MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

I didn't say this was definitely a firmware issue, I said that the behavior folks are reporting is typical of a video driver (most likely) or possibly firmware problem.

Whoever asked...I have a 2.3GHz i7 quad.

I had the same problem. I got my macbook pro 15" 2.0 i7 at Best Buy (Corporate Card) on March 1. After a building up heat with any of Adobe CS5 applications, it would freeze. I believe there is a reason since I spent about 10 hours testing, configuring, and finally realizing the issue

Some restults:

Never froze when I had the factory 4 GB Memory in it
Never froze when I put 1066 8 GB Memory in it
Froze when I put 8G Corsair Memory
Now freezing is not an issue when I put 8GB Kit from Patriot (Fry's) that is labeled specifically for Macbook Pro

I believe this is a firmware issue first and foremost as most memory of the same type should work fine, but I find it strange how Corsair really made it happen often.

WAIT for the update! They are not going to recall the hardware and most likely that is not the issue. Worst case scenario like in 2007 (I believe) the macbooks needed a heatsink mod and everything was good.

Obviously report your issue so the update happens, but until it does you will be disappointed by the results of replacements.

Here is the memory I would stay away from for now:

Corsair CMSO8GX3M2A1333C9

so .. not a real fix, but one way to get around this problem and protect your laptop is to:

while still in fullscreen game (and you have saved, but before you exit back to desktop):
1. ssh into your laptop (you need to ensure remote access is enabled in system prefs)
+ssh <username>@<laptopname>+
2. sudo sync
3. sudo reboot

system reboots nice and clean, no disk corruption .. its all good. [ or good enough till they fix it ]

What was interesting after doing this, system rebooted no problem. Came up quickly and the internal disk was healthy (ran verification). The fans were still running for a bit, though checked temp and all looked ok <60. After a couple minutes fan shutdown.

under - about this mac - more info - serial ATA -
when you click to the right top box on the serial-ATA Device tree for the 2 devices can you see whether its a 3 Gigabit link speed or 6 Gigabit Link speed under each Device ?
for example close the side facing arrows and highlight each of the two items. Below that in the big box at the bottom right - look under Link speed and product and see whether this is a 3 Gigabit or 6. - Let us know, want to establish if there are different sata controllers on which MacBooks. It could be possible that the chips are not communicating properly with HDD/SDD/CD causing the freezes.
Could members not having problems please respond also and make sure you let us know if you are having problems or Not when referencing your report.

Regards
Nicholas.

Nicholas,

I'll check that information when I get home, but I have more information that may be useful. I do a lot of work in the terminal, and after these freezes I can still ssh into the computer, move around, kill processes, etc. My computer froze last night while I was asleep. According to the display it froze around 2.30am. I use fetchmail to download my email from gmail and I still received email that was sent to me around 4.30 am (2 hours after the interface became unresponsive). According to the system logs in Console.app, the system was still logging until shortly before I rebooted the computer around 8am this morning. So even though the interface becomes unresponsive, it's still working in the background including writing to the disk (as the email received and console messages would indicate).

I've still got to reinstall and confirm the freezes tonight before I call Apple.

You know what it is. I bet you it's because of the graphics switching. I only recently realized the graphics auto switching protocols are absolutely hideous. While playing wow, minimizing and going back to full screen sometimes cause the dedicated card to cut out and switch to integrated. While burning a cd, or doing a time machine backup, I can consistently freeze the system into a hard lockup by just going from full screen to windowed. SC2 also seems to have an issue with exiting the game. The system isn't actually locked up, but rather, it's the display that's locked up. You can still hear the music and as some other users have said, the background processes are still going on. It's just an issue with the graphics switching and not being able to correctly execute commands.

Relax guys, it's not something wrong with your computer. According to SMART I've had over 80 hard shutdowns in the last 2 weeks and even then I'm not at all worried as it'll be eventually fixed by apple via software update. Once again, for the vast majority of people in this thread, it's something we'll just have sit tight and wait for an update.

Syan,

With respect to just waiting, that's great if you're like most of the folks here an you're having trouble with WOW or StarCraft. There are those of us who use our computers for work. For example, I'm a mathematical modeler and if my computer is going to lock up every time I put a moderate load on the CPU --- which seems to be all it takes for me --- then asking me to wait a week or two is just ridiculous. This machine costs almost $3k, and I don't mind spending that kind of money on something if it does what it's supposed to. Heck, I wouldn't mind if it was some sort of odd video flickering, but this is going to impact my ability to get anything done, and that is simply unacceptable.

Do you really think I should just relax about this? What if I told you to not work for a couple weeks, would you relax?

Syan,
I suspect as pointed out previously that switching between graphics cards and using the onboard graphics uses memory and this can cause a reclaim from RAM, I also feel that the communication between the SATA controller can also be a factor.

I ordered a 15.4" 2.2Ghz MacBook Pro, and received it on Wednesday night. The computer continuously froze even when doing simple tasks, such as listening to iTunes (no other apps running). One time ti froze with garbled video and pixels. And last night (Friday), it froze and never came back. Turning it own produces only a black screen. I know it's powering on, as I can hear it, and the light on the front is on, but the screen doesn't turn on. I just got back from the Apple Store, where they were unable to fix it after trying everything. They suggested a replacement. Now I have to mail back my $2500 machine, and wait an extra week to use it. Also lost all the hours I spent downloading and installing my applications and importing my old data. Not a good way to start the new purchase of a MacBook Pro.

I had similar concerns as Asteroid01 did with respect to reinstalling software if the machine dies. So after I got everything up and running I created a bootable backup with superduper. I'd encourage everyone else to do this as well. That way when you get the new one back all you have to do is restore it. This of course assumes you have: 1)superduper and 2)enough external storage to back this stuff up.

Even if your computer isn't replaced it's a good idea to create these backups and update them frequently.

I realize that the freezes may occur too often for some to do this (like Asteroid).

Why not just use Time Machine to create a backup? What am I missing? Time Machine's always worked for me -- especially when moving to a new machine that already has an OS installed. You can just use Migration Assistant to migrate your old Time Machine backup to a brand-new machine -- even if the OS versions are different.

That's a good point. I developed my backup strategy before the advent of Time Machine. I don't know, is it possible to boot from a time machine backup? Does time machine backup your installed applications? These are the two primary benefits of SuperDuper.

As it stands now, if my hard drive dies on my primary machine, I can take my backup to a secondary machine and boot OSX from the backup with all of my files current as of my last backup and with all of my applications available to me in the time it takes me to plug in the drive and fire up the comptuer. I can run everything this way until Apple returns my computer (usually about 3 days later). Then I just resync my backup containing all of the files I changed in the interim to the repaired machine --- about 30 minutes.

In any case, if you have the extra space use Time Machine or whatever you want to backup the computer so you don't have to reinstall all of that stuff again.

You can't boot from a Time Machine backup but it does completely backup your system including all your installed applications. What you'd do (depending on the computer you're restoring) is either do a complete restore from backup (if it's the same machine that generated the backup) or reinstall the OS from DVD and then use Migration Assistant to move your files from the TM backup (if it's a new machine). Since the TM backup isn't bootable, you'd just boot to a Mac OS X installation disc (the one that came with your machine) to initiate the restore process.

SuperDuper sounds more straightforward since you can boot right from the backup, but it's not free. 🙂

Message was edited by: Schwa72

Schwa72 wrote:
SuperDuper sounds more straightforward since you can boot right from the backup, but it's not free. 🙂

It's true, but as I've gotten older I've begun to realize that my time is also not free 🙂

Ok Nicholas here is the information:

Under Intel 6 series chipset (hard drive) I have
Link speed 6gb
Negotiated Link speed 3gb

Under Intel 6 series chipset (super drive) I have
Link speed 3gb
Negotiated Link speed 1.5gb

I can confirm that my computer freezes. I just did a fresh install with the latest updates and it froze.

Does that help?