NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!

happened again, first time since the 10.6.6 update. Again hooked up to the 30" ACD, clicked a youtube link in Mail, and as soon as the Safari window popped up, the screen flashed black once for half a second, then started to glitch out (chunks of graphics scattered, system froze, etc, then the rapid intermittent flickering as has happened before. Waited a while to see if it would kick me out as usual, but ended up just hard rebooting instead after a few minutes.

Console has a bunch of these:

1/10/11 3:23:51 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0xd = GR: SW Notify Error
1/10/11 3:24:11 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel timeout!
1/10/11 3:24:11 PM kernel 0000006e
1/10/11 3:24:11 PM kernel 00200000 00005039 00000476 00000002
1/10/11 3:24:11 PM kernel 0000047c 00000100 00000000 0000000e
1/10/11 3:24:11 PM kernel 00000000 00000000 00000043
1/10/11 3:24:11 PM kernel 00000002 00000000

alternating with bunches of these

1/10/11 3:29:01 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
1/10/11 3:29:01 PM kernel 00000069

My MBP going to freeze with this application, ALWAYS:

Flash plugin (Safari, Firefox, Chrome, ..)
Twitter (new version, Tweetie works well)

Thanks for your great post. I have exactly the same problem.

Did you have any crashes since replacing GeForce.kext / GeForceVADriver.bundle?

Does anyone think this has anything to do with it? I just got a notice about this in email, and it looks like my MBP is eligible.

Symptoms:
Distorted or scrambled video on the notebook computer screen

http://www.nvidiasettlement.com/

?

fastasleep wrote:
Does anyone think this has anything to do with it? I just got a notice about this in email, and it looks like my MBP is eligible.

Symptoms:
Distorted or scrambled video on the notebook computer screen

http://www.nvidiasettlement.com/

I took advantage of the NVidia graphics card replacement scheme.
My 2008 MacBook Pro had lost it video output completely - black screen.
I took it to my local Apple Store (UK) and they replaced the graphics card (GeForce 8600M GT) and its circuit board.

Unfortunately, *I still get the NVDA(OpenGL) errors* mentioned in this thread.
Perhaps my replacement also has a fault.

Richard

Unfortunately, my stability did not last. I've tried various things since, disabling Quartz Extreme, and so on, without success. Starting in safe mode (holding Shift key at start) does seem to work, but that's not a viable solution. Its interesting to note though that among other things, safe mode disables Quartz Extreme. Maybe taking a closer look at the differences between safe mode and disabling QE by itself would be worthwhile. Near term I'm planning a video card swap, even though all diagnostics pass.

Ah, we have the same machine and configuration. The problem affects a lot of different configurations as well, I find it baffling Apple keeps silent on the problem.

I must say that Apple tech support is pretty bad - it's a brand you'd expect more from. This problem is well documented and known (through numerous feedback) and has in the last two years been traced - by the users - to a driver problem. Not hardware, software.

Apple just is unwilling to put the effort into fixing it. So much for "loving your customers". 😐

Anyway, report back what the senior engineers advise!

I got an update today from senior tech support, just letting me know that engineers are still investigating. It sounded like their preliminary feedback was it's a graphics/driver issue and they were looking for a workaround/solution.

I'll post when there's a further update or conclusion.

I just wanted to add that I've just received this error, found in the log after a complete system freeze. I don't use an external monitor on this MBP i7 2.8G machine. The error is "NVDA(OpenGL): Channel timeout!"

Interestingly this machine has been running Windows XPsp3 more than it has OS X, and there are never any such problems in Windows despite heavy GPU loads.

Yet in OS X this is the second time I have had this occur. In this particular instance I was merely attempting to open a browser window in the latest version of GraphicConverter.

The computer completely froze except for the mouse cursor, which is odd because a hardware freeze usually freezes EVERYTHING. Yet after several minutes nothing loosened up, and no response from the keyboard. In the end I had to hold the power button down.

This computer is not even two months old.. The power button isn't the only thing being depressed over these incidents.

Having followed the thread for a long time, I'm confident that this is NOT a hardware problem. It's driver related and since we cannot (easily or safely) upgrade graphics drivers ourselves, it is up to Apple to fix it.

I have used this machine - obviously with the same graphics chip - with no problems. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the problems first exhibited themselves with Snow Leopard.

There are some applications that are simply unusable, like others have reported: iPhoto 11, Tweetie for Mac, Unison and many others that apparently make certain calls upon the chip that lead to channel exception errors on a wide range of nVidia chips.

With the finite number of configurations out there, it is pathetic and in my opinion unacceptable that this problem has been around for two years and counting.

One more for this little club. I got my first (I'm perhaps being overly optimistic in hoping for last) screen weirdness today. Machine is a 2009 MBP and the symptom was random black and white high speed flashing of the screen. After a smooth restart the console log showed:

11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel 00000069
11-01-19 10:54:33 AM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error

There was quite a lot running at the time but my immediate suspicion was VMware in unity mode.

I've had something like this before on an old macbook and ended up having to throw it away in the end. Fingers crossed that doesn't happen this time.

I am also interested in any fixes that may come for this error. I got it today after working on an iMovie project for a couple of hours. I was going to blame iMovie for not being any more crash proof than it was in '09, but perhaps this has little to do with iMovie other than it uses OpenGL.


2011-01-20 12:53:36 AM kernel Debug NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error

Message was edited by: CPngN

I got a further update by voice mail from senior tech support over the weekend:

- He's still waiting on engineers for a solution to get iPhoto '11 working on my system
- At this point in time, a workaround would be to go back to iPhoto '09

So there you go. Given how widely and for how long this and similar NVDA(OpenGL) problems have been reported and discussed on numerous threads, I won't hold my breath waiting.

I get regular NVDA(OpenGL) errors causing flashing screen and lockups.
I'm also getting regular disk errors when I use Disk Utility.
The errors are:
Invalid volume file count
(it should be **** instead of ****)
Invalid volume directory count
(it should be **** instead of ****)

Are the NVDA(OpenGL) errors causing the disk errors?
I would think that the file and directory counts differ because files were not closed properly when the computer froze.

Thanks for your help.

Richard

I think you get the disk errors because the computer locked up while doing things. You can pretty much expect that on any operating system if you just pull the power without shutting down, and that's effectively what these crashes are to the OS. The OpenGL errors though are a result of either the nVidia hardware crashing, overheating, or the drivers need a bugfix.