Q: MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

Dont feed the trolls, lets keep this one constructive.

Somebody over at the Macrumors thread just mentioned something that I have also had once but figured was unrelated until he mentioned he also had it. When shutting down Windows from Bootcamp it will hang on the 'Shutting down' spinner and the fans will max out in the same fashion that we have all seen on OSX.

Has anybody else had this one?

Run the Cinebench GPU test at the same time. Start the GPU test and the 8 instances of yes > /dev/null at the same time while the fans are at minimum RPM. Good chance the fans wont make it to maximum RPM before it locks.

Ive noticed this same issue with a few pieces of software. A couple games also. Is there a fix??

yes i noticed that the other day, "not Charging" and the compy was acting like it had a bad case of terretts

I was just alerted to this thread after reading about it on macrumors. I'm a new apple customer. This is my first macbook pro. I'm having this issue as well. Other than this issue, i'm very satisfied. I've noticed 2 types of lockups. One:

Complete lockup requiring a hard restart.

Two:

Everything locks up except the mouse. Can't click on anything. Waiting any amount of time doesn't help. Sometimes waiting will result in a full lockup.


I haven't called apple yet...But i'm considering doing it now. I've yet to read this entire thread because it's huge but i have subscribed to it and plan to read it. I hope this is an issue that can be fixed, but from what i understand this is what it is like to be an early adopter.


I'm using parallels when most of the crashes happen....haven't done anything to try to force the crash so i'm seeing them randomly once every 2-3 days.

We've read so you don't have to. This will answer many of your questions:

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

I've experienced 7 freezeups on my 2011 15inch 2.2ghz in the 13 days I've owned one.

They range from when I shutdown in Win 7 Bootcamp (it hangs on Shutting Down and the Circle stops spinning) to disconnecting the external display. I've also experienced lots of beachballing (if this is relevant to the freeze ups I don't know).

I wasn't able to replicate the Wiki Step 1 Instructions of the freeze first time. I did however manage to do it on my second attempt an hour or so later. Ironically the first time (when it didnt freeze) I was on my bed and the second time (when it did freeze) I was in my Office on a table. The second time the brightness was up to the max and it was plugged into the mains power.

Like someone has said before it does seem to happen if you "catch it out" ie from sleep go straight into something graphic or cpu intensive rather than easing it in gently - which is completely unacceptable for the worlds most powerful laptop range.

The two people I spoke to on the phone from Apple were very understanding and infact didn't even ask me to do any tests whatsoever and infact were more than helpful in offering me a refund/replacement (thankfully I did this within my first 14days of purchase). All in all for my first ever Mac computer I'm disappointed and disheartened with the brand.

I have taken up their offer on a replacement which means I'm going to be without a computer for a week (bto antiglare macbook) as I ditched my PC and got a Macbook as a desktop replacement. From what I've been reading however I'm not sure if this is going to eliminate the issue(s).

All in all I'm still (stupidly) loyal to the brand since my first iPod 6 years ago. I hope they can resolve this issue as I will be asking for a full refund on the replacement if it's exactly the same.

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

This freezing issue finally seems to be hitting the news sites and blogs. Let's hope this will put some pressure on Apple, and that they'll fix it as quickly as possible.

I'm still 99% sure that this is a software/driver issue, not hardware...

Agreed, I came across the article on maclife, I thought i was the only one and that i was just being a *******. Good to know im not as much of a noob as i thought. And word yet on a fix? i think im going to go the apple store today and bug the genius peeps. lol haha "bug" the genius peeps.....there is a bug with the lappy toppy hahaha...wow way toooo tired

I am also experiencing this issue. At first I thought it was the application I was running, Eve Online, but it appears to have the exact same symptoms that everyone else is reporting: Black screen, locked up, able to ssh to the machine, cursor responds. I will be calling Apple after work on this issue.

---
Additionally this issue only happens after the system has been running the application for an extended period of time. If I exit the app a few minutes after starting it's closed without issue. After running for 30 mins + the application locks to black screen, cursor responds.

Message was edited by: Bourius

ive had 7-8 kernel panics in the last few weeks,funny thing is, its not happening in windows,even when i game,i wondered if the default install of osx is gammy?- so you think a call to apple?or back to the store,?i wondered if its the graphics switching,its not going to the discrete gpu when it needs to.now in concerned to take it back,oni few weeks old,seems like lot o probs with new machines,according to this thread.

That article, might be usefull. however it doesnt give any information that will help. sound like a screen reading IT support moron on the other end of the line. (not meant as a personal attack on you, just the content)

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.

I tried this. 8 yes > /dev/null instances and CineBench GL then CPU at the same time. Fans are running but the laptop is still running and responding smoothly.