MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

I bought the 2.2 15 w/ 1050p display and I've haven't had this problem yet. I always use the ATI and keep the computer powered. I did a migration from time machine and played long hours of World of Warcraft and Quake Live. I also made a video in Final Cut pro with some heavy rendering. Still no problem. I'm still worried because I see a lot of people having this problem :/ Hope it gets fixed fast.

Just want to chime in that I'm a very dissatisfied macbook pro 13" user. I know the title says 17" but i got a black screen resume from sleep with the spinning BBOD on day and the next day a lot of freezing. The computer is barely a week old

I changed my HDD to a WD 750GB 7200 RPM and did a fresh install (as this was mentioned to help) but nope, still freezing.

What should I do? I always thought macs were reliable =(

I don't believe the way you are using the term "freezing" is the same as this thread. This thread is referring to a complete lockup of the machine requiring a press and hold of the power button to turn the machine off. It is only known to occur on 15 and 17 inch 2011 MBP with dual video cards. You problem sounds unrelated. I'd suggest opening a new thread for your issue and/or making a visit to your local apple store.

Hi VTGolfer,

I ran the compile test of boost while executing Photobooth and it did not reproduce the crash on my machine (just ran it once). My machine hung three times last week sometimes under load, sometimes not, so I thought you should know the test doesn't always work. But there is no doubt that the test often works.

xaphod

Message was edited by: xaphod3

well yes and no. The black screen with spinning BBOD happened only once, but the freezes happen more frequently (hold power key down for hard reset sort).

the thing is that about 2 days have now passed since anything has happened and I'm cautiously optimistic. Should I wait to call apple? I would bring it to a genius bar but I'm located nowhere near an apple store. I bought the MBP online.

Since I'm not seeing any other 13" users reporting this problem, I'd assume the problem is unique to your machine and I personally would seek a replacement. As I said, all the reports on this thread (and there are many of them) are for 15 and 17" models with dual video cards.

This issue seems like it's talked to death, but I figured I'd post what I've been seeing on my newly acquired 15" MBP in the hopes it'll speed Apple to a solution...

My system intermittently freezes hard (the display freezes and the system doesn't seem to respond to input from the mouse, trackpad or keyboard). No information is logged in the system console. No kernel panic.

I first started noticing the problem playing back a rented movie in iTunes in fullscreen mode. Then it started happening at other times (has happened a few times playing back a Flash vid on a web page, but also happens when I'm just editing a text file).

I originally had restored from Time Machine (based on a working configuration on a Late 2008 15" MBP ). Then tried again from Migration Assistant (thinking it was related to Applications garbage or some leftover user data). I've re-installed MacOS several times to try to eliminiate the possibility that it's a weird software issue and installed all software (as was suggested when I visited the Genius Bar).

It's still happening.

I have a lot of trouble pinning down what exactly is causing it. I've seen it when I'm just browsing on Chrome. I've seen it when I have only Terminal, BBEdit and Chrome open and am editing a text file...

This morning I found this site: http://mbp-freeze.wikispaces.com/

My machine freezes on the first 2 of the 3 tests listed there.

Apple? Please help?

Just in case anyone here is curious what may be causing the heat issues with the new Macbooks, see this tear-down sequence - http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Unibody-Early-2011-Teardown/4 990/1. You want to pay specific attention to this pic - http://guide-images.ifixit.net/igi/xjEFKC4TRB6NEiqS.huge - Showing the excessive application of thermal paste to the CPU and GPU. When excess thermal paste is used, it acts as an insulator and negates heat dissipation. The heatpipe setup is attempting to dissipate 55w to 60w of heat and something like this will pay a serious role in preventing success.

I'd like to just add that I am NOT having these problems on a 17" 2011 standard model. I HAVE however replaced the hard drive with a Seagate Momentus XT. I actually did max out the cpu using the yes terminal command before I knew about this thread and didnt experience any problems on the AMD GPU. So it is either not universal or a hard drive based problem. I'd imagine it is the former. This post isn't probably that useful but hope it ads to the overall picture!

Tom

I received my MacBook Pro on Wednesday and used it very heavily over the next few days, and got my first lock up yesterday. Then this morning I see the article on MacRumors and sure enough, my machine locks-up under the PhotoBooth and yes > /dev/null test. I phoned AppleCare, they went through the usual steps and they advised that since it was under two weeks since I placed the order, I should probably return it, and it's being collected some time in the next few days.

I asked whether it would be fixed in software but they didn't have an answer and just said I should return it. I've elected for a refund rather than a replacement and will follow this issue closely.

I had two 2010 MacBook Pros which I returned due to white spots on the screen, and after that I decided to stick with my 2008 Mac Pro a bit longer and wait until the 2011 MacBook Pro. I'm completely disillusioned with Apple right now.

"Report of the machines freezing using the INTEL graphics chip:

"
Using google chrome (extend the window to take up the whole screen), go to their webGL demo at

http://www.chromeexperiments.com/det...arium/?f=webgl

Set the fish count to 1000, wait for 1 min.

Please Note: Your Macbook could freeze completely, so save any opened documents!

On my macbook Pro 2011 2.2Ghz hiRes the issue is reproducible every time after about 30 sec using Intel GPU. I have not tried ATI graphics yet."

From http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=12212522&postcount=52 "

===============

First of all, NO the Intel Graphics don't crash during the test because Intel Graphics don't support WebGL. Attempting to use Intel Graphics causes an error when attempting to load the test. So no, there are no crashes using Intel Graphics in this "fish" test.

Anyway, this crashed my rig once. the first time I tried it. after rebooting, I ran the "test" 3 times more for 5-10 minutes. No effect. CPU temp even dropped into the low 80s during the test. GPU and diode never hotter than 74C.

idk what's going on. I hate when things aren't consistently reproducible. I absolutely hate it.

Message was edited by: Adrian J.

If I use smcFanControl to force the fans to operate at maximum speeds, I couldn't get a single freeze. If the fans are left in their default settings, several "yes > /dev/null" works 100% of the time, and every time within seconds.

So it could well be a problem with the firmware controlling the fans.

Greg-
Plenty of us around here are Unix-savvy, and have actually been paying attention to the nature of the problem. If you'd read as many posts as you claim, you'd understand that your suggested debugging techniques won't do anything but waste time and electricity.

Consider:

The AMD/ATI GPU is clearly implicated, so letting the display sleep will either avoid the problem entirely, or make the failure invisible: It's the display that freezes.

There are numerous reports in this thread that confirm my experience: You can ssh into the machine after the freeze. Your abusive invocation of top will show you, well, top. It won't show you a snapshot of the freeze, since the system is still running.

There are no crash dumps, because there are no crashes. Finding the answer to this will probably eventually require connecting a debugger to the graphics driver, but that's way beyond anything I'd expect in this forum.

I'm having the same exact issue with my Macbook Pro 2011 15". I thought it was VMWare, but I've observed it happen even when I'm not using VMWare. I went to Apple and had it checked, they said fan is working fine. My 14-day return policy already expired, so I don't know what other options I have. There's a post below from someone who said he got his replaced with another 2011 MBP, but the same problem is still there, so I don't know if it's even worth it to get it replaced.

"If people want to keep submitting the wiki to Gizmodo/Engagdet/Andandtech we might get some more coverage.

Up to 5 people who have had the Windows 7 shutdown freeze in bootcamp now. "

============

My 2010 used to do this on occasion. I wouldn't assume it's related to the graphics issues we're having. I think that has more to do with BootCamp/EFI.