Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

pendolino wrote:
can anyone let us know if they are getting the following message once or more in their console log (run the 'console' app) at or around the moment their system freezes?

"kernel /drv/ MacAsyncDevice.cpp:229 Wait for hostwait_work_complete_asyncdevice (02:00) finished with timeout. "

or this one

"/usr/libexec/hidd[30] IOHIDEventQueueEnqueue: Error enqueuing memory. (0xe00002e8)"

i've noticed at least one of these every time i have had the system lock up on me.

You are probably experiencing a different issue.
The EFI firmware 1.7 issue of this thread is not associated with any console messages.

I'd suggest searching the forum for those messages, or making your own thread about it.

MBP 13 (fw 1.7) & 3 dead Crucial 256 drives later. Well - chalk me up for yet another unhappy customer. I am an professional IT person who relies on the hardware every day. Apple has demonstrated their total incompetence when it comes to this segment. No acknowlegdement, no information for their own call center and no information to the outsourced repair shop all over the world. USB mounted it works fine - internally it just does not show up.

I want to second this; I have one of the new 13" MBPs, with the stock 500G drive. It's occasionally hung (more like 1 or 2 times per day than the high frequency reported here). Recently, however, it has begun hanging every few minutes! I have the 1.7 firmware, and I recently "bootcamped" it. But, aside from that, the machine is pretty standard. It's completely infuriating!

I took my 15 inch MBP into service in Hong Kong last week as my 3rd party 500GB Momentus 5400.6 drive stopped working properly after the 1.7 firmware update (i.e. the AJA diagnostics showed drive reading rates dropping down to zero).

The tech staff told me they did not know about the firmware or the roll back but their diagnostics showed a motherboard failure, so they ordered a replacement.

The new MB was installed and already had 1.7 installed, but works perfectly with my 500GB drive (i.e. AJA reading and writing of about 80MB/s)

My conclusion is that the FW update exposed a hardware problem in some MB, rather than the FW being the problem itself.

For anyone with the problem, I strongly recommend taking your MBP in for service ASAP with the 3rd party drive installed and let Apple fix the problem for you.

Good luck!

John

Sadly. the rollback disk Ella and fishbert have quoted doesnt work on my machine (somehow), so they genius has offered me an alternate route to fixing this, replacing the logicboard, he theorizes that the logicboard replacement will have an older version of the firmware on it.

I rang Apple today, explained the problem and pointed them in the direction of this thread. After a short wait they suggested a logic board replacement to rollback to the old firmware.

I've left it at the shop and should have it back in a few days, hopefully fully working.

Does today's firmware update fix this?

Today's firmware update is related to a different issue. It does not fix this.

Ponzi wrote:
Today's firmware update is related to a different issue. It does not fix this.

funny how the issue with all the third party web-news coverage gets resolved before our problem, eh..

Brand new 15" MBP, same problem with the intermittent 30 second "freezes". After reading almost all of this thread, it sounds like either rolling back to 1.6 or replacing the motherboard will fix the problem. We're heading out to the Genius Bar tonight to talk to them about it (already confirmed they have the rollback tool, yay), but we might want to just go ahead and replace the motherboard.

Can those of you who've replaced the motherboard tell me how you convinced them to do it, and how long you were without the computer? This new computer is already a replacement machine after a 3 week delay in getting the last MBP fixed, and it's starting to get really difficult to get any work done. Ugh.

Ponzi wrote:
Today's firmware update is related to a different issue. It does not fix this.

But has anyone tried it?

Not to say I'm expecting it to fix our issue here, but we won't really know until someone tries it. (I plan to give it a shot when I get home... worst case, I have to roll the firmware back again and wait some more)

Aja B. wrote:
Brand new 15" MBP, same problem with the intermittent 30 second "freezes". After reading almost all of this thread, it sounds like either rolling back to 1.6 or replacing the motherboard will fix the problem. We're heading out to the Genius Bar tonight to talk to them about it (already confirmed they have the rollback tool, yay), but we might want to just go ahead and replace the motherboard.

Can those of you who've replaced the motherboard tell me how you convinced them to do it, and how long you were without the computer? This new computer is already a replacement machine after a 3 week delay in getting the last MBP fixed, and it's starting to get really difficult to get any work done. Ugh.

I don't think you'll be able to convince them to swap a logic board when the firmware rollback tool exists. And, I'm not sure why you'd want them to, either... more chances for damage whenever that cover comes off.

I downloaded today's update and it won't even run. I assume it detects if the hard drive is the specific seagate. Otherwise, it simply says "You do not need this update."

BTW - to the prior question if an Intel X25 works with the update: A few have posted that they've had success, but I've put two separate X25's into my MBP (15") and they will not show at all. They'll work in any other machine, but this one after the firmware. Your experience may vary, but I'd be concerned before I'd drop the cash to put one in the MBP at the moment.

me 2, apple really needs to fix this

Ok, did the rollback at the store, hopefully that'll stop the freezing. Here's to v1.8 eventually! :P

fishbert wrote:

bobrudge wrote:
Does today's firmware update fix this?

Ponzi wrote:
Today's firmware update is related to a different issue. It does not fix this.

But has anyone tried it?

Not to say I'm expecting it to fix our issue here, but we won't really know until someone tries it. (I plan to give it a shot when I get home... worst case, I have to roll the firmware back again and wait some more)

Oh, I'm an idiot... today's release doesn't update the firmware on the logic board, but on the drive itself. So, it requires a specific hard drive.

Yeah, completely not applicable.