MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

My Mac Book Pro 2011 (17inch Antiglare screen 8GB RAM 750GB HDD ) froze several times when I run CPU/GPU-intensive application. Only the mouse cursor moved.

VMware Fusion 3 (guest OS: Windows 7 Pro)
Starcraft II (1920x1200 w/medium graphics settings)

It is technologically disappointing because it's either
1) Mac OS X failed to prevent *one faulty application* from freezing the entire OS.
2) or Mac Book Pro hardware malfunction made the rock solid Mac OS X freeze under load.

It is emotionally disappointing because
3) Supposedly superior, BSD Unix-based, rock-solid, updated Mac OS X 10.6.6 froze on me
4) Apple's tightly-controlled hardware/software integration did not result more stable machines

I neither bother to return nor explain this to Apple retail employees called Geniuses. They would have put me through their routine procedures in spite of my professional/academic credentials just "to make sure the machine is really at fault."

When you buy the first batch of any kind of machinery, unfortunately there is usually risk of under-refinement. It's the price to pay as an early adopter. I was hoping Apple would shield its loyal customer base from the early adopter price.

If this persists after few major updates, I'll probably request an exchange.

From one scientist to another, you should try to be as dispassionate about this as possible. As Apple is notorious for having problems with their first generation products.

You have a couple options. You can just sit back and wait for a fix. Alternatively, you can do all the tests beforehand (or just lie and say you did), spend 30-45 minutes on the phone with apple care, and become another documented dissatisfied customer. I can tell you that if you don't register your complaint they will never know you had one. If you read through the thread, I think you'll discover that this problem is very pervasive and a replacement may not fix your issues.

I've been working with some others to lay it all out here:

http://mbp-freeze.wikispaces.com/

Goodluck.

I have been watching the twitter trends for the term "macbook pros" since I found out about the wide reaching glitch. Shortly after I reported about the trend going huge on twitter.

http://twitter.com/#!/search/macbook%20pros

Since then a spammy looking not at all well written story has been retweeted and mentioned several times... "New MacBook Pros default boot in 64-bit mode"... Does anyone else find this unusual?

I have a 2 week old 2011 MacBook Pro 15" 2.0GHz i7.

I haven't had a single lockup on it yet. Here's what I've done with it:

- Audio encoding of hour long plus audio in GarageBand
- Installed and used Windows 7 in Parallels
- To try to reproduce the issue, yes was executed in 4 terminals. The fans spun up quite loudly and the MBP became warm, but after 2 minutes the machine had still not frozen.

Just my two cents. Sorry I don't have any assistance to offer.

There is a teardown of a 15" Macbook Pro 2011, here: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Unibody-Early-2011-Teardown/4 990/1. They observed that the thermal interface(aka thermal paste) was shoddily applied. I don't know if this is the cause of what so many are seeing, but it is possible. It maybe more about this then the responsiveness of the fans. The "Absurd amounts of pre-applied thermal paste" could leading to overheating. They observed this on both the CPU and the GPU.

I do not think that this has to do with MacBook Pro as it used to happen quite often on my Mac Pro.
It still happens but less often since I disabled a hardware monitor. I wrote the author and got tossed into never vill. Yes I know $30 down the drain but my sanity was more important. it took a year of those reboots and to keep stopping everything as soon as it was done. It was the old process of elimination.

hi all, I'm new to this forum and am new to Mac. I got the 13" one from Hong Kong and so far I haven't experience any of the problems that have been floating around. The temp gets quite hight when I'm playing games, once it got to 94 degree, but the body is still warm to touch not hot.

During idle, I can't hear the fan at all. Maybe because its only running 2000rpm on a 40 ish degree.
I haven't really stress tested it, if you guys have some info on how I can do that, I would be glad to post back the findings here.

My point is this, could it be that all the macbook pros that has all these issues are the ones that are produced in the states ?? its just a maybe.

Thanks all and I hope that this is only a software issue

No problems with my 2011 17" MBP with SSD so far. However I fully expect to experience some teething problems with a CPU/GPU this *ridiculously powerful* in a laptop. And I expect Apple to fix any issues via replacement, warranty repair, whatever; not a big deal, just the cost of owning the latest and greatest fastest laptop on the planet.

-Allen

saw this thread from /. i just got MBP 17" 2.2GHz i7, 8GB, matte screen, AMD Radeon HD 6750M last wednesday, direct from China.

i loaded up the machine (both MenuMeters and Activity Monitor showing 100% cpu) running some sparse matrix solvers + nonlinear optimizations (along w/ chrome playing youtube, terminal, xcode 3.2.5, preview & x11). according to gfxCardStatus, i'm on dynamic switching, but it's running discreate (i.e. Radeon).

fans are revving, cpu is maxed. i'm not freezing. how long does one need to run before the problem presents itself?

the first thing i did was to wipe the drive, do a low level format and then install from the dvds shipped with the machine. i brought over just Network and User directories from Time Machine from the old laptop. installed all the sofware/compilers by hand.

thanks and good luck to all.

There is a confirmed way to avoid freezing w/o 3rd party software:

Go to: System Preferences > Energy Saver > and UNCHECK "Automatic graphics switching"

Bingo, no more freezing!

Hi Mike,

That is not confirmed,
I still have the crashes when that is unticked.
The only way for me to avoid the crash is by forcing the laptop to use the Intel Onboard Graphics.

I too have had freezes when it is unchecked and also when I have discrete selected in the switching program. I have NOT had a single lock up with I run integrated selected in the switching program. No matter what software I have been running. I have not try to hammer the cores.

Even if that did work wouldnt that shut out the more powerful graphics processor? Thats part of the reason I got the 17" mbp. I shouldnt have to shut down part of the machine, it should be able to handle a lot more than backing up a DVD or waking from sleep.

I have exactly the same problem. MacBook pro 15 inch early 2011 basic model with upgraded HDD to 7200 rpm.

Just got off the phone with Apple techsupport.

One thing they got me to try which has been mentioned is resetting System management controller, which I had not previously done.

-Power off.
-Hold: Left Shift, Control, Option - then also press and hold the power button. Hold these 4 keys for 5 seconds then release.
-Power on the laptop.

Right now I'm endcoding some video in Handbrake with my CPU at 100% for 5 minutes at 93deg(c) and no crash, however I know this issue is intermittent and will require a few days for me to say weather my problem is gone or not.


*+Has anyone here tried this? What were your results?+*