MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

Schwa72

These things aren't going to be addressed just by calling apple and hoping they can figure out on their own that graphics switching+cpu intensive stuff is causing the problem. By providing them with a machine that can reliably recreate the problem they will have a good starting point. If I have to be one of those people then that's fine. As it stands, I cannot use the machine in it's current state, and I really need this for work. I've gone through this with the guy on the phone, and I've even documented what ND381 suggested with a video:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1901170/Temp/mbp/mbp%20freeze.mov

I emailed all of this to the support guy, so it's attached to my case ID. I just want it to get figured out as quickly as possible. If they keep my machine for a week and send it back to me with a firmware update, then that's fine by me. And everyone will eventually benefit from it.

don't have an iphone & my box is unchecked so I'm always on the AMD card. Ran BoinxTV last night with a matrox mxo expresscard box inputting 1080p video scaled down to 720p. this app is very GPU heavy & the only issue I had was to reboot once, did a lot of unplugging, plugging in mic, and changing settings in BoinxTV. it bogged it down so it was dropping frames but was fine after the restart & I didn't mess with anything. rendered & recorded just fine.

John Harrold wrote:
Schwa72

These things aren't going to be addressed just by calling apple and hoping they can figure out on their own that graphics switching+cpu intensive stuff is causing the problem. By providing them with a machine that can reliably recreate the problem they will have a good starting point. If I have to be one of those people then that's fine. As it stands, I cannot use the machine in it's current state, and I really need this for work. I've gone through this with the guy on the phone, and I've even documented what ND381 suggested with a video:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1901170/Temp/mbp/mbp%20freeze.mov

I emailed all of this to the support guy, so it's attached to my case ID. I just want it to get figured out as quickly as possible. If they keep my machine for a week and send it back to me with a firmware update, then that's fine by me. And everyone will eventually benefit from it.

What I meant was that some folks think that simply posting on this forum will make Apple aware of these problems. It won't. Making a phone call is better, but what you're doing is even better still. Thanks for running point on this!!

What I meant was that some folks think that simply posting on this forum will make Apple aware of these problems. It won't. Making a phone call is better, but what you're doing is even better still. Thanks for running point on this!!

You sir are correct. Posting on the forum only helps us work out some of the variables associated with this problem. That and it allows us to take solace in the knowledge that we are not alone 🙂.

So yes, if someone out there is experiencing these issues and you have not yet called apple, you should *definitely call* them. I've seen nothing to indicate these forums are used by anyone at apple, diagnostic purposes or otherwise.

I have had 3 crashes running a raw processing program called Capture One which is very core dependent with my graphics checked. I also had it happen when using Carbon Copy cloner yesterday and running safari at the same time it crashed or froze up so this morning I tried unchecking the graphics so i have the most powerful one on and it should be noted here i am also connected to a 30 in NEC monitor. Well no freeze this morning and still trying a few things out my idle is also 60C and fan speeds around 2900 which maybe a little warm but I am chalking that up to all the cabling connected to the side of the MBP which cause a lot of heat. I'm thinking this is fireware on the freezing so I may just cancel my Genius appointment tomorrow this is my second 2011 MPB. First one was hotter and had a mysterious power issue. It was flat out possessed. LOL

Now i should also note I was working on 700 images and processed 378 of them at full bore which left only 1. 5 mgs of free ram and when I hit safari after a minute it would crash. I was chalking this up to just being flat out being overloaded and my cores where going at 98 percent full bore. Very core dependent program along with Ram. So not sure what to think

Okay back to running C1 at full bore processing about a 100 files, CS5 PS and In design are opened trying to suck as much ram as i can. Also have word, mail and safari as i am tying this. Temps running at 72 up from idle at 60 C and fan speed is 6200.

Now i have the graphics UN checked and seems to be working have not froze yet. Free ram 39mgs. CPU running at 93 percent. Have not crashed with box unchecked yet on the graphics

Message was edited by: Guy Mancuso

To add after a few minutes when all processing was don brought machine back down to 56 C and fan speed at 3200 . It will go back up to 60C.

Now weird thing is that all seemed perfectly normal but yesterday with graphic checked i froze.

Have no idea except something maybe funky in the firmware switching mode between the graphics.

Hi,

I did a little stress test of the machine too (15" 2.2GHz), though not with XCode as ND381 suggested. I installed gfxCardStatus, iStatPro, got Handbrake, and started a conversion of some movie. Within a few seconds of clicking "Start", the temperatures of the CPU went right up and the fans spun up to 6200RPM (sounded pretty wild!). I then proceeded to try all possible combinations of opening and closing Photo Booth, manually changing the GPU from AMD to Intel with gfxCardStatus, even opening CivIV (game) while the Handbrake encode was going, but I was unable to make it crash. I noticed that Handbrake uses the AMD GPU: when switched to Intel it was only about 60% as fast, I didn't know that it did that. I also unplugged the power cord while it was going flat out, and after a few seconds thinking about it, the battery menu item said about one and a half hours of usage - from a full battery. 😉

So I'm stumped. Just thought I'd share.
Cheers, A.

Same here with a new 15" i7 2.3 GHz. Out of the box when setting it up just kept freezing, needing a hard reset. All I had was a Windows 7 install running under Fusion while also transfering my data from a firewire drive. Powered from the mains, so assume using discrete graphics.

Eventually corrupted my iTunes library, so called Apple. I'd already repaired permissions and done a full hardware test, but before swapping it out, they wanted to reset the SMC and NVRAM. Sighed and did as they asked. Gave me a case number and said ring back if any further probs.

But...since then, it hasn't frozen. Hmmmm.

Aurel Griesser wrote:
Hi,

I did a little stress test of the machine too (15" 2.2GHz), though not with XCode as ND381 suggested. I installed gfxCardStatus, iStatPro, got Handbrake, and started a conversion of some movie. Within a few seconds of clicking "Start", the temperatures of the CPU went right up and the fans spun up to 6200RPM (sounded pretty wild!). I then proceeded to try all possible combinations of opening and closing Photo Booth, manually changing the GPU from AMD to Intel with gfxCardStatus, even opening CivIV (game) while the Handbrake encode was going, but I was unable to make it crash. I noticed that Handbrake uses the AMD GPU: when switched to Intel it was only about 60% as fast, I didn't know that it did that. I also unplugged the power cord while it was going flat out, and after a few seconds thinking about it, the battery menu item said about one and a half hours of usage - from a full battery. 😉

So I'm stumped. Just thought I'd share.
Cheers, A.

I've run a Handbrake encode while running an iMovie encode while playing a 1080p movie with VLC and I was also unable to get my machine to lock up. However, running ND381's procedure caused it to freeze exactly as he described. The point being that there is a very specific set of circumstances that must be present to cause the freeze (MD381's procedure is the only way I was able to get mine to freeze), so simply taxing your CPU/GPU heavily by running a bunch of encodes very likely won't cause a hang.

Twice in two weeks I've been editing text in Eclipse and had my new MBP (15" 2.3Ghz i7) completely freeze. The display is still showing my code, buy nothing responds and the clock does not update. I Amy need to visit the Apple store and request a replacement.

I've had the same experience of stress testing the CPU (running Handbrake, six instances of VLC, and some intensive PDF processing) and not freezing up. I agree with Schwa that there is indeed some specific set of circumstances which can easily occur during normal operations but definitely occur using ND381 recipe that is causing this. Aurel, you should give that a try and see what happens.

Thank you feldkamp for confirming that getting a replacement machine doesn't actually solve the issue. I use my machine every day for work and it would be pretty harmful to have to wait for a new one only to have the same issue!

I can confirm here that unchecking graphics switching fixed a couple cases that would cause a display freeze (where the mouse could still be moved). I use the Unity Engine and noticed that it would freeze while baking lighting using the integrated Beast software, but it no longer does after unchecking the switching. However, there's a case - using the rayGL feature of modo 501 - where I can reliably cause a complete freeze/lock-up, and it still happens.

This does seem to be a pretty specific issue. I ran both the CPU and GPU tests of Cinebench multiple times in a row and could not trigger a freeze, despite the fact that the tests fully tax each of those components.

I wonder if this has to do with GPGPU features? rayGL in modo 501 uses the video card to do raytracing, and other apps out there might use or trigger OpenCL (Grand Central Dispatch). Maybe that has something to do with it?

Message was edited by: torncanvas

I am having the same problems as others discussed in this thread but I am also experiencing something else I haven't seen anyone mention yet. While watching flash videos for an extended period of time I will occasionally have a crash that halts the system to the point where it is completely frozen(cannot ssh into it). When it crashes the screen gets artifacts and the audio loops over and over.

Here is a pic of what it looks like: http://i.imgur.com/2qqbI.jpg

(I was on integrated graphics at the time)

Has anyone else had this happen?

Message was edited by: MattiX

Just to add another voice to the chorus. I took delivery (2.2 GHz, 17", AG screen, 8GB memory) last Friday, and spent 2 days setting up (full reformat first, Bootcamp installation) and transferring data from my old machine. It locked up ("soft freeze" - could move cursor, but could not interact with it, but ssh in seemed to work, applications still seemed to be running) four times over the two days. Called Apple on Monday, and they wanted me to do a bunch of tests, but I didn't have the machine in front of me. Yesterday, I did a full re-install of OS X, installed no other software, did an SMC and NVRAM reset, and 3 rounds of hardware tests (all ok), and then tried to make it fail before calling them back. I figured this would take a few hours, but all I did was start up Photo Booth (saw here that that would force the discrete graphics card to be used), and 9 Terminal windows -- one running TOP (to see usage), and 8 more to run % yes > /dev/null to tax the CPUS. I got 5 of the terminals running (cool to see 5 processes running at 100% CPU, and still see 30% idle 🙂 ), and as I tried to click on the window to start the 6th, the system was completely locked -- hard freeze... no cursor, no clock, no screen update, nothing. Hard reset -- called Apple and they are sending me a new machine this week. I then initiated that same sequence again to see if I could immediately reproduce the crash, but could not -- however about 4 hours later the system locked again with the "soft freeze" -- cursor would move, apps were running in the background, but could not interact with it. So clearly, there are two types of "freezes" -- one that seems to still allow applications to run but no interaction with the window manager, and another that is a true "hard freeze" - no response, everything stopped.

As a matter of interest, I let the Ken Burns picture screen saver run as part of the testing (when it took a long time to lock up) -- at one point the RSIZE (resident memory size) ballooned up to almost 4 GB of RAM -- I'd never seen that before...

Will advise how new machine fares (as I put it through paces before transferring any data this time)...

Scott