the Energy saver Preference, reset the PRAM, scratched my head, all to no avail. The aforementioned Community topic discusses hibernation interval with all sorts of Terminal commands to change it but I'm not inclined to experiment (i.e. expert enough to clean up the potential mess if I did!).

Simply shutting and reopening the lid works every time and is not a big deal but it would be nice if the thing worked properly. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Has this problem got a history, i.e. since he got the MBP, since he upgraded to Mounty, since he installed xyz software?

And has he tried either booting into Safe Mode or logging in to a test user account to see what happens? (What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? & Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode)

Artie (?)

History? Good question. He's had the machine from new and says it started happening about three months ago, well after ML upgrade. The only software I can recall him installing recently (and I always look over his shoulder when he does such things - on the principle that 2 dummies are better than one!) is Touchcopy, an app that copies music/photos, or anything really, from iPhone/iPad/iWhatever to Mac.

He got advice from the official Apple tech shop in Hobart that the hard drive was probably on the way out and they promptly replaced it. I have to say that I'm not confident that they did much else in the way of problem analysis and, indeed, it didn't solve the problem. He then wandered into another tech shop in Cairns (he gets around!) who suggested that the problem might be the touch pad. This was then replaced. This hasn't cured it either and his wife frowned quite severely when he said, bugger it, he might move up to an Air.

Will do a Safe Boot and create a test user account as you suggest and report back.

thanks for your help

Yep!

Hmmm... Sounds like his AppleCare may close to running out. Is time an issue?

Artie, AppleCare has well and truly run out...

I guess by time you mean "is it urgent?" No it's not an issue!

cheers, Andy