MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

17" 2.2, 8gb Ram.... It freezes a lot, i tried about everything, i thought it was because of my Crucial SSD at first but i put back the original 500 HD and it keeps freezing, less than before but again, impossible to work properly. Called Apple for a full return, don't have time to wait for a hypothetic fix in a few months...

I have a similar problem with my mid 2010 MBP (2.6, 17in, Core i7 with 8GB of RAM). Here's the story:

My MacBook Pro frequently freezes despite very light use. I took it to a "genius" today, but he was not very helpful. Actually, it froze again right at the apple store while they were checking it. The log showed some errors from Quicksilver right before the freeze and they suggested disabling Quicksilver for a while. At the same time they said that Quicksilver is "solid" and should not cause any serious problems. They also recommending deleting flash plugins, but admitted that it was unlikely that a flash plugin was causing freezes.

Nothing came up during hardware tests, and I already did a clean reinstall of the OS (twice).

Since then it froze again for a third time during the last 24 hours). I was not using any heavy programs, just browsing with firefox. The log shows the following message:

11-03-12 9:28:59 PM 0x0-0x2e02e.org.mozilla.firefox376 Sat Mar 12 21:28:59 **-MacBook-Pro.local firefox-bin376 <Error>: unknown error code: invalid display

Same issue, new MBP 17" 2,2Ghz - 8Gb (Apple-) Ram - 500 WD Scorpio drive (Apple).

Lightroom (3.3) was exporting about 150 RAW files to full size JPG's. Fan's revved up and it frooze. Only solution was to shut it down. After I found this thread, I made a slideshow in iPhoto with 300 full size jpeg's, export to iDvd... no problem. Export to Full HD QT file... no problem. Fired up Lightroom and ran the export batch again...no problem. Ran a batch of +/- 50 RAW files in DxO... no problem.

I do not own any games so I can't comment on how it behaves in games.

I'll be watching this thread. I haven't contacted Apple yet, nor the (Apple-) store I bought it from. I would hate to return this wonderful machine 😟

Oh yes, same info as John reported earlier:

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

Message was edited by: Frank E

Message was edited by: Frank E

I think I have the same issue as everyone else. However, it only freezes when I'm running certain applications. So far the only apps that will result in a hard freeze are ScreenFlow, CoverFlow3, and Starcraft. I've played many other games, and use many apps, but these are the only ones that have resulted in freezing. This is getting annoying...

In my instance it seems to be an integrated effect. I encoded a movie with Handbreak and ran six instances of VLC. This caused it to freeze after about 10 minutes or so. Instead, I ran a backup and that froze after 1.5 hours. Then doing nothing over night froze it after 8 hours. So pegging the cpu seems to speed up the process.

I've got a phone call scheduled for 3pm est to discuss this with Apple.

Ok I just got off the phone with apple. Evidently their phone system isn't day light savings time complaint. So if you setup a call and they don't phone you on time, just give them an hour. I called them at 3.30 and the guy I got a hold of said he couldn't help me debug it if it wasn't frozen right then. I tried to explain to him that if it was frozen I couldn't do anything to debug. So I agreed to freeze it and call back. While I was in the process of freezing it, I got a call and spoke with someone who seemed to have a slightly better understanding of the concept of 'non-responsive even after several hours of waiting'. So along with these steps:

- resetting the pram Alt Cmd+pr at boot
- shift ctl+altpower (3 seconds)
- boot off of OS install disk -> disk utility -> repair disk permissions
- clean install+updates-> confirm freez

he had me do the following:
Stick in the Application disk that came with the computer and boot into the diagnostics (hold down 'd' while booting). Then:

- run the quick test (a few seconds)
- run the extended test (it's running now and can take several hours)

If you're going to call apple, you might as well do everything above (because they will tell you to do it anyway :)).

I'm waiting on the result of my extended test, then I'm going to call them back.

Hi John,

When your doing the hardware test in quick or extended did you have the power plugged in ?
Try Booting up into AHT (D key) & *make sure you have the battery 20% to 70% Charged and the power connector is in charging the mac* (not an already charged mac). Then do the std test and repeat a few more times without restarting - Do you get an error such as- tmp' error ??

I got a crash this morning when trying to wake it from sleep. The screen went nuts; black columns at (approximately) every second line of pixels across it, alternating grey areas and black areas, the impression of a menu bar at the top. All looked very much like a graphics card crash/issue to me. Something was still responding, as the keyboard backlight could still be adjusted, and to start with, pressing the arrow keys repeatedly would result in a system alert beep (though I don't know why).

Cmd-opt-esc did nothing.
Cmd-ctrl-power for a few seconds restarted it and it seems normal now.

Waiting to see whether it happens again. After reading this thread, I'll try to ssh to it if it does.

New 2011 top-end 15" standard.

alvinzho wrote:
Can anyone run Windows 7 Experience Index using VMware fusion without it crashing? It crashes for me every time when it tries to do the Aero graphics test.

[It ran fine for me|http://home.earthlink.net/~kfscoll/images/VMWare Fusion_pre_WinUpdate.JPG]. I just installed VMWare Fusion and Windows 7, so I haven't run Windows Update yet. I'll post back after I update windows.

FWIW, the VMWare Fusion video drivers SUCK.

You may already know this stuff, but just in case 🙂

Make sure you have remote login enabled:

System Preferences => Sharing => check Remote Login

Also figure out which ip address you have as well.

{quote}Under normal use I have not had any issues but when testing StarCraft II and Minecraft, I will randomly incur a lockup where only the pointer is usable. In some situations I can play for hours without issue but in others it won't even take 5 minutes for a lockup to occur. {quote}

this, in addition to the garbled display issue is sounding more and more like the graphics chipset is overheating. Could also be a driver issue however. My MBP is arriving in a few hours, looks like I'll have to do a thorough burn-in to make sure all is A.O.K. :\

Hey Folks

Ok I spoke with them, and I asked the guy I was escalated up to if this was a problem they were seeing a lot of. He said that was not the case. I told him if this was something that was going to be fixed in a couple days with a firmware update or a new driver then I would wait. He he said he didn't have any reason to expect that. So, some of you can wait if you want, but my return box is on the way.


WRT the diagnostics with my battery at ~40% I didn't get those messages Nicholas.

Oh I was able to complete the test without it crashing after switching to full screen mode. I probably should have done that before. Strange that your video card score is so low since we have the same card. My score for that is 6.0.

I am having the same issue and mine is the MBP from 2007

I have tried re-installing from the original disk, reinstalling Leopard, reinstalling from Snow Leopard DVD, updating software...all of it. I have been in IT for 15 years and have done all of the logical tests I would do and can find no pattern.

The mouse just stops and I can do nothing but power off and then on, but it will definitely go again. Even with only Safari running, the laptop stops connecting to wireless, even though the signal looks good! Again, the only way to resolve is power off. I am having to reboot 10-15 times evey evening, just to get work done.

I was thinking of getting the new MBP, but now I am not so sure!!

Booked into Genius Bar for Friday...

Apple now treats it's customers very bad.. We paid high premium money for the the trust and like of the brand. I think I have to think about going back to PC which cost 1/4th of this and we have freedom to optimize it. I am totally disappointed