Q: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!

In response to amacbishop's post---

i have reinstalled osx 10.5.5 a few days back and my system has not crashed since.

Seems this is a common problem of the updated software and the NVIDIA 7300 GT card. Worrying in terms of Snow Leopard - isn't one of the main features of OS X 10.6 to be greater use of OpenGL? If Apple are trying it out by increasing its use in 10.5.7 and it's done this to our system, it doesn't bode well for Snow Leopard ...

Thanks, iotek - I think to get my stability back I will go back a couple of versions and wait to see if any fix materialises.

Software Update showed updates for iTunes and QuickTime, so I installed both right away. Then, yesterday, I went to the Genius Bar. The gentleman played some music in iTunes and turned on the visualizer (puts a big load on the graphics chip and warms it up). Then he started just about every program I have. The system handled it all without freezing up.
Just to prove I wasn't making it all up, I showed him the NVDA error messages in the Console log. He couldn't find any alerts from Apple that might give some insight to our problems.
I forgot to tell him that I had installed the free Fan Control program (preference pane) and set some faster speed parameters. Maybe that had something to do with it.

Since I last experienced the problem, I updated iTunes, QuickTime and iWorks and then had the Disk Utility program repair permissions (it found a lot of errors). Since then (knock on wood) the system has run flawlessly for about 8 hours without freeze and/or the need for restart.
I'll keep you updated.

The same thing is happening to me when running Maya 2009 - It seems to happen during my rendering or when i turn on "hardware shading" in the viewport... I thought perhaps it was a Maya 2009 issue so tried my old Maya 8.5 - and - well the same exact thing happened... after restart - I get the same errors listed here in the console! This is killing my ability to work my school project! i guess I will have to boot into BOOTCAMP and pray windows can handle it without freezin out! And trust me - I'd rather not! Hope Apple comes out with a fix for this - i'm taxed!
-david

Since updating iTunes and QuickTime, I haven't had any freezes.
Knocking on wood.

So far it works for me - so it seems that fixing the permission rights has solved the problem for me. There is one caveat however: I noticed that the problem occured when it was very hot in the room, with an ambient temperature of 31C / 59F. With a PC I run into trouble with these temperatures a few years ago. Right now, weather has cooled down and the ambient temp is about 21C / 70F.

hi david,

I feel with you, it's exact the discription of my mac problem! everytime turn my 3d objects in maya the mac freezes completely.

wikipedia :
"OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL was developed by Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) in 1992[1] and is widely used in CAD, virtual reality, scientific visualization, information visualization, and flight simulation. It is also used in video games, where it competes with Direct3D on Microsoft Windows platforms (see Direct3D vs. OpenGL)."

the conclusion is:
apple or /and nvidia have to fix the openGL problem!

if anyone finds the fixing of these bug, PLEASE POST IT HERE !!!

- ron -

hi friends of the sun,

I've solved the 10.5.7 freezing problem that comes while using the openGL commands.
the holy words are: "Reverting to a previous Mac OS X version"

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15216.html

it's very easy if you've made backups with your time maschine. if you follow the steps of the link below, you can choose a backup you want. the great thing is, behind the backup date you can see the version number of your OSX.

time: 2 hours

good look!!!


I'm happy now and can work with maya again

De-activated MenuCalendarClock ical - and now it seems to be stable again! Hope it stays like that...

This error has caused me MAJOR problem. After I updated to 10.5.7 the problem got so bad that I had to hard-restart the computer several times per day. I even took the drastic step of completely reformatting the hard drive then installing OS 10.5 from scratch, then updating to 10.5.6.

Didn't solve the problem.

Final Cut Pro (5.1.4) seems to aggravate the problem and this NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! error comes up more often than when I'm running other applications.

Just now, my screen got all jacked-up when I was switching Spaces to open a Flash CS4 file.

I'm at a loss as how to fix. This NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT card / driver seems to have some bugs.

I ran Apple's Hardware tests, and everything came back fine.

For some reason, the 10.5.7 update makes these errors much more difficult. They seem to affect the stability of the entire system, whereas with 10.5.6, they are just annoying, and generally the computer seems to keep working.

I've been checking this thread for a couple weeks now, and hopefully, something useful will come up.

Unfortunately, the problem ist back. Repairing permission rights seems to prolong the time between the freezes, but does not prevent/solve the problem.

I'm going crazy too. This started to happen to me less than two months ago.
I always regularly updated my system, and never experienced anything.
And 10.5.7 is shipped more than two months ago. Right?

Last test I'd like to do, is install Leopard as shipped on the dvd, or even use Tiger as I got when I originally bought my mac.

My problems are on wake up, as I described here.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2040046&tstart=0

You should check the iMac Freezing thread. You're problem looks like the one described by many users in there.

yep, I got screwed by the update too. I have a mac pro with 2 nvidia 7300 GT cards. Everytime I fire up my main 3d program, it crashes. Photoshop crashed it once so far too.

This needs to be fixed. This is how I make my living...

Message was edited by: monday1313