MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

I received my MBP on Tuesday (upgraded from a 2008 MBP). I run windows 7 with VMWARE fusion 3.2. Using a program called Blue Iris, I was thrilled to see that the CPU cores did not max out like they did on my previous MBP. However, when running this graphics intensive program and playing back an MJPEG file the fans started up and shortly after I got the freeze everyone mentioned. The CPU's were running at about 25% at the point of incident. Cursor was still working but only the power-on button was functional.

The next day I called support and went through the motions (verify disk etc). This morning I got another freeze. Then I found this forum. Called support, got to 2nd level, was told the problem was with VMWARE. I was told I was the only one reporting this symptom. Was told to call back if it froze with the apple side of the world in control of the keyboard. So I decided to try some experiments. I opened some terminal windows, entered "yes > /dev/null" to max them out while playing back MJPEG recordings. The fans ramped up and the computer froze. Installed istat 3.0, repeated the experiment a few times while watching the temperature readings. Each time the laptop froze exactly at the point where the first CPU core hit 100 celcius.

Called back apple 2nd level and mentioned this. Was told to take the computer into a store for a check. If the check shows a problem, it should be replaced, it not it is software.

What bothers me is the support person claims I am the only reporting this issue. He also says that I should create a new VM and try that (I can cause the freeze at will without fusion running at all, the advice doesn't inspire confidence).

I am an ASIC developer of 25 years. For nominal silicon to hit 100 degrees in a cool 68F room with fans at max the design is fundamentally bad. Moving that computer into a room at 85F or run the disks and GPU's with a worst case pattern (which I know I would not be able to hit on with my first little tests) and you will easily overheat ... add to this voltage tolerances (V-squared law) of the power supply and corner lot silicon the margins are negative. Unless the temperature diodes/sensors are off, this is a real problem.

Yes other people are having the same problem. I've verified this with a second call to AppleCare and a review of my ticket.


- "It's your game."
- "No, it's not. Other people are reporting the same thing on different games and programs."
- "Hold on I need to talk to someone"
- ...
- "Hey you there? It's a known issue."
- "you mean it's NOT my game?"
- "......... no."

my second call

- "Hey I didn't get my ticket number earlier"
- "it's XXXXXXXX"
- "thanks, just wondering, is the engineering report referenced in my ticket?"
- "yes, it doesn't say what their progress is, but engineering is working on it and they are aware of it."



So if they tell you nobody else is having this issue, you can suggest they check this thread.

Perhaps. I suspect there could be two mechanisms. My first freeze event occurred when the CPU's were at ~25%, my heat induced "freeze" took more than pegging the CPU's, I also had to run some video. The heat related freeze also killed the cursor and the fans never retreated, whereas they did retreat from my unintended freeze. I have noticed though that the temps change quickly with seemingly small events, the software that polls the sensors does so at a different time/interval than the software we run ... hard to know if a sensor is involved while the fans are at low speed.

I had the "black screen freeze" occur the other night while ripping a DVD on handbrake. The fans never stopped and I did not do a hard reset immediately. Eventually I did do a hard reset and realized that the DVD encoding had continued to completion while the screen was black and none of the keyboard inputs were working.

When quitting application (game) which was using the larger graphics card AMD the os automatically switches back to the integrated graphics card that is on the cpu this can in itself produce a little heat but I don't think that is the culprit. What happens is that the memory usage for the graphics card automatically allocates 384mb (as a minimum) hence the application/game(hungry memory usage) just quit may still have allocated memory as it quits and any little memory for the IGP may not be sufficient, as this can happen at the same time it may be possible that memory is not distributed properly and causes the crash.
This is just the theory that I have come up with but I know little about how this works especially as I cannot test this myself until my mac arrives any day now.

Why not switch off the automatic graphics switching in system preferences ?- this may work but other applications may be switching the onboard cpu graphics on and off and can lead to other errors or sudden heat issues which may be the reason for sudden temp increases and the fan does a slower kicking than should which can lead to a freeze.(not sure about this).

Other factors like running the games in smaller windows etc may help however whenever there is access to the finder window or the App tries to access it when saving etc this may also be a problem.
Can some pros look into this and see if this is possibly the case. Sorry about the explanation being a bit vague but Im not a tech specialist and some of what I have written may not be accurate either but there may be a relevance as most incidences occur when quiting games/apps.
By also having other control software for fan control temp reporting gfx etc this probably does not help either so a clean install may temporary help but is not the solution.
This may well be a graphics and RAM memory allocation issue switching back and forth between the two graphics cards. This can produce the sudden heat problems especially with the onboard graphics on the CPU (I think thats where it may be - so the paste can also be a problem).
There are many problems to be addressed here and I think Apple may take their time on this one. I just hope there is no need for a hardware modification.


Regards
Nicholas

It is absolutely two mechanisms. There is a condition that is met, when aggravated by a second condition, causes the symptom of the freeze.

I have done a complete sweep of everything I am in control of:

- new OS, fresh install
- 32 bit mode
- 64 bit mode
- auto graphics switching turned off
- auto graphics switching turned on
- SMC cleared
- PRAM cleared
- FanControl Installed with Fans at Max RPM (and subsequently uninstalled after testing)
- iStat Installed to monitor temps (and subsequently uninstalled after testing)
- gfxCardStatus installed to make sure the ATI chipset was only active

My belief is that:

Condition A: fans speed up, although not uncommon, there is a very high speed fan ramp up associated with condition A. NOT all fan speed ramps are this condition. I believe Condition A is required for Condition B to cause the crash, and so far, is the unknown variable.

Condition B: switching from Full-screen to windowed mode, OR, moving windowed-mode application around from screen to screen. Without Condition A present - Full screen/Window switching is a non-issue.

The combination of these two factors causes my freeze. Neither by themselves cause it. I've gone as little as 5 minutes until a freeze, and this past Tuesday, went an entire night without one. However I have been able to get it to happen with enough diligence each time.

Edit: I must add I have done NO compressor tests making H.264 files or any other activity that could test the other issues. I've simply been trying to play games.

Jason, the symptoms you've describe point to a video driver issue. I really think we'll see an updated video card driver or firmware relatively soon, especially since you've confirmed that Apple Engineering is working on it.

My point was that there are other folks who are experiencing freezes that don't seem to have anything to do with exiting a game's full screen mode or moving windows from one display to another. In those cases, the symptoms seem to point to a possible heat issue.

Impossible to tell without an engineering review, but I would agree.

However, you know as well as I do any circumstance where hardware/firmware/drivers are in question - symptoms of behavior and actual behavior are effected in ways that won't deliver consistent results.

However - "Condition A" is my fans ramping up and watching temps rise. The temperatures NEVER got above tolerance, but without this condition, switching from full-screen to windowed or moving a windowed session around, behave as normal.

I don't think it's heat - I think you are right about firmware but I'm suspicious it is even the graphics card; since the fans go crazy and temps fluctuate more than normal during "Condition A", it could be SMC firmware or graphics firmware.

the adapter is set to stay on the ATI chipset

there is no memory swap for the graphics since when I exit the game I'm still running the ATI chipset. I have automatic graphics switching set to "off" which means that the default is the ATI chipset for all activity.

the Intel integrated graphics aren't coming into play, firmware or driver bug notwithstanding.

Thanks for the input Ronda, I'll give that a shot.

I did a regular repair and permissions rebuild after each hard crash, but I will try that next.

Also, worth noting, at least with my particular issue - that someone reported their render job finishing in the background in the state we are getting when we "freeze". I am also suspicious that what is happening is that the OS is still chugging along, but the user is hung in the app while background processes continue.

Since neither the caps lock light nor the mouse are affected in my case, I would believe this line of thinking as a complete and total freeze would render those two things frozen as well.

that's correct. The system is still functioning (for a time) in the background. If you have remote login enabled (ssh) you can connect and poke around. What I do find though is that after a while things freeze up even for command line items, specifically reviewing process tables (ps or top).

I think my situation has been fixed. I removed iStat Menus, called AppleCare and ran a diagnostic by holding down the letter D while restarting my computer with the boot disk in and that came back just fine. Crazy thing is, my computer was freezing when I launched iWork in safemode I started getting font errors popping up and the snr AppleCare employee helped me do something and now my computer is just fine! No fan rev ups, no lagging, no freezing, system is actually smoother than it was before! oh, he also had me send over my profile by clicking on the Apple symbol, about this Mac, more info, file, send to Apple....he was the errors in their and now I'm all good for now.....

FWIW..

I am having this issue too on my high end 15" and am currently working with Apple.

So far, we have reset the pram and something else, tried something in safe mode, turned off automatic graphics switching, and I've sent a lot of reports in to Apple. I ran a hardware test for a few hours and had 8 tests that all passed.

I am calling in again tomorrow to reinstall the OS from my DVD and only load my games since they are what makes it freeze, and see if its a software issue from the migration from my old computer.

Hoping to a fix at home with Apple... I just got this computer and really don't want to wait for another one from China.

Hey Ronda,

Just wanted to update the thread on this suggestion you gave. I did all the following in order, including your steps:

- ran Apple HW Diagnostics - passed
- booted off OS DVD, ran both a repair of the volume and the permissions
- verified both volume and permissions repair were successful
- booted in safe mode
- removed iStat
- Shutdown
- reset SMC with Shift-Control-Option-Power key combination
- powered up computer
- 5 zap PRAM cycles
- on finder load, verified automatic graphics switching is unchecked

- launching game it took approximately 10 minutes for system to freeze during a part of the game where it changes display modes while remaining full screen. During the entire time the system's fans were running high, as expected, but the surface temp of the unit is no hotter than my original Unibody during the same use. I didn't even try switching to windowed mode.

Doing a multi-core/RAM preview in After Effects CS5 with my friends macbook pro 2010
made no fan noise what so ever. Mine peaks at 6200 rpm just for short 3-5 second RAM previews.
That is not normal in any sense.

I got tired of this...

Just got of the phone with Apple, they are shipping me a new one:

MBP 15.4
With following configurations:
PROCESSOR 2.2GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
MEMORY 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
HARD DRIVE 256GB Solid State Drive
DISPLAY MBP 15"HR Antiglare WS Display

I will get to keep my current macbook pro at home meanwhile,
and when the new one arrives, I will still have a new 14-day
return policy to lean back on. I doubt the new one will be any different
but at least then, I will most likely have ruled out any hardware issues.

Hoping for a firmware update soon, another friends MBP 2010 model had this issue aswell,
until apple released a firmware update, and the fans went dead silent.

/d