Q: MacBook Pro 2011 17" hard freeze

Have fun with your cheap, plastic, fat and ugly Dell... Just saying. Not to mention the "NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 550M 1GB graphics" is significantly worse than the 6750M... It only has DDR2 while the AMD has GDDR5.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product-geforce-gt-550m-us.html

Just some advice... That's all.

Good for you. While you gave no indication of what issues you are having, I can't wait for you to deal with Windows. If you have only heard good things about Windows 7, you aren't listening very attentively. You'll need that exta hard drive space for that clunky OS anyway. So you just have fun with that. Be sure to get the extended warranty and spare no expense on your virus protection. Remember to calculate how much processor time, RAM, and bandwidth you are signing away just for that to run and remain up to date. You aren't done spending money yet. Enjoy your slow, unidirectional, undaisy-chainable USB. Belkin makes good hubs you will need to buy. Don't forget to get a USB external drive (even though USB is a dog) to back that thing up. You WILL be grateful you did!

While Windows 7 is more secure than Vista, maybe even XP, it is still severely vulnerable, so be very careful when online!

If you have been a Windows user all along, then you are probably used to waiting forever when you search for files anyway, so that shouldn't bother you. You won't miss the instantaneous search results that Mac OS gives.

Even though you can't remove it entirely, you may be able to clear up some extra room on your hard drive if you delete a lot of the bloatware that your new Windows machine will come with, so that's a plus.

If you have any problems, just call MicroSoft and they will be happy to lend a hand. Oh, wait, that's actually not true. They will refer you back to Dell.

I just got a hard freeze on my week-old standard-issue 17", updated to 10.6.7. I couldn't move the cursor, and the clock in the menu bar (set to 'Display the time with seconds') had stopped updating, but otherwise the display looked normal.

It froze about a minute after opening a single Safari page open whose only dynamic content is an animated GIF banner. Idling in the background were Mail, BBEdit, Terminal, and Finder.

The CPU temperature was only 39°C and the GPU only 34°, so it's definitely not temperature-related in my case. No fans were running, so it's not fan-related either. Quite a few posters have reported freezes shortly after startup in the morning, so Adrian J.

There was no crash report in "~Library/Logs/CrashReporter", and "cat /var/log/system.log" in the Terminal utility showed nothing but three innocuous-looking messages from Safari:

“Safari[462]: * WebKit discarding exception: <NSImageCacheException> Cannot lock focus on image <NSImage 0x11569cce0 Size={0, 0} Reps=(\n)>, because it is size zero.”

I don't have iStat or smcFanControl installed.

It's certainly not true that this issue only occurred under load. At least 8 other users on this lengthy thread have reported hard freezes under light load.

This response is for Jason AND Regular Joe:

I'm a Windows 7 user and a Windows user going back to
Windows 95 (the first multi-tasking OS from MS); I'm a power
user X2 with Photoshop and Premier Pro and Lightroom; my databases of
videos and photos are terabytes in size..

I presently am using a Dell XPS 16 I7 (the predecessor of the XPS 17
that Joe describes) but agree with much of what Jason states about
Windows systems in general..WIN 7 is probably bloated compared to Mac OS;
but my XPS 16 with 8 GB RAM, SSD, and i7 processor renders my images and
encodes my videos with the best of them and has worked flawlessly for
18 months; I've become very intriqued ,however, with the promise of
the Sandy Bridge technology as an uplift for my workflow and productivity;
I was a click away from ordering one of these MBP 2011 until I read and studied this Apple thread...and I probably still will once the hardware/software
kinks get ironed out..I can't afford (and I believe Regular Joe) can't
afford to have our hardware freeze right in the middle of a cpu-gpu
intensive operation..people that buy MBPros are SERIOUS computer users and
their time is generally worth much more than the price of a computer..so these
tools must work as advertised or need to be left in the developers kitchen a bit longer..

And just for those who think I'm a MS troll...no..I bought my son an imac
for his graduation and plan on getting a MBP soon! My first computer in 1989
was indeed a MacIntosh for those out there old enough to remember so I do have
skin in the game!

*No Joy in 10.6.7 Ville...*

Well, I thought we had a solution...

I installed the 10.6.7 update to my 2.2 GHz, 8 GB, 750 GB 17" machine and suddenly the world seemed great. I could not crash the machine -- the /dev/null tests could run for hours with PhotoBooth, Safari, watching iTunes movies, viewing 1080p content on YouTube, etc. all at the same time. The temperature of the CPU never went above 85C, despite my throwing everything I could find at it. This machine is a *beast*, and, if stable, will become my new best (non-human) friend

All seemed well enough that I elected to once again migrate all my data back on to this machine (I had wiped it fully to do a reinstall to demonstrate to Apple that no 3rd party software at all was part of the problem), in hopes that the update had permanently solved the problem. I ran this thing *really* hard from 9:00 AM right through until 11:30 PM -- at which point it froze, exactly as before, with not much running except the installer for some software (DVD installation).

It started just as always -- the installer stopped responding, and the screen stopped updating (clock) -- then clicking on other open windows (finder windows, a terminal window, etc.) worked -- but seconds later provided a spinning beach ball. Within about 20 seconds every single application was frozen and the mouse no longer responded.

So, with all due respect and delight for those of you who have found that the update has "solved" all the issues, please be very wary that you may still find some instability. My assessment is that it *has* made a difference -- as I said, I ran this thing for over 12 hours with no issues at all -- but I fear it has not completely addressed whatever the underlying problem is.

As much as it pains me, this one is heading back, since I cannot abide random failures doing basic stuff, and we'll see what a replacement has to offer...

Best of luck, all!

Scott

did u have have the "freeze" under win7 ?

@Scott Hurd,

do you have any 3rd party CPU/Fan speed controlling tools, like iStat/smcFancontrol and others? if so, remove them and you shouldn't notice an improvement. The fact that system works like a charm w/o your data proves that you have something which makes it to go mad.

John - I bought my newly delivered Macbook Pro using my Amex. What's the "Amex extension" you refer to? If I get an extra years' warranty from Amex that would be great!

Thanks
R

@Scott Hurd

I saw the same thing. So sorry -- I feel your pain.

I have a 15" 2.2 GHz i7 MBP, that literally crashed 10X under load yesterday. Mostly stupid stuff like Flash, sometimes something as lame as editing a text file.

I upgraded to 10.6.7 this morning and everything was grand -- no crashes. I was using the AMD GPU all day, and it was powering my external display just fine. That is until it got to be 5PM. Then it went back to its hard freeze behavior (system "stops", display remains in a frozen state, input devices seem to have no effect -- a hard reset is the only way to get the system to respond. And of course, no crash report / system log).

I tried switching back exclusively to Integrated GPU, and that really didn't seem to make a difference. It crashed again around 8.

While 10.6.7 seemed to do something, I agree with Scott -- it didn't totally solve the problem.

Seems like you still have some work to do, Apple...

I've seen a very similar freeze on my 2011 13" i5 machine both with 10.6.6 and 10.6.7. The display locks up and I can no longer move the cursor. It requires a power cycle to recover. No crash logs..

It seems to occur randomly and have no correlation to applications or CPU load. I've seen this happen several times with a light load.

I have been following this thread for a few days now.
I had desperately hoped that the 10.6.7 update would fix the problem but it appears it hasn't
The only way Apple are going to take any serious action on this is for us consumers to get serious.
If you have one on order (like me) - cancel it.
If you have one that keeps crashing - take it back and get a refund (not a replacement)
Pass the word to anyone you know - don't buy this model

Quoted:

@Scott Hurd,

do you have any 3rd party CPU/Fan speed controlling tools, like iStat/smcFancontrol and others? if so, remove them and you shouldn't notice an improvement. The fact that system works like a charm w/o your data proves that you have something which makes it to go mad.
----------------------------------------------------
Well, the truth is that I did have iStat Pro installed, but that was both when the system worked fine for 12 hours, and right through the crash.

I don't believe it is the data that is the issue. I hadn't gotten to running any other installers (other than the one that ended up running at the time of the crash) -- just moving data. So it isn't as though I had messed up the previously-installed pristine system (yet -- I was waiting for a special occasion for that ).

The bottom line is that I'm doing what I do every time I get a new machine -- I wipe the disk, reinstall the vanilla OS and run the heck out of it to see if it is trustworthy. This time, I got a little enthusiastic and started transferring my data a little earlier than usual -- but as soon as I hit the instability, I backed everything out and went right back to a newly formatted machine.

Having done this with every Apple I've owned, I have never experienced this type of issue before. I'm quite willing to admit I make mistakes, and may have missed something, but in my careful approach, I've been pretty meticulous about not introducing 3rd party stuff into the equation. In this instance, I DID install iStat Pro, because I needed to see the CPU temperatures to see if I had a "thermal runaway" problem -- I do not, since the idle temp is around 40 C, and the hottest I could get it to go was 85 C with all eight threads maxed out, video and lots of other stuff happening.

I could remove iStat pro and run another battery of tests, but the fact is that EVEN IF iStat Pro were the worst piece of software ever written (and I have absolutely no reason to believe this -- it is, after all only a dashboard application, and an EXCELLENT one, at that!), it should not result in a hard-boot-requiring-lockup!

I've talked with the courier and we're going to play New ThunderBook Roulette to see what comes up...

Sorry to hear others are still having troubles as well -- I still advise caution in trusting these machines with critical processes and data...

Blessings,
Scott

This is very disheartening to someone like me. This is my very first MAC, 15", switching from PC, and I just got it two weeks ago. It's already freezing up, and all I'm doing is blogging with 3 open tabs, maybe. Nothing else is running. This computer and required programs was a hefty $3000 for my college classes, applied to my tuition. And I can't even blog? How am I supposed to do my schoolwork?

What is Apple planning to do? Does Apple usually have this many problems? I have never heard anything bad about it.

I have the same 2011 13" just like you but haven't had any crashes at all. Its a bit weird since the freeze usually affects the 15" and the 17" due to their discrete graphics.
After I updated to the latest 10.6.7, my temp has gone lower by a couple of degrees. It has never passed 90 now and can go down under 40, before it wasn't able to do so.

I came from a PC and this is my first MAC and I'm really enjoying the system. Maybe because I came from a PC, I don't have that high of expectation. Back then, my pc used to crash all the time, not to mention the viruses and compatibility issues.

All I'm saying is that, this is so much better compared to from when I still uses the pc.

p.s: I got mine from hong kong

One more windows 7 user who bought into mac and is reconsidering.

I too do professional advertising photography and have for years cranked out my work with minimal problems despite the constant ribbing of my mac based clients.

So I broke down and bought a macbook pro, the high end 2010 15 inch model. Problem was that over 2 k mac would not work with my usb based Canon 1DsMKIII camera and a simple 30' active usb extension...which worked perfectly with window machines of all stripes.

Apple says...sorry it just wont work. ***????

So I returned it and tested the 2011 version and low and behold...it worked. So I bought two, a high end 15 and a low end 13.

Now I have a 15 that locks up for no reason and a 13 that won't properly resume from sleep after the latest software upgrade. Now I find I can't simply roll back the software upgrade with a single mouse click which is what I can do with ease on windows.

So now I have well over 4 grand of sexy looking laptops with an os that has eye candy popup icons but neither can be trusted to run production work and earn their keep. Good thing I have my cooking windows workstation for production and my windows laptops available to take on location and to process files so I can earn back the money I spent on these superior Macbook pro computers.

Am I a bit bitter at the "Mac Experience"? Oh yea. Great advertising, rabid followers. Not so great hardware and software.

Maybe its a fluke. Maybe Apple will sort it out. Sadly for them they burned a lot of people with these products and that simply can't be denied.