Q: MacBook Pro (2010) Freeze

baseliner wrote:

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.

Which version of gfxCardStatus are you running? Check Cody's Changelog for v1.7.5 at http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/changelog

jgmdean wrote:
Which version of gfxCardStatus are you running? Check Cody's Changelog for v1.7.5 at http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/changelog

I'm running the latest, 1.7.5 that I downloaded yesterday.

I've noticed that just prior to my macbook freezing, the screen begins to display a bunch of artifacts starting with random pixels changing color to the screen going completely blank and turning gray.

I ran Techtools and found no issues. I then brought it to the Apple Reseller I purchased it from and they ran some heavy duty diagnostics on the machine which all passed. I took the machine home again and didn't notice an issue until I plugged in a memory card reader to download some pictures into Aperture, and the computer began exhibiting the same issues again. It doesn't appear to me like a hard drive issue at all. Everytime the computer freezes, my hard drive is under minimal load. In some cases I'm even using an external drive.

I'm really getting frustrated with having to power reboot my computer almost daily. Any recommendations on how to proceed from here? Is everyone getting these weird screen artifacts?

baseliner wrote:

jgmdean wrote:
Which version of gfxCardStatus are you running? Check Cody's Changelog for v1.7.5 at http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/changelog

I'm running the latest, 1.7.5 that I downloaded yesterday.

Right, per the chnangelog you can see that the external Mini Display Port is a dependency.

Try this: With nothing plugged into the MDP, use gfxCardStatus 1.7.5 to select "Intel only" mode. Plug in your external display to the MDP. Watch what doesn't happen. Switch back to "NVIDIA only" or "Dynamic switching" with the external display still plugged in and it'll spring to life. I always use dual display, not mirrored, but AFAIK that doesn't matter.

PSIconolfi wrote:
I've noticed that just prior to my macbook freezing, the screen begins to display a bunch of artifacts starting with random pixels changing color to the screen going completely blank and turning gray.

I ran Techtools and found no issues. I then brought it to the Apple Reseller I purchased it from and they ran some heavy duty diagnostics on the machine which all passed. I took the machine home again and didn't notice an issue until I plugged in a memory card reader to download some pictures into Aperture, and the computer began exhibiting the same issues again. It doesn't appear to me like a hard drive issue at all. Everytime the computer freezes, my hard drive is under minimal load. In some cases I'm even using an external drive.

I'm really getting frustrated with having to power reboot my computer almost daily. Any recommendations on how to proceed from here? Is everyone getting these weird screen artifacts?

Is this with a USB or an Expresscard 34 card reader? Either way, if you can reliably reproduce this issue with the card reader, get your MBP replaced, that's a hardware error.

I can't help but wonder if there's a bad batch of MBP's out there with a chipset problem. Remember all the IO goes through that chipset and if something starts to glitch a bus or two there all kinds or errors and weirdness can result.

I got my 15" i7 MBP on May 7th and sadly the 14 day period has passed for me at this point. The machine was running fine until I ran into this problem on the 21st when I experienced a few crashes and by the 22nd, the machine was crashing within a minute of booting up and at one point the machine wouldn't boot up past the gray startup screen and it wouldn’t it boot up even from the system disc.

I noticed that this machine runs hotter than my 2008 Unibody MBP by about 20-30 degrees f. all around from the CPU to the GPU to the case itself. Without a cooler on the laptop, I have seen the CPU get to over 190 deg f while looking at some photos according to the iStat Pro widget.

I have had the machine on a cooler almost religiously since, but it still gets fairly warm even while idling.

Idle temp of the CPU is around 120-130 deg f. Right now CPU is 121 deg f, but I have a/c and fans on.

From Duke242's list (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2420192&start=120&tstart=0) I am experiencing:

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.

No current Apple Updates affect it (either for better or worse).

Hard Drives don't affect it at all. It happens with both SSDs, 5400rpm drives and 7200rpm drives.

The machine is generally not under load at the time of the crash.

The frequency of the issue is completely random, in some cases every 10 minutes, in others once a week or less.





Things that are unique to my problem are:

Airport WiFi has problems acquiring 2.4GHz N from Airport Extreme, but has no problems with 5GHz N

Crashes occur with auto graphic switching both on and off, but seem to occur more when it is turned on.

Putting the Display to Sleep with Expose causes the computer to crash almost always.

#17 is key. It happened on Friday so much that the computer would not boot past the gray screen. Saturday it crashed every hour or so. Sunday every few hours. Yesterday the machine crashed 4 times doing completely different things. The machine crashed when idling by itself in a room, it crashed while sending a file to print over airport, it crashed while sending a file over airport to the airport disc, it crashed while trying to reinstall OS x via the original factory disc several times, it crashed once while reading the thread on the apple website about crashing, it crashed while surfing the web, it crashed while entering information into iCal, it crashed while checking Mail... but strangely it did not crash while exporting 1000 JPEGS in lightroom while encoding a video in handbrake with photoshop and adobe bridge open, a few finder windows open while playing Halo over the internet with all video and graphics settings to max over 802.11g. It is in deed random when the machine crashes, but it seems to me that it crashes when it does graphics related things or things over wifi.

Hopefully my trip to the Apple Store tonight will yield an answer or two... or at the very least a replacement machine.

I have reformatted/reinstalled from the original system disc twice since the 21st and the machine is no better than it was before the reinstall.



\m/
Re: MacBook Pro (2010) Freeze

baseliner wrote:
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.

@baseliner,

When I am on external display, gfxCardStatus shows that the external monitor is a "dependency" and that it can't switch to the Intel card. If I exit all the apps that use the Nvidia card, switch to the LCD screen, I can switch to the Intel card. But if I put myself in Intel-only and connect my external LCD screen, then I don't see anything on that external screen. See:

http://img.skitch.com/20100525-eaucrri9xkie7dc2c5ne825n83.png

Maybe the Intel card supports an external display only up to a certain resolution? Mine is 1920x1200; what is yours?

Alex

jgmdean wrote:
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?

Yes, mine is a custom order. But keep in mind that the kind of folks posting on forums are also, IMHO, much more likely to be the type of people who are getting custom orders .

Alex

10.6.4 Beta (stable) is available for download. Has even a single person downloaded and tried these updated beta drivers (confirmed stable by many in the community). After ordering custom configurations (i7 CPU), formatting several times while speaking to an Apple rep on the phone, and willingness to lose your laptop for weeks at the Apple store, why wouldn't you try such an easy fix and report back your results? I myself do not have the 2010 model or I would post the results. Come on 2010 pros, let us know if it works!

jamesuva wrote:
10.6.4 Beta (stable) is available for download. Has even a single person downloaded and tried these updated beta drivers (confirmed stable by many in the community). After ordering custom configurations (i7 CPU), formatting several times while speaking to an Apple rep on the phone, and willingness to lose your laptop for weeks at the Apple store, why wouldn't you try such an easy fix and report back your results? I myself do not have the 2010 model or I would post the results. Come on 2010 pros, let us know if it works!

I would be curious to see if that helps too, but my understanding of the problem is that it is hardware related, not software.

We can only speculate whether this is a software or hardware problem (I believe it is software-related as despite the complaints, I do not believe so many users across several mac websites I visit would report such a consistent problem). Regardless of the cause, we can easily test 10.6.4 Beta (stable) to see if the problem still occurs! Perhaps the fix already exists in this beta! I did a search and one user did try 10.6.4 and stated he has not experienced any more of the "beach ball" symptoms to date. Can someone please confirm? Fairly simple to format back to the 10.6.3 afterwards.

Thanks and good luck everyone!

okeven wrote:

jamesuva wrote:
10.6.4 Beta (stable) is available for download. Has even a single person downloaded and tried these updated beta drivers (confirmed stable by many in the community). After ordering custom configurations (i7 CPU), formatting several times while speaking to an Apple rep on the phone, and willingness to lose your laptop for weeks at the Apple store, why wouldn't you try such an easy fix and report back your results? I myself do not have the 2010 model or I would post the results. Come on 2010 pros, let us know if it works!

I would be curious to see if that helps too, but my understanding of the problem is that it is hardware related, not software.

...I went in for my 5:30 Genius Bar Appointment and they replaced my machine no questions asked after describing the problem. Even though I was past the 14 day grace period I was under 30 days so the manager had no problem helping me out.

All seems to be functioning fine so far... I will keep my eye on this for the NEXT 14 days and give a shout out at the end to tell y'all one way or the other if I've had success with the new machine.

jgmdean wrote:
Try this: With nothing plugged into the MDP, use gfxCardStatus 1.7.5 to select "Intel only" mode. Plug in your external display to the MDP. Watch what doesn't happen. Switch back to "NVIDIA only" or "Dynamic switching" with the external display still plugged in and it'll spring to life. I always use dual display, not mirrored, but AFAIK that doesn't matter.

Just tried the above and I am able to reconnect the external display and the display does show up fine on the external monitor, except that it's a bit cut off at the two edges (probably cos I did not have mirroring on). Once I close the lid, the machine goes to sleep, then wakes up when I hit a key on the keyboard and shows the screen fine w/o the black bars at the edges. So in summary, no issue w/ just leaving it w/ Intel only and reconnecting the external display.

@Alex - my max res on the laptop's screen is 1680x1050, however, when plugged into the external display via an HDMI cable, it shows the res as "1080p (Television)" .. so maybe HDMI has something to do with why I'm able to use the Intel graphics adapter?

Where can you download the latest 10.6.4 beta?

baseliner wrote:
@Alex - my max res on the laptop's screen is 1680x1050, however, when plugged into the external display via an HDMI cable, it shows the res as "1080p (Television)" .. so maybe HDMI has something to do with why I'm able to use the Intel graphics adapter?

@baseliner, yes, it looks like the Intel card might be able to drive the HDMI port (1080p is 1920×1080, which is a fairly low resolution compared to what you can get on a external monitor).

Alex