MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

Definitely not a switching prob at this point because a lot of us are forcing one or the other. Mine locks-up with AMD forced. Haven't tried running integrated forced as I'd like to not poke my eyes out with a fork.

As for a firmware/driver fix.... one can only hope at this point. Just have to wait for Apple to finally say. May be a month or more. I just can't understand how media blogs/outlets are not running with it.

jbriant wrote:
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.

This is an interesting theory.
I've read about excessive thermal paste found by ifixit. They said, +"Holy thermal paste! Time will tell if the gobs of thermal paste applied to the CPU and GPU will cause overheating issues down the road".+
I've experienced several lockups, some with racing fans and some without. Most of them happened upon waking from sleeping overnight or connecting/disconnecting a display. Some have happened when connecting or disconnecting USB keyboard/keypad though.
If this is as you suggest, I am even more concerned because I have automatic graphics switching turned off. It was one of the first things I did even before transferring apps. So maybe it's the AMD graphics chipset/driver that is the problem.
I've stopped Mac Scan's nightly scanning. Since then the MBP has been responsive in the morning. I have also stopped using my Logitech G-13. I disconnected this yesterday and have not seen a lockup since. I run VMware daily (even some lightweight compiling) and have been watching video (iTunes, Hulu & Netflix) and playing dragon age 2 with no problems...

I'm going to run some CPU-intensive ops to see what happens. I'm planning to boot in single-user mode to do this. That should exclude graphics switching and all but the basic driver. I'll post details if I can repro in single-user mode.

yes Rensoom I experience the same freeze situation. I noticed that in the most cases it happens starting heavy activities like rendering some huge 3d scenes in vue 9 xstream or cinema 4d. IMHO this is not a real freeze because the mouse pointer is fully responsive. It seems more an OS related issue. 😟

My problems begun on day three,
and this was kind of weird to suddenly go all the way down
I just closed the lid, packed it to my bag and opened at uni, tried to connect for the first time with uni's WiFi and boom.. first some few second freeze, then some horizontal white lines
stopped being responsive - I had to power-button it

I have a Windows 7 set up as a secondary OS - when I've booted into that a minute later, the graphics there have gone wild. Many different lines across the screen, all dynamic and pretty scary
the display driver crashed few times, as windows informed and it kept restarting,
when I got back to generic vga driver it all stopped - not really using the gpu

In MacOS I can't work with either dynamic switch or forced AMD - it's just an instant freeze, no CPU load, no power demand no overheat no fans spinning - it just kicks in and freezes, with some 0,5s windows once every 30s for the mouse to move

I spoke twice with Apple, on the 3rd day (this Tue) and yesterday. The first conversation got me on a list with "that kind of issue", the man asked me to describe what i'm experiencing and told me to wait for some further info or an update. Yesterday they told me that the issue is known as it's been stated in some internal article of them. He told me there are lots of machines affected and they consider this a priority issue, on which they have an engineering team working. The other interesting thing he said is that they are sure that this IS an firmware/driver related problem, not a hardware one, which raised my hope up a bit.

It is just really weird reading that all over the world, inside the same company, every support staff tells you something else, with many of them not knowing anything about that case and even making you believe that they don't really get a *t cause there's not enough customers to complain for them to start worrying

Add me to the list.... I have to do something taxing like others so the fans spin up but sure enough hard freezes like everyone else.. However if there is any music running anywhere on the system it continues to run, even web content.. Weird.

Even though the fans kick in the computer is cool to the touch. 2011 15" MBP

Yours lovingly

Unpaid Apple Beta Tester

add me to this list as well. New 2011 15" MBP 2.2GHz i7 with the ram upgrade. Locks up when playing World of Warcraft, which is really not that intensive compared to what this hardware should be able to do.

Add me to the list. 2011 15" quad-core 2.0 Ghz. I just got it last night. Let it go to sleep with the display open last night, and it wouldn't wake from sleep this morning. When the display did finally come on I saw this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28535101@N03/5539983950/

I had to do a hard shutdown (holding the power button down).

Hoping this is a firmware thing.

Not had a crash in 2 days! No idea why not, the cards seem to be switching fine now. I've decided to install some high end games and see how it performs... I just wish this **** thing wasn't bent now!

I saw similar graphical glitches when I migrated from my 2010MBP to my new 2011. It would happen upon booting. Just before the blue screen fades into the desktop background. I did a fresh reinstall and I haven't seen it since. I think it may have had to do with the installation of Air Display (an iPad app that extends the desktop).

Anyway, I'm just checking in to add my machine to the chorus having these issues. In the last 6 days, my machine has had all of the mentioned issues. "Soft" freezes where the mouse is still responsive. "Hard" freezes where nothing moves. In both cases, a hard shutdown is required. It has no problems booting back up, and it's a trivial matter for me since I have an SSD installed which limits the amount of down time to about 20 seconds...but my 2010 never had these issues.

Just this morning, I come downstairs to find my fans blowing audibly and my display unresponsive. Every night I put the display to sleep (I have one of the 4 corners designated to put the display to sleep but not the computer) and come back to the machine in the morning to keep going. Well, for maybe the 2nd or 3rd time since this CTO machine arrived, I'd go to wake the machine back up only for it to not respond and require a hard shutdown.

Here's the thing: I almost never run intensive applications. All that may have been open last night before heading to bed would have been Chrome, Mail, Fidelia (audio app) and TextEdit. That's it, maximum. My common installed apps that are running:

-Chrome
-TextEdit
-iTunes
-Mail
-Fidelia

Common apps running in the task bar/background:

-iStat Menus
-gfxCardStatus
-Flux
-Bowtie

No games. No heavy CPU-intensive applications. Same lockups as everyone else here. While I tend to think that it is indeed a software and/or driver issue (these kinds of things usually are), it doesn't make me feel any better...especially knowing I can simply return this machine over the next few days for a full refund. Knowing that it's a software/driver issue doesn't necessarily guarantee they know how to fix it, folks. It may be updated next week....but it may not be updated and corrected until June. None of us knows...and that makes me very anxious. It's hard for me to feel okay with having to do serious work on what appears to be an untrustworthy computer. One time of losing critical data because of a freeze in the middle of work and I'll be ready to throw this thing right out the window. I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

Things I've already done: (1) Regular migration from old machine, (2) Format and reload of entire OS & manual install of all needed apps. I think it's unacceptable to have to do anything more than that. I've already spent more hours than I should have on maintenance.

$0.02

Not 20 minutes after making my post in this thread and doing an SMC + PRAM reset did my computer do yet another hard freeze.

Open: Chrome, Fidelia, Reeder (RSS), TextEdit.

Running memtest now just to make sure it's not a RAM issue (I don't think it is, but for the sake of thoroughness). Then I'll start using one app less and less, starting with Fidelia. If it freezes again, I'll go without Chrome and see what happens.

This is ridiculous. Never was a problem with my 2010 the entire year I owned it.

Ridiculous.

Here's the deal. Just for fun I now have "3" 2.2 and 2.3 MacBook Pro's. 1 CTO and 2 from local Apple Stores. I have another replacement for my CTO 2.3 coming.

ALL 3 MACHINES FREEZE.

ALL3 MACHINES HAVE DANCING SCREENS VIA THE THUNDERBOLT/MINI-DISPLAY PORT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TXolf19wGw

ALL 3 MACHINES HAVE FUNKY POWER USAGE (all three screenshots within 15 minutes of each other):
http://kirker.com/images/battery1.jpg
http://kirker.com/images/battery2.jpg
http://kirker.com/images/battery3.jpg

Sorry to scream but I'm frustrated and haven't been able to get much work done because of the constant freezing... Figured a new machine from the store would help but it didn't so I got another again and now with $8k temporarily on the AMEX I'm out of ideas...

Here's the deal. All of these machines were purchased from different locations, they were all produced at different times. They have different lot numbers. They all have different ram, different drives, etc.

The consistent features? All assembled in the same place? All have new GFX components and new TB port.

It's not the TB/mini port though because I've gone to external USB monitors (Displaylink) and had the same freeze issues. Are the USB monitors driven by the internal GFX cards?

Heat and fan behavior seems to be consistent with everyone else. When the freeze happens for me, it is typically (but not always) under load. It most commonly has occurred with a Flash object on the screen (video or other), multiple videos, handbreak, etc.

I have run my CPU to the max with CPU tests and that didn't seem to kill it by itself even though all the cores appears fully loaded.

Like everyone else, the video freezes but I can still move the mouse around. I can also still hear audio playing. And can SSH into the boxes. But eventually the machines hard-lock while fans are still whirling at max RPM.

What I can say is that the freezes have happened at the most un-opportune time and I've lost code/work, etc. Auto-save only gets you so far.

Anyhow, I'm totally rambling and I do hope that Apple eventually figures this out. Now I just have to remember which computer to save and which of the others go into the right boxes. 😉

Thanks for the insight, jkirker. very frustrating. fortunately, I haven't lost any work...but it's inevitable. it doesn't take much to corrupt a Photoshop file. I get the bad feeling that if I continue to use this machine, I'm going to corrupt something. And it's not that I can't/don't back up regularly...it's about the fact that every time I'm at the machine, I don't know what's going to happen.

Something I never worried about with my 2010. Or any other computer I've owned for that matter.

I've had two hard freezes that are very similar to those in this thread. I was in ZBrush, which works the processor good so the fans were kicking. Also using Screenflow to record it, and listening to the Pandora desktop app. Using a bluetooth Wacom Intuos4 tablet as well.

In both instances, the mouse would still move and the music would still play until the song ended. Keyboard totally inactive and I couldn't click on anything, but the screen would still dim on time and light back up with mouse movement. Let it sit for 10 minutes, never recovered. Reboot was the only option.

I went all out, so this is the 17" 2.3 i7 with 8gb, the 512 ssd and the matte screen.

Since it mainly stays plugged in, I've turned off graphics switching. Have not had another freeze in over a week of constant abuse.

It's worth noting that I've also been working on the biggest photoshop file I've ever created. 7 gb so far, 12,000x24,000 with several layers. No freezes, but also no system lag at all. This thing is a **** beast.

Sure hope for no more freezes, though...

Some more info for those who are considering returning their machines and whose who asked about windows issues.

After much stress testing on a windows partition I can confirm that I was not able to get my MacBook to freeze under Windows, even with sustained temps of 100 degrees plus on the CPU and graphics intensive tasks running.

This all points to driver/firmware issues under OSX as indicated above.

For people who want to test this under windows for themselves, simple program attached that will max out 8 cores;

using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace Stress
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Parallel.For(0, 8, Run);
}

private static void Run(int thread)
{
int a = 0;

while (true)
{
a++;
}
}
}
}

I bought my next MBP 17", I usually try to tech refresh them when Apple releases them. To date, I have had good luck with graphics, and issues.... until now.

I too experience freezes, lock-ups, as everyone else seems to be in this thread.

Nothing like dropping between 4k and 5k on a MBP to frustrate one.

Come on Apple, why did you go with AMD/ATI for graphics this time? 😀

I never had any issues with the nVidia on my 15" or 17".

Fix it please.