MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

I've been having a few complete freezes running on my 2.3 2011 i7 15".

The last time I was running VMware and Virtual box guest quite happily had a bunch of terminals running. Graphics were using the 6750M at the time according to gfxCardStatus.

All I did was to go to finder and selected Waterroof and .. then it frooze. I had to perform a hardreset.

I've been having the same issues with my new 2011 MBP since the second day I had it. I custom ordered it and went with the high res screen and bigger HD. It first started freezing when it would go to sleep by itself so I changed the setting to never sleep unless I do it manually. It also freezes once or twice a day while I am using it. All I can do is move the mouse cursor around. I use it at work, connected to an external monitor, and I'm not doing anything intense like playing a game or working with videos, etc. They are refunding this unit and sending me a brand new one. I have tried to reformat and do all of their hard resets. I even brought it into an apple store and did a diagnostic test, nothing showed up.

I use 2011 office for mac home version. Do all of you who are having this problem use this software?

Thanks

ryandir,

I'm having this problem with almost nothing installed. I don't think it's really related to specific bad software. They simply make you wipe the drive to eliminate that as a variable. I formatted, reinstalled and got everything up to date before I called support because I knew if I didn't do that they would try to blame the problem on a third party application. It's an easy way to get you off the phone, and in their defense it's also quite possible errors people experience are caused by third party software.

Scott,

I think the 'hard freeze' might have been a mis-identification of what was going on by the original poster. I'm sure, without any other information, it might have appeared that way. I've noted above that I could ssh into the machine. I actually tried to reboot and halt the machine from the ssh connection as well. It hung when I did this.

John & ryandir, I'm having the "exact" same issue. Screen appears to freeze, mouse works and can remote into the box. It does appear to happen more often under load (I've been able to consistently reproduce the issue by loading 12-16 YouTube windows simultaneously).

So I went to my neighborhood Apple store last night and picked up another MBP (15" 2.2 4GB 750) to test and guess what....same behavior, same freezes with nothing installed but Chrome....

Both notebooks also have a funky video glitch on external monitors plugged into the ThunderBolt/MiniDisplayPort. Check this out (go full screen to see more)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ3ItL4_k6Q

I have a replacement 15" 2.3 coming soon - and I'm hopeful that they've done something to resolve the issues.

Until now, all of my other Apple experiences have been excellent... I haven't lost hope but this has been a very expensive experience (time and lost billable hours from random restarts).

I wanted to see if there has been any resolution to this issue.

I just purchased a new Macbook Pro Core i7 2.3 GHz with the RAM maxed out at the Apple Store. Runs great -- except when I am using graphic-rich, processor intensive applications, when it just up and freezes. Sometimes I get the spinning ball, sometimes I don't. The mouse usually remains active, but the OS seizes up (clock stops, all windows unresponsive). Only solution is a hard reset.

The freezing is always preceded by a spike in the CPU temp (the base of the machine feels hot to the touch, as opposed to normal operation, when it's just warm) and the fans increasing to max speed.

I haven't called Apple yet, as I am wary of a tech reading from a script telling me to reinstall the OS, which I'm pretty sure would be a waste of time. Plus I just got this thing setup, which included migrating a lot of data and apps from my old machine over the course of a couple days.

Having dropped over $3000 on this machine, I'm hoping there's a quick and easy fix out there.

(And I can't tell if this thread is about After Effects or some other issue, but several other threads redirect here for what sounds like my issue.)

Thanks for any suggestions!

I'm reposting the link for gfxCardStatus since it has helped me immensely until Apple releases whatever update or patch is required. This software allows you to pick between integrated and discrete graphics and prevents the switching that seems to be at the heart of this problem.

http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus

I got a new 15" 2.2 Macbook Pro a few days ago and have the same issue and have a few points to add.

My machine will lock up when transitioning from periods of low CPU temps to high CPU temps. If I boot up a VM with some other processing running on OSX then its 50/50 that the system will lock up (no mouse / keyboard response). I have noticed that this seems to happen whenever the CPU hits over 90 degrees and the fans are below 6000rpm.

For example I just had a freeze with a CPU temp of 92 while the fans were still spooling up (they were around 4700 rpm on their way to 6200). Once the fans hit 6200 rpm the CPU can go over 90 degrees without any issues, I've had it running there for hours with the fans at max RPM without any freezing.

The issue seems to be isolated on my machine to rapid temperature spikes while the fans are still catching up. Once the machine has locked up I am able to see still updates coming through from iStat server on the machine (it locked up before I installed this - not the cause) so the kernel is still running, I bet I can still terminal to it if I had another box.

This sounds like a software / firmware issue so I'm reluctant to return the laptop as I've spent alot of time setting it up and it is a custom build. I've had some success preventing the issues by raising the min fan speed to 3000 using smcFanControl.

I'm going to do some further testing by getting rid of smcFanControl and resetting the SMC to see if that makes a difference.

Bit more testing;

Gor rid of smcFanControl and reset my SMC and PRAM. This seemed to help with the issues, I ran a couple of tests to see if I could still get it to hard lock. This involved booting a VM up, 4 terminal windows with yes > /dev/null, running SC2 in a window and loading up a bunch of apps.

The first couple of tests ran fine much to my surprise, was able to handle the load with the CPU spiking to oveo 90 and no issues. Keeping in mind that before doing this I was having issues just booting up a VM.

Upped the number of terminal windows to 6 and was able to reproduce the hard lock and also a couple of soft locks (could still move the mouse). So all in all getting rid of smcFanControl and doing the SMC/PRAM reset seemed to help alot. The issue was still there but I had to push the machine much, much harder to see it (well outside my typical usage scenario). Still the issue remains, anytime the CPU goes over 90 degrees, you've got a chance of it freezing up.

Hi there,

I'm also having this issue.
If I do the following I always get a lockup.

1. Encode something in handbrake to get the cpu's all hot and maxed out.
2. Play a HD video in Quicktime X fullscreen (to kick in the ATI gfx card).
3. Exit out of the Video.
4. Bam- macbook pro is locked up.

Give it a go, this frezzes mine everytime. If you get the same please ring Apple. The more people report this the sooner they will fix it.

Regards,
Simon

SimonPickard wrote:
Hi there,

I'm also having this issue.
If I do the following I always get a lockup.

1. Encode something in handbrake to get the cpu's all hot and maxed out.
2. Play a HD video in Quicktime X fullscreen (to kick in the ATI gfx card).
3. Exit out of the Video.
4. Bam- macbook pro is locked up.

Give it a go, this frezzes mine everytime. If you get the same please ring Apple. The more people report this the sooner they will fix it.

Regards,
Simon

For some reason doing what you suggested doesn't freeze my computer, and I even ran the Handbrake encode while watching a 1080p movie fullscreen. However, I don't know how the HD video you watched was encoded, so that could be the difference. Regardless, mine freezes up consistently if I run the boost compilation (as John linked to above) -- but that's the only type of freeze I've run into.

Still, I think there's a firmware/driver problem with the ATI video card, so we'll just have to wait until Apple releases a firmware/driver update before this gets fixed.

I also get a freeze up if I'm running handbreak and then play C&V Zero Hour for a while. Only when I exit out of the game.

Seems to be a problem when the Mac tries to go from the ATI back to the Intel gfx card to me.
I rang Applecare here in Sydney and explained this. Went through all the normal tests / reinstall, scm reboot, etc. The guy I spoke to advised that I should return it before the 14days are up and wait to hear about a fix before buying again. He said that I was the first person he'd spoken to with this issue and as far as he knew no fix was being worked on. 😟

So for me.. I'm going to wait a few days. If I don't hear of a fix coming I'm returning. The last thing I want is a $3000 laptop that "hopefully" will get a firmware fix. 😟

Regards,
Simon

Well.. gfxCardStatus seemed to temporarily resolve the problem to stave off the baseball bat to the screen until a fix. It lasted for days even. Finally choked.. again.

Running: WoW, QT movie, Parallels - Win7, Safari, iTunes, Transmission (1 file) and maybe some other things.

It just doesn't work.

Sadly mine is BTO so I'll be stuck with it for quite a while longer. People have posted that their "new" machines are doing it as well... so... I'ma just go chill and not type something to get banned by :P

Calling support as soon as they open.

Yes many problem is in the mc723 15", today i use imovie for make some clips to be one clip... But 5x tes freeze and mouse cant move... I kill with press power button!!!! Wow!! This must be amazing work of steve jobs!!! AMAZING JOBS!!! YOU DONE IT!!! YOU BUILD NEW MACBOOK PRO WIT VERY SLOW AMD RADEON 6750 AND CAN FREEZE ALL OF THE TIME!!! GOOD JOB!

I WANT TO SELL MY MC723 (I BOUGHT 3 DAYS AGO) WITH MONEY IDR 21.950.000 ( US$ 2.200 ) AND I MUST SELL IT WITH LOW PRICE!!! GOOD JOB

I too am having this problem, though I can ssh into my box. Since it kicked in when I ran KeyShot2 (opengl), my hunch is that it is graphics card related. In fact, I'm tempted to believe that its switched rendering to the other graphics card, but continues to display the first.

So honestly guys, what do you think the chances are of getting this issue fixed with a firmware / drive update are?

I love the machine- very powerful. A great update. I just want it to be stable.

Regards,
Simon