Lion randomly crashes - black screen

I'm unable to reproduce the similar behavior on my brother's MacBook Pro 2010 15" model. Before upgrading to Lion, I ran software update and it is up to date. However I applied latest EFI firmware update again (didn't check whether it's already contains or not) - However you can manually download the firmware from here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3423 - I'm not sure whether this update fixes that issue. But it's better to check existing EFI firmware by referring this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3706 - After that I upgraded his system to Lion and it's working fine.

If you unable to boot MacBook Pro, please follow these steps:

1. Shutdown your Mac entirely by holding the power button for 5 seconds.
2. Hook up your Mac to another one with a FireWire cable. (You have one, right?)
3. Hold the T key on your mac's internal keyboard and press the power button. When your MBP's disk will shows up as an external firewire disk on your HelperMac, release the T button.
4. Open finder and go to the /private/var/vm folder on your MacBook's hard drive. You may need to use Command-Shift-G in Finder, because this folder is hidden by default. Once in /private/var/vm remove thesleepfile you find there.
5. Next, go to /System/Library on you MBP's disk and removeExtensions.mkext.
6. Now, eject your MBP drive and shutdown your MBP by hitting its power button.

After these steps, you should be able to boot your MBP as normal again.

Thanks to Ariejan for this tip!

It is definitely not google chrome by itself, I did a clean install of lion formatting drive etc and no google chrome installed at all and I am still getting black screen crashes.

The only thing that seems to help is forcing integrated only video and fan control temp which I describe on page 2 of this thread

@Aexis,

Can you let me know your EFI firmware version? You can check existing EFI firmware by referring this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237

Some firmware updates for Intel-based Macs may not be displayed automatically using Software Update. If they do not appear in Software Update, they must be manually downloaded from the Apple Downloads site. If you are unsure whether your computer needs a particular update, simply download and open the update installer. The installer will alert you if the firmware update is already installed or not needed.

I just tried this meraTechStuff. No good says the update is not supported by this system. probably because it was created for snow leopard not lion? Not sure. Looked promising though as their description looks just like what is needed. Have a check here if anyone with snow leopard can install the firmware update

here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237

and here (for direct link to 15" macbook pro mid 2010 model):

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1098

I've also gone back to using gfxCardStatus on forced integrated mode and i haven't crashed in 20+minutes (whcih is good for me). I'd previously removed gfxCardStatus when using Snow leopard because i thought it might be a cause of the problem of "black screen of death" but as i expected its something wrong with nvidia hardware or firmware. I'll leave it on force integrated for now...

One more thing... regarding google chrome. Can everyone try this?...

I was able yesterday to reliably cause the kernel panic by simply saving a file in google chrome. As soon as the file completes it crashes. I know people are saying its NOT google chrome because they have done fresh installs etc etc but it certainly can reliably reproduce the issue for me. So please try download google chrome install and download any file within it. It might help apple diagnose the issue if they atleast have a reliable way to reproduce a KP.

Edit: Actually forget it... so yesterday i could reproduce it over and over by downloading in google chrome, today i just tried and it successfully downloaded a file both with integrated and nvidia card running... go figure.

With all due respect, with enough people not using Google Chrome I think we can reliably rule it out, and it would only further cloud the issue for users and Apple.

The first three times I had a BSOD, all I had running was Powerpoint when it happened. If I applied your logic, I would have deduced it was due to PPT (and I even made a post about it in some support forum, either this one or an Apple-friendly site). Turns out that was not the case as now I've had it happen when I'm not running PPT.

It's clearly an nVidia driver issue. Has been since apparently the developer builds. Apple should have enough to go by on that. Worst case scenario they should roll back to the last nVidia driver that Snow Leopard was using, as that one was apparently stable for most, if not all of us. That would be a great first step in order to bring back stability. They can monkey around with new driver builds behind the scenes and stop using us early adopters of what was supposed to be Final Rev software as beta testers.

EDIT: I've also had the longest uninterrupted up-time right now using gfxCardStatus forcing the Intel onboard graphics, and with others reporting similar results, I think it's nearly conclusive that it's the nVidia driver.

Google chrome triggering a crash would not at all surprise me, since the newest builds of google chrome use GPU very heavily if it is available. There is even in an option in the about:flags screen for using the GPU on all pages.

With that said. even if chrome is triggering the crashes, the chrome team will likely argue (rightly) that apple is responsible for fixing the driver. No application on the system should ever be able to create a kernel panic.

I've also just had an email from Apple, asking if I'd be interested in helping them locate the problem by sending them logs, etc

Of course, I said yes 🙂

Looks like they're aware of the problem and are watching this thread, as they found my posting here. Hopefully, this is good news.

You're right, this is definitely an OS BIG bug. The proof of it is that just reinstalling SL everything is ok.

Apple HAVE to solve this as soon as possible.

Got the same problem with random black screens on my MbPro, first one appeared when installing Lion on the select / connect to wifi, had to skip that step to continue.

Did another try after that and it installed ok, but now i get random crashes......

Hope AAPL is working on this!

My Setup:

15-inch, Mid 2010

Processor 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB

Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7 (11A511)

Experiencing the same problem (crash on a blank screen, predominantly after waking from sleep) on a Macbook Pro Core i5, with NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M.

Just as a litmus test I'm now running five concurrent windows of Chrome on some flash and animated-content heavy sites and left it on for an hour, no crash so far. Keep in mind I'm also forcing the integrated graphics and avoiding nVidia altogether.

@meratechstuff

Model Name: MacBook Pro

Model Identifier: MacBookPro6,2

Processor Name: Intel Core i7

Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 2

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 4 MB

Memory: 4 GB

Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s

Boot ROM Version: MBP61.0057.B0C

SMC Version (system): 1.58f16

is there a manual intel firmware update I can download?

i'm having this exact same problem. prior to this had not experienced a single crash with my 2.66 Ghz i5 imac.

i've had 2 crashes - one while watching hbogo and one while listening to music with spotify.