Here's a quick recap of everything about this issue:
1. It's a hard freeze of the graphics and some services. Everything will stop and the mouse will continue to work for a few seconds before stopping too.
2. Things like Skype and iTunes will continue to work, as you can still hear the sound/music.
3. No current Apple Updates affect it (either for better or worse).
4. It may or may not unfreeze after 10-15minutes of waiting.
5. It affects 15" and 17" MacBook Pro, with some (fewer) reported issues of 13" MacBook Pro's doing it.
6. It happens in both Mac OS X and Windows 7
7. Hard Drives don't affect it at all. It happens with both SSDs, 5400rpm drives and 7200rpm drives.
8. There are no entries in the System Log file.
9. The machine is generally not under load at the time of the crash.
10. Getting it replaced by Apple won't fix it, the replacement machine will still have the issue.
11. If you unplug the Display port and plug it back in, you will get multicoloured static on the external screen.
12. The temperature of the machine doesn't seem to matter. Low CPU Usage and low temps don't affect it.
13. Being on battery power doesn't affect it. Some people report it only when on Battery Power. All of mine have happened when not on battery power.
14. Apple Hardware Test shows nothing out of the ordinary.
15. Using the Data Transfer to get data from an older machine doesn't affect it.
16. It seems to mainly affect the Core i7 MacBook Pros, however there are a few cases of the i5's doing it too (and through the 1-2 reported 13" ones, the C2D chipsets too).
17. The frequency of the issue is completely random, in some cases every 10 minutes, in others once a week or less.
18. 3 of the cases were running Skype, a lot of others were running Firefox or Chrome as well. The Firefox/Chrome one isn't statistically important, as a lot of people are running a web browser 24/7. The Skype one is more interesting, as it happened in the middle of a call. For me, 2 of the crashes were in the middle of a Skype call and I rarely make calls on Skype.
If your error isn't the one described, if your computer isn't doing the whole lock up that everyone has described, please don't post in this thread, instead, make your own thread that documents your problem. Issues with putting your computer to sleep and graphics glitching out are not a part of this issue.
I think the most interesting points out of everything I've made is the fact that most people are running i7 MacBook Pros and that the frequency that it happens varies so much. For me it has happened about once a week, for some others it happens almost constantly. Perhaps this could be investigated further (environmental factors, applications running, temps + cpu usage + graphics card usage).
One more point is that the crash happens at times when it's NOT doing the graphics switching. It'll be in the middle of a Skype call or using a program that has already kicked in the nVidia card. There's no reason for it to swap back to the old card in the middle of whatever you're doing, so it's unlikely that that's the issue.
If I've missed anything, please post. If this isn't the error you're having, post elsewhere.
Dustin
EDIT: Also, don't bother saying that this is your last Mac because of this error, we all know that's not true. Once you've used Mac you never go back.
Message was edited by: Duk242
