You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

Overheat? The fans revved and suddenly I could use nothing but the cursor. Had to hold down the power switch to kill all and then re-power & startup. I wasn't doing anything unusual, but I had 7 apps open and was amid an auto-backup to TimeMachine.

Just a little disillusioned and concerned, wondering if anyone else there has experienced a hard freeze like this.

macbook pro 17" 2011, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Mar 1, 2011 11:15 AM

Reply
2,292 replies

Mar 20, 2011 7:36 AM in response to jezzy514

Jezzy,

Here's my best distillation of this thread:

To reproduce the error, this seems to work for most folks, and it's what I told the support folks to do when they got my computer at the support place:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13219904#13219904

You need to call Apple. They will make you go through some standard stuff. If you want, you can do this before you call so you can jump through those hoops faster. Here is a list of what they will ask you to do:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13214356#13214356

Try to be polite to the support guy on the other end, because he's got no control over this. Describe your problem as follows:

The interface freezes but things seem to work in the background.

Lastly, this post will tell you how to get a system that is stable enough to get work done. Try doing what it says and see if that helps for now.

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13251758#13251758

Good luck
John

Mar 20, 2011 8:08 AM in response to John Harrold

Hi,

I have a 2011 MBP 15" 2.3Ghz (high res) with the Radeon 6750M. The machine has hung three times this week. In one hang I was editing code in IntelliJ, in another I was compiling and the fans were spinning hard. Not sure about the third hang, think I was compiling code again.

In the last two crashes I was able to logon via ssh. The UI was frozen and unresponsive. In one crash WindowServer had pegged a core, in the other crash, Terminal and VMWare had each pegged a core.

In all cases I was in discrete mode because I had a external monitor attached.

I've also seen a number of video flickers (a brief blackout of the video image) across the lower 1/3 of *two different external monitors*, with different cables and different DisplayPort adapters.

I've already had some file corruption due to powering down my machine while in use to recover from the hangs.

Video driver bugs and/or unstable hardware don't surprise me, though they severely disappoint. What's odd is that my machine was actually stable for two weeks after I bought it. Just enough to get out of the 14 day return period.

I was able to compile boost (once) and lots of other MacPorts though. I've compiled the Android source with no problems (took hours). So the problem is intermittent, but definitely present.

Yay, another MBP that is unstable.

Apple -- this is sad. Please test your hardware and drivers instead of making us do it.

Mar 20, 2011 8:08 AM in response to John Harrold

Mines going back. More freezes in the last couple of weeks with this MacBook Pro than ten years with various iBooks/MacBooks/iMacs.

Out of interest, bought it off the Apple Store. Shipped the 1st March, was received by me 8th March. Just went to raise the return on my order, it says it's not eligible, outside the return period.

Does the Apple Store start counting the 14 days from the ship date rather than when it was delivered? I assume if I ring tomorrow, they'll be no issues, as I'm within my 14 days from when I received it.

Mar 20, 2011 8:41 AM in response to John Harrold

John Harrold wrote:
operaman1 wrote:
Well reproduced it again. What I do not understand is why it works in windows just fine...


If it's a driver issue or an OS level issue with switching, then it would make perfect sense that it would work on Windows and not on OS X


mine started making "faces" at me in windows at the exact same moment of the first crash in MacOS and since then I can't work on windows cause it's all stripes and different weird other artifacts, and the driver crashing all the time

so it's somehow related..

MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.