Q: MacBook Pro (2010) Freeze

I have a late 2009 MBP 15" and have had the same exact issues as people here with the new 2010 model. Due to Apple refusing to acknowledge the issue, I decided to video the problem I have and put it on Youtube. I can consistently reproduce the problem by transferring large files to or from the internal hard disk (Western Digital 500GB), but it also happens when just casually browsing the internet. Large file read/writes just exacerbate the problem and make it more common. Here is the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCO3SyIrkLw

Also, in case new owners of the 2010 MBP have not seen the initial thread with almost 2,000 posts from nearly a year ago, here it is:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2054387

If anyone who watches my video can please comment back here and let me know how similar your issue is, that would be extremely helpful!

The problem you demonstrate in the video is not the same as the one I'm experiencing (and I suspect this is the case for most of the others on this thread as well). In your case, your display is actually not frozen since your Activity Monitor graph does continue to scroll, wheel spins, etc. In my case, absolutely nothing on the screen changes or can be changed except that the mouse pointer can be moved. The other difference is that your computer unfroze fairly quickly compared to mine which does not unfreeze or unfreezes after about 15 mins..

Occasionally mine does freeze for 10 to 15 minutes. It is not common though. On average the freezes last for 30 seconds. Also, the Activity Monitor continues to update only because it was already open. If I was to try to open a program after the freeze starts, nothing on the screen will respond. I cannot even click on any menus on the top bar. Is that similar to your issue?

@okeven,

Thank you for sharing this video with us here. The way the 2010 MBP freeze is somewhat different: in most cases they freeze for 10-15 minutes, after which they sometimes (not always) come back to life. Also the freeze isn't correlated, at least in my experience, to high disk activity.

Even if the symptom isn't identical, the root cause could be the same. Have you solved this problem with the 2009 MBP, or is this still something that is unsolved?

Alex

Still unsolved. I made the video tonight after spending four hours at the Genius Bar arguing with the tech. I was able to reproduce it over and over in front of him and he blamed it on "normal hard drive operation" over and over.

In my situation, the freezes are about 30 seconds 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time, it ranges from a few minutes to at least 15 minutes. It all but a couple situations, the system did unfreeze suddenly.

I've got the same problem, after 2wks I got the first macbook pro.

Macook pro 13" 2.4Ghz (2010 Standard configuration)

My new MacBook Pro i7 ordered the day they were announced has been nothing but trouble from day one. It began out of the box with slow software response, and frequent spinning beach ball, and endless waiting. Now it won't start at all -- gray screen. Finally got files pulled off after hooking up in hard drive mode to another computer (took about 5 minutes to show-up). Passed hardware test. Now I'm ready to reformat drive and start from the beginning. Try to reinstall software from original disk "The contents of this disk can't be changed," I'm informed. Bought from Apple store on-line. Do I need to send the thing back to Shanghai? I've owned nothing but Macs since 1987-dozens of them-including at least 6 portables. This new MacBook Pro is by far the least satisfactory Apple product ever purchased. When is the recall Mr. Jobs?

Just to add my name to the list, I'm having crashes too. Mine aren't freezes that come back -- I get the grey curtain of death slowly descending and am told (rightly) that I have to hard reset. I've only seen it when connected to my external acer monitor (which is almost always how I work) and find that it often happens when I'm using the keyboard to switch between apps or to cycle amongst terminal windows. The kernel panics (all of which I report to Apple) mention something about a possible attempt to unlock a locked mutex. This happens to me on average once every 3 days.

That seems to sound like a different issue.

Playing Monday Morning Techie-Quaterback here (Don't Shoot! ):

I'm begining to wonder if this isn't a problem with the new (to the MacBook anyway) Intel chipset? Losing access to the internal SATA would show up as a freeze with some window updates as has been described, losing access to the graphics frame buffer would explain the screen freeze (except hardware mouse pointer). Postulated failure modes:

1)The new "lite" GPU is in the chipset and it's being switched, a software or hardware/timing error occurs and for whatever reason the driver is unable to reset access to the boot drive and thus either of the freeze types.

2)For whatever QA reason (bad batch, connection, drive failure, intermittent whatever) the chipset glitches, possibly aggravated or increased in probability by disk load, the driver is unable to reset access to the boot drive and thus either of the freeze types.

On the hardware side: it sounds as if most of the hard, repeatable or frequent freeze machines were all custom or at least mail order? Can we confirm this?

On the software side the OS X driver for the Intel chipset may need some work and a patch, especially with regards to error handling.

Comments on the above?

James

Interesting theories.. Mine was a custom order one (I upgraded the HD to 7200 and the display to hi-res on my 15"). However, at this point, I have a feeling the problem has to do with the Nvidia graphics adapter and not the Intel one. My rationale is that for the last 4 weeks since I got this machine, I've been mainly using it w/ an ASUS 24" screen and it appears that the default graphics adapter used in this mode is/was the Nvidia one (I found this out after I downloaded gfxCardStatus yesterday. I set the graphics to Intel only yesterday morning and no freezes yet (it's only been 24hrs but I've used the machine for about 18 of those 24hrs). It's still not enough time to definitively conclude that Intel is not issue.. will wait and see... also, as someone pointed out, 10.6.4 Beta's release notes do list fixes to graphics driver issues.. http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/05/mac-os-x-1064-in-the-works-to-address- graphics-issues.ars Hopefully this will resolve our issue..

Thank you Artitron: I have had only one freeze and after using it on battery (imovie, iphoto, itunes, safari, etc....with several switching, when needed, back and forth between the 2 graphic chipsets) or on AC no more freezes...so far so good. It is so random that, at least on my mbp (touching wood), a hw problem is probably remote...that is why I have decided not to return it to apple as it might be a 50-50 bet: I could even receive a mbp with the same problems as others, hence renouncing to this mbp freezing only once....
Looking forward to 10.6.4 though.
Thank you and keep us informed.
Ciao

You would have to be using the Nvidia chip with an external display of any kind as that's the only one the port is wired to.

I suspect it's not either GPU, but rather the switch between them that can trigger a freeze in a lot of the cases quoted here. The repeatable frequent freezes I contend are the genuine hardware errors that result in the same symptom: hung I/O chipset and thus a freeze.

Considering that neither the Intel chipset and embedded graphics, or the Nvidia, or even the OS X display drivers were originally designed for this kind of switching AFAIK, it's amazing it works as well as it does. Here's hoping that it's a race condition, deadlock, or timing related issue that can be fixed with a firmware and/OR OS driver update.

jgmdean wrote:
You would have to be using the Nvidia chip with an external display of any kind as that's the only one the port is wired to.

Unless gfxCardStatus is showing me wrong info, the above isn't true since I'm currently on an external display, I've selected Intel only in gfxCardStatus, and it's showing me the "i" in the menu bar. Plus, I don't see why they would limit external displays to just the Nvidia chip, which AFAIK is meant for more graphics-intensive operations.