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.
No, unfortunately there is no rhyme or reason to it - I've installed/uninstalled monitoring software like iStat and Fan Control with no change either way.
The problem has a definite trigger but is intermittent when that trigger sets - sometimes I'll crash every five minutes, the other night I went for two hours with nothing.
So was on with support today for a while, they assigned a specific tech to me.
We did all the normal troubleshooting, smc/prom reset, installed a new partition and mac os x, was able to replicate the problem (freeze out of fullscreen game after longer time, 15 minutes seems to be as good a mark as any).
They have no idea .. they did not tell me engineering knew about it .. or at least if they did, they weren't making the support teams aware.
I was surprised they assigned someone to work my case when I told them I was able to ssh into my box during the freeze. So I was encouraged, that I was going to get a tech that new what to do .. of course, she had no idea what commands I could run to troubleshoot the issue.
Couple of items I did notice though, that seemed to go over her head:
1. everything seemed to be running as normal, though the screen was completely black
2. it looked like the graphics chip had lost its power, saw the following error message in the logs
+ATIFramebufferNI::setPowerState(0xffffff800c4f3000, 0 -> 2) timed out after 45117 ms+
3. when forcing a reboot from the command line, it looks as if the system was rebooting but I saw no visible progress after 2 minutes, so did a hard restart .. next time I'll give it a much longer timeframe.
Has anyone attempted to close the laptop (sleep it) while in the game and come back after an extended period of time and see if it exits clean? I may try that tonight.
I called AppleCare back just to make sure what I was told was correct
- My case # references the engineering notice specifying they're aware of the issue
- I had the support rep double check this to make sure I heard her right
- they wouldn't tell me anything more about it, as engineering doesn't give status of cases like this to front line support
I received my MBP on Tuesday (upgraded from a 2008 MBP). I run windows 7 with VMWARE fusion 3.2. Using a program called Blue Iris, I was thrilled to see that the CPU cores did not max out like they did on my previous MBP. However, when running this graphics intensive program and playing back an MJPEG file the fans started up and shortly after I got the freeze everyone mentioned. The CPU's were running at about 25% at the point of incident. Cursor was still working but only the power-on button was functional.
The next day I called support and went through the motions (verify disk etc). This morning I got another freeze. Then I found this forum. Called support, got to 2nd level, was told the problem was with VMWARE. I was told I was the only one reporting this symptom. Was told to call back if it froze with the apple side of the world in control of the keyboard. So I decided to try some experiments. I opened some terminal windows, entered "yes > /dev/null" to max them out while playing back MJPEG recordings. The fans ramped up and the computer froze. Installed istat 3.0, repeated the experiment a few times while watching the temperature readings. Each time the laptop froze exactly at the point where the first CPU core hit 100 celcius.
Called back apple 2nd level and mentioned this. Was told to take the computer into a store for a check. If the check shows a problem, it should be replaced, it not it is software.
What bothers me is the support person claims I am the only reporting this issue. He also says that I should create a new VM and try that (I can cause the freeze at will without fusion running at all, the advice doesn't inspire confidence).
I am an ASIC developer of 25 years. For nominal silicon to hit 100 degrees in a cool 68F room with fans at max the design is fundamentally bad. Moving that computer into a room at 85F or run the disks and GPU's with a worst case pattern (which I know I would not be able to hit on with my first little tests) and you will easily overheat ... add to this voltage tolerances (V-squared law) of the power supply and corner lot silicon the margins are negative. Unless the temperature diodes/sensors are off, this is a real problem.
Yes other people are having the same problem. I've verified this with a second call to AppleCare and a review of my ticket.
- "It's your game."
- "No, it's not. Other people are reporting the same thing on different games and programs."
- "Hold on I need to talk to someone"
- ...
- "Hey you there? It's a known issue."
- "you mean it's NOT my game?"
- "......... no."
my second call
- "Hey I didn't get my ticket number earlier"
- "it's XXXXXXXX"
- "thanks, just wondering, is the engineering report referenced in my ticket?"
- "yes, it doesn't say what their progress is, but engineering is working on it and they are aware of it."
So if they tell you nobody else is having this issue, you can suggest they check this thread.
Perhaps. I suspect there could be two mechanisms. My first freeze event occurred when the CPU's were at ~25%, my heat induced "freeze" took more than pegging the CPU's, I also had to run some video. The heat related freeze also killed the cursor and the fans never retreated, whereas they did retreat from my unintended freeze. I have noticed though that the temps change quickly with seemingly small events, the software that polls the sensors does so at a different time/interval than the software we run ... hard to know if a sensor is involved while the fans are at low speed.
I had the "black screen freeze" occur the other night while ripping a DVD on handbrake. The fans never stopped and I did not do a hard reset immediately. Eventually I did do a hard reset and realized that the DVD encoding had continued to completion while the screen was black and none of the keyboard inputs were working.
When quitting application (game) which was using the larger graphics card AMD the os automatically switches back to the integrated graphics card that is on the cpu this can in itself produce a little heat but I don't think that is the culprit. What happens is that the memory usage for the graphics card automatically allocates 384mb (as a minimum) hence the application/game(hungry memory usage) just quit may still have allocated memory as it quits and any little memory for the IGP may not be sufficient, as this can happen at the same time it may be possible that memory is not distributed properly and causes the crash.
This is just the theory that I have come up with but I know little about how this works especially as I cannot test this myself until my mac arrives any day now.
Why not switch off the automatic graphics switching in system preferences ?- this may work but other applications may be switching the onboard cpu graphics on and off and can lead to other errors or sudden heat issues which may be the reason for sudden temp increases and the fan does a slower kicking than should which can lead to a freeze.(not sure about this).
Other factors like running the games in smaller windows etc may help however whenever there is access to the finder window or the App tries to access it when saving etc this may also be a problem.
Can some pros look into this and see if this is possibly the case. Sorry about the explanation being a bit vague but Im not a tech specialist and some of what I have written may not be accurate either but there may be a relevance as most incidences occur when quiting games/apps.
By also having other control software for fan control temp reporting gfx etc this probably does not help either so a clean install may temporary help but is not the solution.
This may well be a graphics and RAM memory allocation issue switching back and forth between the two graphics cards. This can produce the sudden heat problems especially with the onboard graphics on the CPU (I think thats where it may be - so the paste can also be a problem).
There are many problems to be addressed here and I think Apple may take their time on this one. I just hope there is no need for a hardware modification.
It is absolutely two mechanisms. There is a condition that is met, when aggravated by a second condition, causes the symptom of the freeze.
I have done a complete sweep of everything I am in control of:
- new OS, fresh install
- 32 bit mode
- 64 bit mode
- auto graphics switching turned off
- auto graphics switching turned on
- SMC cleared
- PRAM cleared
- FanControl Installed with Fans at Max RPM (and subsequently uninstalled after testing)
- iStat Installed to monitor temps (and subsequently uninstalled after testing)
- gfxCardStatus installed to make sure the ATI chipset was only active
My belief is that:
Condition A: fans speed up, although not uncommon, there is a very high speed fan ramp up associated with condition A. NOT all fan speed ramps are this condition. I believe Condition A is required for Condition B to cause the crash, and so far, is the unknown variable.
Condition B: switching from Full-screen to windowed mode, OR, moving windowed-mode application around from screen to screen. Without Condition A present - Full screen/Window switching is a non-issue.
The combination of these two factors causes my freeze. Neither by themselves cause it. I've gone as little as 5 minutes until a freeze, and this past Tuesday, went an entire night without one. However I have been able to get it to happen with enough diligence each time.
Edit: I must add I have done NO compressor tests making H.264 files or any other activity that could test the other issues. I've simply been trying to play games.
Jason, the symptoms you've describe point to a video driver issue. I really think we'll see an updated video card driver or firmware relatively soon, especially since you've confirmed that Apple Engineering is working on it.
My point was that there are other folks who are experiencing freezes that don't seem to have anything to do with exiting a game's full screen mode or moving windows from one display to another. In those cases, the symptoms seem to point to a possible heat issue.
Impossible to tell without an engineering review, but I would agree.
However, you know as well as I do any circumstance where hardware/firmware/drivers are in question - symptoms of behavior and actual behavior are effected in ways that won't deliver consistent results.
However - "Condition A" is my fans ramping up and watching temps rise. The temperatures NEVER got above tolerance, but without this condition, switching from full-screen to windowed or moving a windowed session around, behave as normal.
I don't think it's heat - I think you are right about firmware but I'm suspicious it is even the graphics card; since the fans go crazy and temps fluctuate more than normal during "Condition A", it could be SMC firmware or graphics firmware.
