Q: MacBook Pro (2010) Freeze

Still freezing after update!! UGH!!!

Message was edited by: ccashman92

I'm pretty sure it's associated with automatic graphics switching. I turned the switching off last week and didn't have any trouble until I turned it back on this morning after installing the update - and it froze straight away. Have been in contact with apple support and they've made the usual suggestions (resetting PRAM (?), running hardware check etc). We'll see.

I thought it might be associated with the switching, but turning it off did no good. None of the repairs did anything either so I reinstalled the OS. Freezing continued. The occasional change in settings (PRAM, plists) gave an appearance of a return to stability, but always a couple of days later, gremlins returned.

At the weekend I wiped the disk, but it froze during the reinstall. And again during the extended hardware test; and when I tried wiping the disk again, froze over and over. Target mode does work so data was recovered. I have 3 or 4 ideas: graphics, hard disk (target mode suggests not), logic board, or something as yet undiscovered.

The Mac sits in my office in bubblewrap waiting for collection and I am working off a Mac mini. Disappointed (not in the Mac mini, I might add).

I did following steps before i used the SL Graphics-Update these days:

- TechTool Deluxe Hardware Check
- Reset SMC
- Updated Flash Player (H.264 GPU Decoding)
- Updated gfxCardStatus App to latest version

Maybe this helps. Its catchy but dont think different in this case.. think positive! =)

Looks like Apple have released an gfx update for Snow Leopard - which potentially "Resolves an image corruption issue that may occur when disconnecting and reconnecting external displays while the system is running.".

may i ask why can't you return it if your mbp freezes up?

I've posted about this in the past. on my machine i can actually trigger a freeze by using a hardware monitor, called IORegistryExplorer, the one included with XCode. If that is running at the moment graphics switch, my computer freezes, and remains accessible only via SSH (under certain conditions).

My suspicion is the subsystem that posts notification of changes in the hardware tree, which obviously cause a mess under certain conditions. That makes gfxcardstatus a suspect in my setup. Hence why I have not installed it at all, and suggest that realtime system utilities are kept to a minimum (I do use iStatPro on the dashboard).

Hope this helps someone.

have you reported a bug to apple with the steps to reproduce the freeze?

http://bugreport.apple.com/

If not, please, do it right now!

Thank you

mgcharlie wrote:
have you reported a bug to apple with the steps to reproduce the freeze?

i have. it's been staying "open" ever since.

Here's my experience with this problem:

I'm pretty sure the problem isn't isolated to just the switching between cards. I think just operating using the nVidia card/drivers causes the issue. If you disable the automatic switching you'll use the nVidia card less often and therefore run into the problem less frequently. When using Parallels, for example, the nVidia card still runs even with switching disabled. I think this is why some people experience the issue more/less than others. Some people, like myself, use Parallels 100% of the time I use my Mac so the nVidia card is always running and the problem happens to me all the time.

I've been using gfxCardStatus for a little over a week now (thanks to this thread) and keeping it set to "Intel only" has allowed me to run without freezing the entire time. It kind of stinks though because Parallels with Windows 7 (Aero) runs pretty slowly without the nVidia card.

I'm going to try out today's update and see if that allows me to safely switch back to nVidia.

This is way beyond unbelievable. Loyal customers, myself included are waiting to spend thousands of dollars on an Apple Macbook Pro and don't know when it's safe to do so because of this issue. Come on Apple, get real and let us know if this latest update is supposed to do the trick. We just need to know. That's all.

Amusingly enough when I went to install the update I froze right at the end. Then when I booted up it froze several times before allowing me to log in (after many many hard reboots). I'm guessing it uses the nVidia card during boot up. Once I got into OSX and hit "intel only" stability returned.

SimonB76 wrote:
Looks like Apple have released an gfx update for Snow Leopard - which potentially "Resolves an image corruption issue that may occur when disconnecting and reconnecting external displays while the system is running.".

has this update worked for anybody???

did this solve the problem???

I'm just about to install the update myself, i'll report back in a day or so. As i too am experiencing this issue. It happens all the time randomly and the only way to regain access to my Macbook Pro, is to starve it of power by holding down the power button.