MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

That's cool, there's so many postings and this unthreaded flat, 20+ page format makes it difficult to scroll through the history and evaluate things in a more effective and concise way. I was more or less relying on what you've surmised. I was outsourcing 🙂.

Lol, yup it's been a long day. I am very confident at the current state of affairs though, the integrated mode eliminates my issues completely @ my highest levels of stress....and that's saying a lot. Hope to hear from other people if they are experiencing issues in integrated mode as well.

After some wierd screen flashes on this machine when in descrete mode, have to agree - GPU drivers seem to be the problem.

However, I still very strongly feel that a firmware update is needed to make the fans kick in earlier. Processors evenually go into emergency shutdown if they get too hot, so Im not worried about my CPU getting damaged.

However, I have absolutely no idea what the radeon mobile GPU does - and more to the point, whether the result that we see at then moment might be permenantly damaging to them leading to a later permenant failure (year and a day death syndrome for eg).

Basically themal issues + flakey GPU drivers are a pattern that I have seen in the context of GPUs having a very short lifespan (usually nVidia), so anyone experiencing this might want to go for the replacement option for more than just a way to extend the 14 day thing.

Totally agree, mine is already ordered so I can do whatever I wanna do with this one lol.

Thanks Chullo and everyone else... Been running SmallLuxGPU for nearly 30 minutes now with no freeze... I'm even going to let it grind away overnight - CPU's are hanging out 92-98.

Maybe tomorrow I'll actually get some work done? Lot's of catch up to do. This is now a $10k purchase considering lost time and wages. And that doesn't even begin to take the weekend away I owe my wife for being such a freak. 😉

Night all... Let's connect tomorrow and report our findings...

Yea man, I'm gonna call it a night too. Let us know how it goes.

Also happening to me.

FFS this is REALLY annoying, I can't convert any video or play any graphics intensive games...

I've tried disabling card switching and it doesn't make a difference.

So much for spending the extra on this $3700 machine! FFS Apple... not happy!

Just called Apple but their call centre is closed on Sundays!?
***!

So Madhat, to confirm disabling switching and forcing it to only use integrated mode does not prevent the freezing?

Howdy,

Yup still crashed when using the AMD / ATI card.

BUT... I just tried using 'GFXCardStatus' and locked it to the onboard intel3000 graphics and it seems to be working without crashing...

I don't think he got that far john, he probably just disabled it in system preferences. We need to post this authoritatively somewhere.

Temporary solution until apple fixes this..
Download gfxcardstatus
Set mode to integrated only
Use machine.

Yeah Madhat, you kiwis are getting the raw end of the deal.

I was in Samoa for two years, and my Mac at the time died. I had to send it to NZ to get repaired. I believe it went to a place called MagnumMac in Auckland. Service was a bit limited though. Most of the parts had to be imported from Australia.

I'm in Christchurch where the earthquake was, we have a MagnumMac here too but they're really useless, they're all about upselling and have very poor service.

I'm quite angry I just spend NZ$3700 on this beast and I can't even use it for what I bought it for, my old hackintosh was more reliable!

How about you wait a day to get feedback from folks. Then after we've got a better sample response you post a new discussion with the fix. Then we can move discussion to the new thread and keep it on the top of the list of topics.

I've filled in the Apple online feedback form i hope everyone does the same. However i would also suggest reporting these findings to the likes of Engadget, Gizmodo and Wired.. I think a public shaming might be in order for Apple's silence on this clearly evident problem.

I fear taking this machine back will solve nothing when i read reports of people buying 3 machines or more with the problem across the board.

We should have some justice for the amount of money we have invested in a defective product.