MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

From Apple:

+Dear John,+

+I am excited to inform you that your computer qualifies for Apple's Capture Program.+

+What is the Capture Program?+

+When Apple launches a new product we are required to take samples of all the failures. This process helps Apple Produce a better future model.+

+At this time you have two options.+

+Option 1:+
+-Continue with repair of your original unit. You may want to select this option if there is data on the faulty computer that you have not backed up.+
+Apple cannot transfer your old data to your new computer.+
+Please note: Generally repair is faster then replacement.+

+Option 2:+
+-Request a new machine. You will not be required to pay anything. Apple will ship you a new unit from the warehouse. Any power adapters, cables, and software you currently posses from the old unit, you are entitled to keep. *We do not have the ability to preinstall software. If you ordered preinstalled software we can set up a phone support call to help you install on your own, with your existing software discs. If you have a refurbished unit you will be receiving a new unit. The new unit will be the exact replica of your original purchase unless otherwise discussed.+

+Generally your new Mac will ship from the warehouse in 24 hours. If your computer has paid upgrades then it can take 1-3 days. Once your computer ships, I will forward you the tracking information. The Fed Ex tracking information will provide you with an estimated delivery date.+

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+Please elect from your two options by responding to this email.+

+Reply: repair - for repair. We will process the request, repair and return the unit as soon as possible.+

+If you would like a new computer please fill out the following template.+

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+PHONE NUMBER:+
+ADDRESS: (shipping address)+
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+Please be advised, Apple reserves the right to move your unit on to repair if you have not suggested otherwise within 24 hours.+

+Thank you.+

Sincerely,

I know you're saying the new one will have the same problem. Well there is that chance, but I'm going to go with the replacement option anyway. At least it will be easy enough to test out when it arrives.

So that's where I currently stand.

Perhaps this forum topic should be changed to Not Using your MacBook Pro.

My 2011 15" froze this morning and will not respond even to power off/power on using the power button.

When this happened, I had Terminal, TextEdit and Safari running on the desktop. No games, no external monitor and I'm using about 16GB of the hard drive. The desktop image was fine but the computer would respond neither to the mouse nor the keyboard.

I have powered off and on using the power button four times. Each time, the computer comes on showing the Terminal (my start-up programme) but the computer responds to neither the mouse nor the keyboard.

Specs:
2.2GB processor
750GB hard drive, 5400 rpm
Hi-res matte screen

I purchased the computer 13 days ago from the New York Apple Store (5th Ave) and will be returning it today. Unless they can give me an assurance that this is not going to happen with a replacement, I will be requesting a refund.

You are right, as this problem doesn't affect all MBP 2011 out there, and I think only a minority of them. Mine for example never freezed or crashed since I deactivated the Fan Speed Control option of iStat Menu, and I've played multiple 3D games already for hours and used programs that use the full power of it (like Handbreak) without any issue.

So anyone having freeze issues and having put out any possible software cause (iStat Menu fan speed control option, SMC Fan Control, Reset of SMC and PRAM done...), should get a replacement, as there are faulty and, except if you are very unlucky, the replacement unit will certainly works just fine.

So go for it, get a replacement unit, all of you having this issue (and not being able to find a software cause).

Using GFXCardStatus on my 2.3 15" to set integrated only, results in no output to my external 24" monitor.
The same monitor works fine in dynamic and discrete modes.
I have tried unplugging etc.

Does anyone else experience this?

Thanks

Sid Merrett wrote:
Using GFXCardStatus on my 2.3 15" to set integrated only, results in no output to my external 24" monitor.
The same monitor works fine in dynamic and discrete modes.
I have tried unplugging etc.

Does anyone else experience this?

Thanks

That's by design. If you want to drive an external monitor, you must use the dedicated GPU.

Just returned my 2011 MBO 17" after 2 days.
I think it's an issue with the fan.
I had nothing open but Firefox Browser...that's all.
I was watching a video on YouTube and when I clicked it to
full screen mode the fans started whirring as if the machine
was overheating.
I tried to exit the browser, but nothing happened, so I guess in retrospect the screen froze. I then immediately put it into sleep mode in order to
stop the noise. It was very loud. The machine was vibrating.
When I woke it, everything was normal, except for the fact that when putting it
to sleep or waking it up, the wait between the command and it happening was
abnormally long and random. prior to the fan incident the action was instant.

To me that was a big red flag. I spoke with a tech at apple who had me
partition another HD to run the basic install disc to see if it was being caused
by any of the files or software I'd migrated from my old PowerBookG4 800MHz which runs like a charm but can't handle the programs I need to use...anyway
The newly partitioned HD had the same issue with untimely sleeps and wake-ups...
a warning of things to come...
I returned it for replacement but after reading all these complaints...I think
I want to get a refund until they figure it out.

rredge wrote:
Perhaps this forum topic should be changed to Not Using your MacBook Pro.

My 2011 15" froze this morning and will not respond even to power off/power on using the power button.

When this happened, I had Terminal, TextEdit and Safari running on the desktop. No games, no external monitor and I'm using about 16GB of the hard drive. The desktop image was fine but the computer would respond neither to the mouse nor the keyboard.

I have powered off and on using the power button four times. Each time, the computer comes on showing the Terminal (my start-up programme) but the computer responds to neither the mouse nor the keyboard.

Specs:
2.2GB processor
750GB hard drive, 5400 rpm
Hi-res matte screen

I purchased the computer 13 days ago from the New York Apple Store (5th Ave) and will be returning it today. Unless they can give me an assurance that this is not going to happen with a replacement, I will be requesting a refund.

Just got home from the New York Apple Store. They acknowledged within a couple of minutes that there is a problem with my machine. I told them that I wanted a refund unless they could give me an assurance that this problem is not widespread and is fixable. Not only could they not give me that assurance, they said that there is no Apple acknowledgement of a problem. That took me aback a little. I was in fact one day past the 14 day return period, but they did not make an issue of that and gave me a full refund for the machine and case that I purchased.

I too have a MacBook Pro 15" 2.2GHz Radeon 6750, occasionally it'll randomly freeze for a second or so, even when forced to either GPU via gfxCardStatus.

Where my machine will often freeze completely (sometimes the mouse will still move) is when compiling code in Xcode 4 (was fine in Xcode 3). I've noticed the CPU temperatures reach about 94°C before it does freeze, and the fans kick in at around 90°C. (Using hardware monitor, to read the temperatures)

When stress testing using Folding@Home, the CPUs ramp up to full utilisation and temperature increases to 86°C and the fans kick in at around 75°C. So it looks like it measures the load on the CPU to determine what speed the fans should spin at.

I think there maybe two issues at play here, 1 bad graphics drivers and 2 bad temperature management. Hopefully both fixable via software update.

On a side note, the WiFi is horrible compared to my old 2007 santa rosa MacBook Pro.

I'm back to update my experience for anyone interested. After my first few freezes last week, I noticed that anytime I launch VMWARE the graphics selection goes from integrated to discrete and stays that way. I was quite happy for a whole week as I didn't over stress the CPU's and hadn't witnessed any freezes. Until this morning. I plugged in my iPad to recharge it for the first time on this machine (last night), this is the only variable I had going. This morning, when I woke the display up with a mouse wiggle, it went straight to the classic freeze. This time I could see the time of freeze (clock), temperatures, and the input power draw on the top menu. The CPU temp was 78C, which is the average temp with the applications I have running. I sent the profile to tech support and they observed that time machine was running (it's been running all week) at the time of the freeze.

I spoke with two support people, both were very quick and confident that this issue, it's signature (everything seems fine, cursor moves but keyboard seems completely disconnected), is basically non-existent.

So, what the heck, might as well believe them. This would mean that the people observing this issue on this forum are statistically non-existent and perhaps in the correct population for random hardware failure escapes. I know some have returned their laptops and the problem was still there, but VERY few ... in my case no graphics cards were switching, the discrete GPU selection was in play at the time of the freeze. If I force the GPU to switch while VMWARE is running, I lose VMWARE, if I switch back, it comes back. That's not a big surprise.

So I'm replacing mine with a new one (bought a 2nd and returning the first), which will leave me with the old machine for transfers. If the new one freezes, I'm not going to be so quick to assume a firmware fix. Firmware fixes are often software workarounds for hardware issues. Some, albeit rare, hardware issues don't have solutions. The only one who stands to lose in that assumption would be me.

Compared to my prev generation Macbook Pro though, this thing is unbelievable. Very very hard to contemplate not having it.

for what it's worth, I received a call back from Apple Support and they confirmed Engineering is aware of the issue and working on it. No timeline on a fix. They only recommend to keep it up-to-date.

I pressed and pressed for more info, but they wouldn't provide a thing. My rep did share this thread with the engineers, though I'm sure they were already aware.

Michael K wrote:
for what it's worth, I received a call back from Apple Support and they confirmed Engineering is aware of the issue and working on it. No timeline on a fix. They only recommend to keep it up-to-date.

I pressed and pressed for more info, but they wouldn't provide a thing. My rep did share this thread with the engineers, though I'm sure they were already aware.

Michael,

I don't question what you are saying, but let me tell you precisely what the gentleman at the "Genius Bar" at Apple's flagship New York store told me:

He said that when Apple acknowledges a problem, it does so on its web site. If it is not on the web site, it is not an acknowledged problem.

He said that Apple does not follow this forum and he dismissed this thread as "talk on the internet".

He said that there are "millions of issues" and that he has not personally run into this problem nor been made aware of it by anyone in the company.

Of course, when he started my computer and couldn't get it to respond to either the trackpad or the keyboard, he did come fairly quickly to the realization that maybe things weren't hunky dory.

Having paid about $2800 for the computer, and in light of the fact that Apple's New York store doesn't have a clue what the problem is or how widespread it is, I wasn't about to accept a replacement.

Ok .. but I've had an open issue with support for about a week now. I've been sending them data about my system, including screen shots of system temperature and anything else I've run into. They escalated my issue to engineering on Saturday.

Today they called me back acknowledging the issue.

What I do find odd, is that much of my communication was via email with support. It seems my support rep had a "problem" with email today and needed to call me to share this info. Seems to me they have a policy of not putting anything into official writing.

I'm not trying to deceive anyone, nor have any guarantee they are even working the issue .. I'm just sharing what they told me.

This essentially what the higher level Apple support guy who was handling my case told me: This isn't a known wide spread problem. The people on the forums represent a statistically insignificant subset of the total population and not indicative of a larger problem.

That said they did take in my freezing machine because:

When Apple launches a new product we are required to take samples of all the failures. This process helps Apple Produce a better future model.

So I would imagine that statement indicates that they may be acknowledging this issue at least internally. I don't suspect they will admit to a fault publicly until they have a fix for it. "We have a problem just run software update" sounds much better than "We have a problem just sit on that $2800 brick until we figure it out".

If you're having problems watching YouTube videos, even 1080p ones, try updating your Flash player. The newer versions are hardware accelerated and shouldn't tax your CPU nearly as much. I just finished watching a 1080p movie trailer on YouTube on my '11 MBP and my CPU utilization didn't go over 10%, the temps stayed in the 50's, and my fans only spun up to about 2900rpm (completely inaudible).

Just thought I'd add a couple more observations... Firstly, in reading one of the forums, I found something interesting about the "soft freeze" (where applications seem to continue to run, but the keyboard and screen are non-responsive, often blank)... I read in one post that someone said this happened, and he entered his password on the blank screen even though the login dialogue was not up and this returned the machine to a usable state. I wonder if there are people who have set the screensaver to pop up after a time, and some percentage of those have passwords enabled on the screensaver -- suppose there's actually a problem with the login window not showing up... the machine would continue to run tasks, but you wouldn't be able to interact with it. This poster indicated that simply by typing in his password on the blank screen, the machine returned to usefulness... Worth trying for some, I imagine.

Secondly, while waiting for the courier to call to collect the machine I am returning, I did some more playing... I left it on for most of the day and it didn't freeze at all (Photobooth, some yes > /dev/nulls, etc.). I also simply left it idle at times, or playing Youtube videos. After a time, I cranked up three yes > /dev/nulls and right away it "hard froze". Except this time, I had "top" running in a terminal window on my other machine, connected via SSH. It was still running -- so this wasn't REALLY a "hard freeze" -- at least not yet. No cursor, no screen update, it really looked frozen, but TOP on the SSH window was showing that processes were still running. Interestingly enough, I was able to quit and restart TOP a few times, but each time it got slower and slower. I tried to kill a process or two -- no effect... and then the last time, trying to restart TOP simply hung. So it looks like when the "hard freeze" happens, it's more like a rapid descent to oblivion. It starts out with the machine still operating (I'm not sure what would happen if I tried a shutdown or kill login window at that point), but fairly quickly degenerates to non-responsiveness...

Anyway, some more data points for consideration...

I'm hoping to hear from Apple on Monday so I can return the first one -- will do some stress testing and provide an update when the replacement arrives.