MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

This is also happening to me. I took it into an Apple Store to see what they could do... and i couldn't recreate the issue as they keep the store cooler than my house is normally.

It seems to be doing better since my visit to the store, though I believe its just me keeping the bottom of the laptop open to the air (especially since it averages with my workload 70-80 degrees Celsius.

pumpichank,

I believe Apple dropped nVidia for the 2011 MBP, so If you are experiencing the same issues then this would indicate it is not related specifically to hardware (or at least not that particular hardware).

After following this over the last week or so, I'd speculate that your issue is different than the one being discussed here.

John Harrold wrote:
Horniasty,

Are you talking about windows under a virtual machine (vmware or parallels) or bootcamp?

It's a bootcamp assisted genuine Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit install, with few Autodesk CAD software - used few times, produced some renders at full speed etc. , and one game (CoD:MW2)
It all worked perfect for 2 days, as did MacOS, then it all went down at the same occurrence

Yeah I agree, I have a macbook pro 2007 with the same problem from before the new ones came out. But it doesnt seem to occur as much as others seem to have.

I have apps crashing at high load and very occasionally the screen hangs as others mention and I can only move the mouse. This has only happened for maybe a month or so after I did a software update so is there any way I can revert back down to Mac OS X 10.6.1?

Ok, when you said they happened at 'the same time' I thought you were running Windows in a VM within OSX.

If it's the same problem causing the problems in Windows and OSX, then that would indicate something lower level than a driver is causing it; firmware or hardware related.

This thing is very frustrating.

I got a new MBP 2.2 17" a couple of weeks ago when they came out and mine is freezing as well. I can't even move my cursor; the whole screen just freezes. Only seems to happen when I'm doing high CPU / GFX stuff, such as topaz denoise in photoshop.

If I shut down photohop first, then reopen it fresh and run denoise, it's less likely to freeze, although still does some times.

The CPU / fans also can go a bit crazy if I use video calling with skype.

I was just saying that many were implying it was with the new GPU's, not that you didn't know what was going on.

In other news, I've had no problems with my new MBP. I haven't stressed it too hard so maybe that is why, but I did try the 16 tabs in YouTube this morning and everything was fine except for CPU temp hit 160º F.

Hello,

I'm on a 2011 15 inch MacBook Pro i7 2.2Ghz, computer is less then a month old.

I can't play the Sims 3 on the lowest graphic settings WITH a cooling pad because the laptop gets dangerously hot. It has also crashed a few times when running multiple programs.

I have basically given up on playing any disc based games on it because of the over-heating/crashing problem.

I am able to make this happen with VMWare Fusion w/ Gentoo compiling any large package using more than one thread/core. The AMD GPU doesn't have to be enabled (although Chrome with 3D assist rendering probably kicks it in).

I have had my MacBook Pro that I purchased last November (2010) and it has started freezing up. Mine was not hanging when I worked with it, but after it went into the screensaver and the screen blanked. I was running Electric Sheep. Once I switched over to RSS screensaver feed, that hangs quit happening.

In one instance of the 3 or so hangs I've had in the past few days, the fan was running on high. Every time I've had to hold the power button to do a hard restart.

Your machine has been recalled for this issue. On your machine it's a faulty invidia 9600 and requires a free replacement system board. It is not related to this issue. I've personally had direct experience with three machines of your exact vintage. Take it to apple and they will fix it for free.

I'm getting freezes too on my new Macbook Pro 15" with the high-end graphics card, SSD and 8GB of ram. I haven't played Starcraft II much yet, but it seems to happen almost everytime I quit the game. Screen turns black, and the fan of my Macbook starts spinning like crazy.

From our Reddit discussion someone just said:

"It appears to be a problem with software that controls the fan speed. I can confirm that removing iStat Menus will eliminate the freeze. Others were using a different program, SMCFanControl, and removing it also fixed the freeze."

http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/g7fin/2011macbook_pros_confirmed_to_crash_underload/

I have it on good authority that the way the OS gets installed on the assembly line has subtle differences to the way the installer disc does its thing. I have also heard that most of Apple's internal testing is done using machines that have been wiped and then "fresh installed" using the bundled disc. Because of this, I always wipe a new Mac when I get it and do a clean install from disc. Some people may think this a silly and unnecessary step, but I have been running my 2010 i7 MBP that way since it came out, with only one or two crashes in almost a year of hard use, and they were almost certainly my fault, not the machine's. If the folks at Apple suggest a clean install, I would definitely try it, even if the above rumors no longer have any basis in reality.

I didn't install iStat Menu or any additional software until after the issue started appearing for me. Currently it still happens without iStat Menu (it expired) and i'm using atMonitor to monitor temperatures.