Q: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!

Luckily I had just made a SuperDuper clone from my installation before I applied iLife 11. Since I couldn't get a downgrade to work (well, iPhoto 9 complained that my Library had been upgraded, even though it too was from the backup) I did a complete clone back to my main drive.

All is well, but I'm fifty euros lighter and have nothing to show for it. Harumpf...

****, upgraded Unison and immediately I began experiencing a flood of channel exception errors.

Since the guys at Panic are friendly and communicative (Apple has been MUTE on this issue and I have left Feedback more times than I can remember) I have mailed them to ask - if anything - they changed something in the way the program uses OpenGL.

Will report back when I know more. If you haven't already, complain to Apple on their Feedback page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

+"Today, we love our customers and we’re going to take care of them.”+ (Steve Jobs, July 2010).

HAHA.

Wow.

I just took my iMac in last night for what turns out to be the same problem. I have an early 2008 24" model with a 8800 GS. They're going to keep it for up to 48 hours running hardware tests. It's already had a failed hard drive, and earlier this week they replaced the logic board and video card after a spectacular crash and then failure to boot again.

This particular problem came up after I'd been playing WoW for an hour or so the very night I set up and restored my data after the repair. I took it back to the store assuming it's a hardware problem still (and was pretty upset about leaving it there for more testing after all the issues I've already had). I will mention this thread when I check in tonight.

@Lars

I am experiencing the same problem with Transmit and Coda (as well as the non-Panic app AppZapper).
But, it's also happened randomly a few times (once when opening a drop-down menu in Safari).

---

Has anyone found a solid fix for this problem yet, or am I now in the market for a new Graphics Card.

I too am getting these errors. This happened while watching a video on CNN in Firefox. What I had running:

OS X 10.6.5
Firefox (multiple pages loaded)
TextMate
Transmit 4
Terminal
TweetDeck
Mail
iCal
iTunes
iPhoto

I've only had this problem a couple times before while running a Windows 7 VM in VMware Fusion.

Since I have two GT 120s in my Mac Pro, I've swapped them to see if I can determine if it's hardware or software. When the crash occurred I only had flashing on two monitors connected to the same card. My other card is connected to a single monitor, and it didn't flash. By swapping the cards, I may get some useful information. I ran TechTool Deluxe on both video cards and they passed.

SSHing into my machine and restarting it cleared the problem.

Update: I can successfully generate this crash on my MacBook Pro as well (has the 9400M and 9600M GT), telling me that my hardware is probably fine in my Mac Pro.

Without fail, if I visit this site: http://www.jokakoti.fi in Safari, at some point when refreshing or resuming from sleep the crash will happen.

Just an update from my trusty 2006 Mac Pro with the 7300GT in it.

Running 10.6.5 and I see no changes. Still get the freezes occasionally, and sometimes they seem to be increasing in frequency. Usually in (surprise, surprise) graphics heavy apps like iPhoto '11.

This is clearly a software driver issue....and I'm losing faith that Apple gives a **** about the issue. My machine rocks.....and I'm really happy with it still (actually putting in an SSD to extend the life a little more). But Apple has me stuck....I have NO CHOICES of officially supported video cards that I can buy.

Hopefully this issue is fixed, but I'm doubting it.

Thankfully so far...it just freezes my machine, but it comes back after 15-30 seconds (knock on wood).

-Kevin

Looking at the 2010 Mac Pros and thankfully, I see AMD cards in them

I sent that url and description of the issue to Apple, and did a bug report to NVIDIA as well, not that I expect to get any answers, but at least tried reporting it

Hi All,

I was having the same issue as twstokes,

I have a 2010 i5 MBP with the Nvidia 330M,

and visiting SOME flash enabled websites such as http://www.jokakoti.fi and one I use myself www.channel4.com/programmes/4od

causes my computer and twstokes to actually HARD crash needing the power button held, and again in my case the only mention in the logs is stuff like:

NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!.

A little background info, I only saw this issue when my MacBook Pro was plugged into my Cinema Display (thus using the Nvidia card and not the built in intel one) this fact AND the console messages led me to think it was either a hardware failure with the Nvidia card or driver issues.

I did not see this on 10.6.4 and my computer has no problem running graphically intensive games such as Counter-Strike:source or Left4Dead2.

SO.... Even though I thought it would be rediculous to assume that the flash plug-in was causing an issue with the graphics drivers enough to crash the machine I thought i'd try various releases of the flash plugin.

so:

10.6.5 ships with Flash player v10.1.102.64 ---- Hard crashes and forced reboot.

various other Flash player versions caused the same instability on the certain sites (and i'm sure there are others) listed above. I literally tried about 10 different versions of the flash plugin (Including the 64bit beta that's available on adobes site)

UNTIL I finally found on adobe's site Flash version: 10.0.45.2!

This I found out later was the version that shipped with 10.6.4.

I installed this and have NO more issues.
Both of the troublesome sites:

http://www.jokakoti.fi and www.channel4.com/programmes/4od

now work everytime without issue.

I never have the crash anymore and it's been over a week using those previously troublesome websites.

So this crazy bug / driver issue that actually forces a hard shutdown and all those NVDA console errors was (at least for me) caused ENTIRELY by the latest bug fixes in the Flash plug in.


Little did I know by upgrading to 10.6.5 and the latest flash plug in I'd actually be making my system totally unstable.

so I recommend using 10.6.5 with the 10.0.45.2 flash player...


For others who have this issue and don't use flash, i'd suggest it's still probably a software issue with some other incompatible piece drivel.

Either that or the Nvidia graphics card drivers with 10.6.5 are muck.


Hope this helps!

Thanks a lot for posting that info JohnAlanWoods - after rolling back to Flash Player 10.0.45.2 I can no longer repeat the crash on either of my machines.

This will be a good workaround for me until newer drivers and or a new Flash Player is released.

*Apple...thanks again for making iPhoto '11 almost unusable* because of this driver issue. Now just double clicking an image to maximize it in iPhoto will cause the NVDA error to freeze the system.

Hey everyone....good thing Apple is moving processes to the graphics card....oh wait....Apple can't write proper drivers, so that's not gonna work out is it?!?



-Kevin

here's an interesting (?) data point. note that this thread is so long that i havent read the whole thing - this may have happened to someone else upthread.

MacPro1,1 with 1 dual-core 2GHz Xeon. stock nvidia 7300 GT.

no problems with this machine all the way from 10.4 to 10.6.4. i upgraded to 10.6.5, and now i'm getting this problem a few times a week. sometimes the display locks up hard, and sometimes it freezes for a few seconds and starts working fine again.

i'm wondering if restoring the NV40 driver from 10.6.4 would help solve this problem. i have found that logging in to the MacPro from another computer and executing "pmset sleepnow" causes the computer to sleep, which powers off the video card. after waking up the video card is reinitialized by the EFI bios/OS and it works fine again for a while.

nothing in particular seems to trigger this. sometimes it's the screensaver, sometimes it's switching between two desktop spaces, sometimes it's just random.

NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0xd = GR: SW Notify Error

Same error on a MacBook Pro late-2008 (9600M GT).
No iLife 11, so it's not that causing the lockup.

Apple, hopefully you hear us.

Well this is looking clearly like an NVIDIA issue that isn't machine specific. Overall that's a good thing, as Apple should hopefully pay attention if more than just one machine or one card was having the problem.

Also to be clear, it's not iLife '11 itself that is causing the issue, iLife is 'exposing' the issue. It's clearly an issue where operations are offloaded to the GPU. iLife '11 clearly utilizes the GPU more. This is also why the latest Flash player is also causing issues.....some Flash player pages will offload to the GPU and that's when this problem occurs.

Apple, please look into this.

I finally submitted an Apple Bug Report hoping that maybe they will see it.

-Kevin

What category did you file the bug report under? Mac OS X, Hardware, etc?