Lion randomly crashes - black screen

@Peace Freak I had a look and no dice, couldn't see ElmediaPlayer installed in Extensions

@alexsaleh I just gave it a try and says "not supported by this computer". Which i was expecting because it said the drivers were created for snow leopard. Whats interesting is they were only updated on 24/06/2011 (http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-macosx-256.02.25f01-driver.html)

as much as i hate to say it - ME TOO! I thought I was going crazy or maybe had installed some janky software causing my MBP 15" i7 to on very rare occasion to blank screen crash.

When I first purchased the unit the os was 10.6 something and for weeks it was one of the most reliable rock solid fastest laptops i had ever owned. Then one day - out of the blue right in the middle of doing something, with a dozen applications, and probably twice as many windows open - BLAM - lights out, the screen went blank. no message, no weird sounds nothing - I stared at the blank screen for while, wiggled the mouse, hit the space bar, put my ear to the palm rest to listen for disk activity... for all intensive purposes it felt like the machine was still running - i thought maybe my screen had crapped out. After a hard reboot and a week or so of no repeat performances I did not think much about it, ran system upgrades like a good little minion and nearly forgot about it. Then one day it happened again - then a couple days latter again - each time I tried to put together some connection, there was none, it was not from running off battery, or having an external monitor hooked up so i kept pushing forward, and it kept getting progressively worse - but never more than one a day. Then came my upgrade(?) to Lion - on the first day no less than 4 in a single afternoon before I decided to go back to 10.6 and try some of the possible solutions in this thread - so far the only one that sounds like it may work (since not having a second monitor is not an option for me) will be installing fan control sw and running them full blast all the time.

I am composing this from my MacPro while restoring my last Time Machine backup from 10.6.8 - Tiger looked cool, but i would rather use CLI then deal with more than one random crash a week.

COME ON APPLE - SHOW SOME COMPASSION!!! WE ARE NOT IMAGINING THIS - ITS HAPPENING AND WE ARE NOT HAPPY CONSUMERS. Perhaps our dissatisfaction would be better known if we tied our MBPs to a brick and deposited them into the front window of the nearest Apple retail store.... Apple customers are very passionate after all.

Hi David that post put a smile on my face. I know how you feel, those are the exact symptoms i've had. Its wierd that the old crashing from SL only started happening after about 6 months for me. Before that it was rock solid.

The brick idea sounds good but i'm sure the apple store glass is several inches thick for that very, macbookpro brick, reason!

the apple store said I was the first person to claim this problem!!!

perhaps if we all chose the same day to go in to the apple store nearest you and complained all on the same day it would have a lasting effect....

wow.

Thats actually not such a bad idea though. Anyone on here going to take their machine to the Sydney, george street Apple store? Everyone should book into similar stores in the same week. might help our chances...

So what happened anyway or were you just enquiring about having it looked at?

g.panos wrote:

Finally I have had a stable (but slow) system for 24h with extreme use.

- I have logged in while pressing shift (only way to really log in)

- I have installed gfxCardStatus and kept it at integrated

- installed smcfancontrol and set it to Higher RPM

You must realize, of course, how utterly absurd that is! I'm sitting here, enjoying Snow Leopard running flawlessly, smcfancontrol at default, coolbook not running at all (didn't need it after I migrated to my delightful MBP from the hopeless inferno that was the first gen Air), no pressing shift or any other machinations.

Apple will fix this, it's as simple as that. If you can't get back to Snow, you have my sincere sympathy, but, honestly, nobody with a real day job could work the way you describe.

As to various reports about elmediaplayer, nvidia cards, etc., I have no doubt these are all valid data points, but I will not resort to second guessing and hypothesizing 'til the cows come home. Apple is aware of the issue (though why they released this dog is a mystery), and it will be fixed in due course. How many have forgotten some of the disasters on the dot-zero release of other versions of OS X? Doesn't anyone remember the one where it didn't like certain HD controllers, and people lost entire disk contents? (another vote for backup, please). Patience, folks. If you haven't logged a bug report, complete with the requisite dump, you're just making noise (albeit soothing for others who have a Lion system that crashes).

rather than making the appt online i called up to make an appt. for tommorrow. on the phone they said were the first with such problems.

i have 2 problems. this black screen crash prob. and another imac in the house is running really slow and safari doesnt work it just freezes when you open safari - this only after upgrade to lion

I like many many other people am experiencing the exact same symptoms, verbatim. I paid $2,200 for this MacBook "Pro" and my AppleCare just expired so I am SOL with support, rendering this a very expensive piece of piece of aluminum sitting here about to crash at any second.

just remember this is not an "apple support" forum. I believe it's simply a community-to-community help forum. Having said that, some people *have* been contacted directly by apple due to this thread, so they must atleast be aware of the issue and what we're all saying. Again, please make sure to submit your "bug" to bugreport.apple.com along with supporting logs + system profile file.

oh, ontop of gizmodo there is also engadget, dailytech etc...!

I am not sure if it is any consolation, but today I was able to speak to the fellow from Apple who called me last week (based on my posts in this thread). He did not really have any news to offer, but reassured me that apple engineering are well-aware of this issue and are working on a number of fixes.

Our problem was apparently flagged late last week based on our posts and bug reports. Wired00 is right - if you have not submitted a bug at bugreport.apple.com you should take a few minutes and log your very own defect 😉

I filed my problem with Apple's bug report (https://bugreport.apple.com) and they responded and said...

"After further investigation it has been determined that this is a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering. This issue has been filed in our bug database under the original Bug ID#. The original bug number being used to track this duplicate issue can be found in the State column, in this format: Duplicate/OrigBug#.

Thank you for submitting this bug report. We truly appreciate your assistance in helping us discover and isolate bugs.

Best Regards,

Developer Support

Apple Worldwide Developer Relations"

if you are having the same problems please file a report. The more reports they get the better. I also hope that this means that the fix will be coming out really soon.

Came across this on CNET:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20083947-263/some-lion-users-plagued-by-bla ck-screen-bug/

Looks like word has gotten out.

nice find, i like how its referring directly back to this "lengthy thread" 😉

Glad to see CNET pick up on it. I had written to MacRumors asking for their help in publicizing this (and even linked to the thread) but apparently it's not a big enough deal for them to run a story on it. I had for for MacRumors to write about it because then the other Mac dedicated sites would have picked it up, and we probably would have gotten more traction on the topic by now. I'm still hopeful that 10.7.1 will come out within a few days and fix the problem. Of course, some of the reports from people who have talked to Apple support doesn't give me much confidence since it seems like Apple engineers might still be trying to figure out exactly what is wrong.

I also wrote up a thread on iFans.com. Link this one and your MacRumors thread.