Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

Same system here with same problems - eg. SpikyJake.

I also have called Apple Support three times and Apple Store once.

Tried all above, still black screen with graphic intensive tasks unless using gfxCardStatus to lock in integrated graphics only. Reproduced with discrete nvidia 330 processor use.

I also believe Apple knows these machines are problemmatic and also know they were all bought summer, 2010. Mine went off warranty a week before Lion was released, assume they are waiting for all to go off warranty before they announce that this logic board has graphics problems not related to , but brought out by Lion

Now have to decide if pay for entire new logic board myself ...

So, could somebody please confirm- Is it a software or a hardware problem?

Ive read that for some people replacing the logic board did not help.

My warranty ends in 2 months, so should I wait for a few more weeks or go to apple store now? I use my MacBook a lot, gonna be hard to find a temporary replacement for it.

Hi Mozart, AFAIK (and I'm fairly sure I've read every post in this entire thread) there was only 1 (maybe 2?) people who received their machine back and continued to get the BSOD after a logic board replacement. That person simply took the machine back again and had the MB replaced a 2nd time. 3rd time they were lucky and were trouble free.

From this and everything else I conclude there are a bunch of faulty GPU's. The chip for some showed its problems with SL, some it didn't. In Lion potentially the drivers/firmware unlocked or utilised new features of the GPU which caused larger numbers of GPU's to crash. The person mentioned above received a motherboard/GPU replacement which AGAIN had the fault. What I know is that apple authorised repairers actually use "refurbished" parts as repairs (it says it in black and white right in the terms of paperwork i received on my repair) so getting a 2nd faulty GPU is entirely possible.

IMO getting a MB replacement is a no brainer given the current situation. I'd especially race out and get the MB replacement done if you only have 2months left on your warranty. Only 1 person (?) in 70 pages of this thread didn't get a solution on their first replacement.

Mozart wrote:

 

So, could somebody please confirm- Is it a software or a hardware problem?

Ive read that for some people replacing the logic board did not help.

 

My warranty ends in 2 months, so should I wait for a few more weeks or go to apple store now? I use my MacBook a lot, gonna be hard to find a temporary replacement for it.

Apple replaced the logic board of my MBP 2010 i7 2.66. That solved my problem — the constant BSOD, making Lion unusable.

My hardware was out of Applecare, by weeks. Lion, though, was covered by Applecare. I opened my Applecare ticket with coverage provided by LIon. Sent off the requested data dump. They offered to replace the logic board.

I have been using it for, oh, a bit more than a week now [I don't do so well with time .]  I won't say "all is well" with Lion - there are still issues (e.g. All My Documents does not show it namesake).

But NO BSOD PROBLEMS WITH MY MBP SINCE THE LOGIC BOARD WAS REPLACED.

It seems like you just don't get it. its a faulty logic board for sure. Just read my post over here

They have replaced my logic board twice, once on Leopard and the second on Lion. My theory is that after a period of time, when you use your MPB, the chip  is FU*&#d. Its a faulty MB.

Got my 2010 15" MBP Pro i7 2.66ghz back today from Apple in Chatswood AU which has had the logic board replaced.

Will keep you updated on it's status over the next few days/weeks.

Fingers crossed

wast3gat3 wrote:

 

In case apple is listening the issue is with the nvidia card and heat.

 

As stupid as it sounds I'm 99.9% sure built in mechanisms is shutting things down because of heat issues. Don't ask me why in Lion and not in Snow Leopard but I run iStats pro and normal usage forcing the intel card I’m hovering at 50-55°c. Switch to dynamic and the nvidia card kicks in and I’m at +80°c fire up a game or VMware Fusion and it’s +93°c.

My overclocked i7 desktop never sees that kind of temperature and shuts down at+80°c. Surely it can’t be a good thing for a laptop at those temps….

 

 

Here's something intersting. I posted screenshots of iStats back on page 61 of the thread showing the heat changes during usage.

After I got my new logic board replacement today there is a difference in that the GPU temp is no longer reported to iStat. Look on the above screenshot between 'Enclosure' and 'GPU Die - Analog' you can see the GPU temp when it's enabled and disabled (shown by a - in the disabled state), also shown at the top by the two temperatures.

Nothing has changed and I have attached the iStat config. but GPU temp is no longer showing in the top bar like it used to and in the drop down.

Yeah I know CPU 1 temp is nice and high now...

Interesting...

Agreed. I turned my fans up with smcFanControl and put a small desktop fan blowing on the back of my iMac, and boom, no issues at all. Stays around 45 degrees now.

I've experienced the same problem. My macbook pro mid 2010 i7, nvidia Gforce N330M was unusable so I reinstalled back the good old SL. I'm waiting for a fix, any news about?

Just in case there will be no fix, does anybody knows which procedure is required to get back money from Apple?

I mean, the reclaim module for a product that is not working how it was supposed to do ...

Please excuse this duplicate post. I'm a newby with discussion board dos/don'ts...but I felt compelled to retract what I hoped was a permanent "fix":

I'm sorry to report that on the 9th day of solid use, after deleting the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist file...I had 3 kernel panics!

Nothing was changed by me, so I have no idea what happened.

I visited the Genius Bar since I just wanted the  piece of mind that my hardware was OK - and all they could tell me was..."Apple engineers are very aware of this..." The Genius was very polite and offered to reinstall Lion. After reading everything on this and other threads it seemed like a waste of time to do a reinstall.

So, sorry to report the bad news, but I thought it was important to report back.

Called support this morning and they had me reset the PRAM and system controller. Not sure if this will do anything. Will also try the hardware test later today.

Will post with any updates.

Has anyone been able to reproduce this problem in Snow Leopard?  I can do it reliably by the iDVD cinema theme that I mentioned before or by going to photobooth and going to the second page of effects, but can anyone do this in Snow Leopard? 

I wasted a bunch of time today talking to the Apple Support supervisor doing unproductive things (like reseting the PRAM - sorry to rain on your parade).  I even went to the apple store but they wanted to run tests on my computer, and I can't afford to be without one.  I've reinstalled Snow Leopard because that was stable, but I'm curious if I can reproduce it in Snow Leopard.

Also, is does anyone know if this is related to the integrated chipset GPU or the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M?  I noticed on NVIDIA's website they do not have drivers available for download for Lion, so could it just be that simple?  No driver that's supported in Lion yet for our graphics card?

For what it's worth, I went to an Apple Store, and was told by one of their geniuses that the issue is actually caused by a bug in power management (which just happens to manifest nicely with the nVidia drivers).... i.e. the power management software believes the machine is going to sleep/suspend, turns off the video card, and never turns / is unable to turn it on again...

Mine's a (crippled) Mid 2010 MacBook Pro ...

Hey everyone,

I've been having this issue with kernel panics since the day lion came out, and I have finally come to conclusion on what has been causing mine. I posted in this thread under another account, but couldn't remember my login. I've tried every fix in this thread, and have been following it for a while now and nothing has worked.

I noticed I would always receive kernel panics at boot, so I did some debugging and started to remove every application one by one from startup items to see if any application could be causing this issue.. and what do you know it was! I haven't received a single kernel panic in over a week since I removed this application from my startup. I can confirm 100% that this application was indeed causing kernel panics, reason being if I open the application I get a instant kernel panic. One bounce on the dock, and I get a black screen with the keyboard still lit.

I have found two applications that caused these kernel panics and removed them both.

The first one is "The Hit List", which is found here http://www.potionfactory.com/thehitlist/

The second is "Reeder", which is found here http://reederapp.com/mac/

I found that whenever I opened Reeder as well, I would receive a instant kernel panic. I suggest you guys do the same debugging process as I did, and hopefully this will solve your problems. I still hope apple would fix this in 10.7.2 so I can use these applications again.

After this extremely stressful situtaiton, I'm glad to have this temporary fix in place until an update is released. I wish anyone who is reading this the best of luck and hope this solves your kernel panics.

Has anyone been able to reproduce this problem in Snow Leopard?  ...the iDVD cinema theme... photobooth and going to the second page of effects...

Both of these work fine in SL 10.6.7 on my Mid-2010 MBPro-15 2.53 i5.

...I went to an Apple Store, and was told by one of their geniuses that the issue is actually caused by a bug in power management...

Power Management was also one of my guesses, but that doesn't explain why things fail in PhotoBooth. Unless there's some way to power-off parts of the NVIDIA chip or surrounding circuitry, e.g. VRAM. Seems unlikely, but it's possible. Maybe PM never powers up something, and when you do the right graphic operation things crap out.