Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

Oh my god. I downgraded to Snow Leopard and THE ISSUE DIDN"T GO AWAY!!!!! I am so so so so so mad. Black screen of death, graphics card problem. Never had it once during the last 12 months on SL before the upgrade. *** is going on!!

i've been postponing the SL downgrade for a week now, but after several crashes yesterday, i decided to go ahead. Copied everything across on external disc, cleaned erased, and copied things back and re-installed apps.

VERY PAINFUL experience but  I have had no crashes with SL so far after intense use of the mac.

did you do a clean install?

No, logic board replacement fixed my mac. I can'y understand why more of you aren'y pushing for this. It's the ONLY solution.

As Jean said, its vital that you do a clean install. That means you wipe the disk with Disk Utility's 'erase' function before you clone back to it. Otherwise, the cloner will leave in place all the hidden Lion OS system files that are (probably) causing your problems.

there has been a new seed (as of Sep 30) OS X Lion 10.7.2 Build 11C57. no mention of graphics drivers in the read me. anyone tries it please report.

Weighing in at 790 megabytes as a combo update and at 740 megabytes for the barebones delta update, build 11C57 asks developers to focus on areas such as AddressBook, GraphicsDrivers, iCal, iChat, iCloud, the Mac App Store, Mail, MobileMe, Spotlight, and Time Machine.

yeap, you are right. i was looking at the readme for the server version.

let us know how goes it

I had my logic board replaced by Apple (Meadowhall, Sheffield) I got the machine home, it tried to boot twice and then died. The Macbook Pro is now completely stone dead. I am now attempting to contact the Executive Relations Officer who assisted me initially. Apalled at this state of affairs , they clearly never tested the machine after replacing the board.

My Macbook Pro mid 2010 (320gb/4gb) purchased in December 2010 had the same problems as most people have reported on here and on the 14 August after a very frustrating week of spinning beachball, constant crashes and kernel panics forcing me to keep shutting down and restarting (which didn't always work) I opened the lid to find a black screen and unresponsive keyboard. I could just hear the hard drive which was the only way to tell that it was on. I phoned Apple service and before I could even explain I was asked if I had Applecare which I did not and explained that it is still under the first year warranty. I was told that if I leave it until it is over a year old I will not be able to buy it.

I was given an appointment at my nearest apple store which was Brighton, East Sussex, a 36 mile round trip for me by public transport!

The service people at Apple tried an external display which didn't work and then I was told it would need the logic board replacing and without saying that I had read many of the posts regarding this problem I asked why it would fail after 8 months and was told that it was very unusual for this to happen! I asked how long it would take to repair and was told it would be a couple of hours if they had the part in stock. He made a phone call and said that they had one which was ordered for another Macbook but as it wasn't being collected until next week they could use it in mine.

I returned later and the Macbook was working as normal and after more pressure to buy Applecare I left the shop. The work was done free but the receipt was for £418.80.

I do not feel that the display is as clear as before and I have been getting the spinning beachball again for the past week.

By the way my Macbook is as it came and I have added nothing apart from iwork 09 which I purchased new and it hasn't left my home (apart from the day I took it for repair). No one else has ever used it and I use it for storing pictures, playing music, email and internet and infact have only used 40gb of the 320gb hard drive.

I have spoken to Trading Standards about the issue and they have taken all the details and circulated them to their other areas so that if any of them get a similar call they will be aware of it. I have been given all the details of my rights under The Sale of Goods Act and am aware of what I can do if I have any more problems with this and I will NOT be buying Applecare extended warranty!

Yes I did a clean install of Snow Leopard, still crashed 3 times in the past 2 days with BSOD

I did a time machine backup of my original hard-drive that never got used before I installed my SSD.

Have an appointment at the Apple store tomorrow. *sigh*

I am of the understanding that it is firmware problem sending bad calls to the nVidia and once upgrading to Lion, the firmware can't be reverted back.

So I am assuming that this is the reason people weren't having problems with SL so much and then upgrading to Lion, seeing this problem happen often and then downgrading and having the prolem not go away. Hence, a mobo replacement seems to fix it for users. A clean install won't help much...if anything at all(it did not, in my case, and I zeroed my HDD before a SL reinstall).

My knowledge is fairly basic of computers, but that's just my assumption. I may be off-base here.

PS-Windows notebook is in the mail. Weeeeeee...........

BTW, the latest seed of 10.7.2 (11C71) does not fix the problem. I'm losing hope and my work suffers. I hope this isn't the last seed, but if it is I'll be going to an Apple store after my current contract to get this issue resolved.

Another way to get the BSOD that is as easy to reproduce as the Photo Booth method is if you have iTunes open to the default store, and just let it sit for a few minutes.

That's not good news...it seems that graphics drivers were the focus of seed (11C57) 10.7.2

This update has focused on the applications and services that interface with iCloud (iCal, Address Book, App Store, Mail) ... In addition, a big focus of the 10.7.2 update has been improvements to graphics drivers, which hopefully should address a few notable anomalies that users have experienced. These include black screens and performance problems, in addition to fuzzy or garbled textures onscreen.

 

Since these graphics "fixes" are firmware, if the next update doesn't work out for my computer, will using Time Machine or a clone of my system really work to bring the computer back to it's previous state???

 

I'm going to wait an see what everyone else has to say before I download any more updates from Apple...twice burned so far...once with upgrading to Lion, and once when upgrading to 10.7.1...now that everything's working, there will be another upgrade to mess things up...no thanks until it proves itself.

 

Ian Kelleigh wrote:

 

BTW, the latest seed of 10.7.2 (11C71) does not fix the problem. I'm losing hope and my work suffers. I hope this isn't the last seed, but if it is I'll be going to an Apple store after my current contract to get this issue resolved.

 

Another way to get the BSOD that is as easy to reproduce as the Photo Booth method is if you have iTunes open to the default store, and just let it sit for a few minutes.

I was OK for about a week and I took extra care to make sure my Mac Book Pro i7 8G 2010 was kept cool.

Got BSOD now from general work on the laptop.

Posted a reply before in regards to if anyone knew of a diganostic program that could be used to test the logic board. It seems to be a good idea to be able to test the computer for faults before traveling to a Mac store, especially if living in a place where its very far to a store

If you know of a text that can be run please post it.

This is get worse. I had bsod on my 2010 Mac mini brought it to apple store with no luck. Once I brought it home I discovered that since lion the refresh rate was different and bsod has been good since fixing refresh rate. New problem with win 7. Any time I try to upgrade drivers to anything but stock drivers windows boots up to black screen. This being my first Mac I'm very dissapointted in apple. All they care about is iOS and that's it