MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

Have you tried to explicitly disable the discrete mode as detailed here?

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

And then tried to lock it up with VMWare and what not?

I think I read on a MacFixit where they are overloading thermal paste between the Intel processors and heat sink. Could be part of the problem. This has always bitten other manufacturers in the past. To much paste doesn't let the heat transfer efficiently.

Your machine might be having this known issue, given it's age:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2377

More than likely this is NOT the problem. Most of the freezes are just the screen (GPU) freezing. You can determine this yourself by having music playing and/or ssh'ing in before it hangs. The music will keep playing and SSH will keep responding. So the CPUs are not the problem in this scenario.

Jeremy, this is so weird. I'm actually posting this from my MacBook Pro while 10 instances of "yes > /dev/null" are running and Photo Booth is also open and, while my fans are going apey, I haven't had a lockup. I wonder what the common denominator is?

This thread got posted on Slashdot...

Now there are a heap of people that haven't read the whole thread saying things like... 'tl;dr it's istat pro causing the issue' or 'this is just another anti-Apple article'.

Some people...

Going to be time for new thread shortly. This one is about to be slash otted.

Yeah I saw that. Sorry, but that's pretty much what slashdot is. I say that as someone who used to frequent it several times a day. But attention is attention. If that posting acts as a bridge to get other folks (Engadget, Wired, etc.) interested, then I'd say it's a win.

Nah, they're too lazy. They would have to create accounts and login to comment. Too much effort, there are better trolling opportunities elsewhere.

Again, I agree with you John,

/. is no different from any other internet forum - beware the trolls!

Regardless, exposure has got to be a good thing for this issue, as I've said before if Apple bothered to answer their phones on a Sunday I wouldn't have been so angry...

Just wanted to say that the xcode compile routine also crashed my machine and quick. Also, under Windows with a very heavy load of prime 95 on all 8 threads and running the gpu burnin really smoked the laptop though it never froze. Still the temps were insanely high. I hit the 100 C on the gpu before the fans took over, and the prime95 had the cores up to 93 for each with one core reaching up towards the limit. This took beyond 30 minutes at full stress to be clear. While it is not likely I would ever push my machine this hard ( I had 8 thread cores and the gpu under 100% load), it is worrisome that there is no response from Apple concerning this. I waited for the last gen before unibody, and this time I took the chance since it was the same body style with a theoretically smaller die cpu working under the same energy envelope as the previous gen.

I have MacBook Pro early 2011 and 15 inch with upgraded HDD to 500 Gig 7200 rpm. I have the same problem while I was using some apps that take cup a lot, like parallel, imovie , ... . It freezes and I have to turn it of buy turn on/off bottom.

farhadsh

I've been following this for a bit. Here is a summary of your options:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13253066#13253066

My 4 day old MB Pro has had hard freeze twice while attempting to use Help function on machine. Was attempting to view Netflix but having Silverlight issues which still prevent me from viewing Netflix video in Safari, Firefox or Chrome. Have no problem viewing Netflix on my late 2007 MacBook 13".

Just done a few tests on my machine. I have installed several games including:
- The Sims 3
- Assassins Creed II
- Call of Duty 4

All these games do not run in full screen or freeze after some time or freeze when altering the graphics settings. On The Sims 3 during the first run I got a 'We do not recognise the graphics card' error/warning.

During all freezes the sound continued to play, however all other pieces of hardware failed and/or disconnected. External USB drives turned off. My bluetooth mouse and keyboard disconnected and my external monitor showed the same frozen state as on the MBP display itself.

The freeze was evident using both graphics cards. On one occasion iTunes played to the end of a song and then stopped. On all occasions the fans were screaming and a hard reboot was needed.