Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

I can't see this as being a logic board / hardware issue when it worked fine under Snow Leopard.  These black screens seem to be specific to Lion and a firmware incompatibility with it and the Nvidia graphics card.  I'm reluctant to go down that path of instigating a hardware replacement for "faulty" equipment when so many seem to have done that and the problem remains. 

I cannot believe Apple's arrogance in failing to publicly acknoledge this as a problem.  I get that it is embarrassing for them (and rightly so) but how long do they expect people to put up with rubbish systems that have you operating on them just wondering when the next crash is going to happen?   With no help from Apple on how to deal with this, I'm going to try and stick it out until next week when 10.7.2 will need to be released (for iCloud going live on the 12th), hopeful that they'll have a fix in there for it.  Not confident though.  If the problem persists after that, my plan will be to roll back to 10.6.8 and vow never to buy another Apple laptop again.

Actually I don't think the next update will fix the problem.

And I think my problem is more serious cuz nearly all apps I opend my MBP will then crashed.

My MBP was out of warranty, but since I bought their Lion software from the app store I got all the work for free. I am in New York City. You have to tell them this is the remedy. Until Apple comes out with whatever Lion needs not to be a disappointment, this is the fix for me.

I was expecting that 10.7.1 would fix this issue!

The bad (or worse) news is that I tried 10.7.2 GM and it's STILL crashing!!

I really hope they release a firmware update together with 10.7.2 public.

My Early 2009 Mac Pro with an ATI Radeon HD 5870 crashes almost daily since upgrading to Lion.

All the crashes reference the ATI drivers, so I assume this is actually an issue with the graphics card hardware, firmware or drivers.

On Snow Leopard, crashes were few and far between. Maybe every 6 months or so.

The Lion issues are completely unacceptable, and Apple should really be trying to fix these issues.

Same problem.

If you get a black screen (with charger attached) try unplugging the charger, close and reopen.

Generally happens overnight, with charger attached.

Upon opening, screen will be black or will flicker for a second.  Close-reopen, then flicker again.

If I disconnect the charger, close the case and reopen, screen will stay on.  I can the reconnect the charger.

This makes sense regarding the problem is with Nvidia, my computer is (probably) switching to integrated graphics when charger is unplugged.

Try disabling Nvidia graphics:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1182104

http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus

Thanks to gfxcardstatus one can easily reproduce the problem, although strangely enough my computer did not crash on the graphics only setting when booted from an extenal hardrive. Can anyone suggest why?

Apple support have shown themselves to be utterly lame. After calling them constantly for two months they no longer have any idea what to do and they are now just stringing me along pretending to offer solutions that will cleary not solve the problem.

My faith in Apple has been shaken to the core. Their philosophy of simplisity -- having only a few products that work really well -- has failed.

I feel like I just found out my wife is cheating on me.

I have a 2010 i7 macbook pro (specs below) and I installed Lion on an external firewire drive and ran it for about a day with no problems. I also attempted the photobooth effects test and all went well... no BSOD. Only significant change I noticed was the computer appeared to run a few degrees warmer (both the CPU and GPU) based on iStat Pro.

On another note, my father ran into this issue after the installation/upgrade to Lion on his 2008 Macbook Pro with NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT graphics processor. He actually couldn't complete the reinstallation (suggested by support) because the BSOD was appearing during the reinstallation process. Made us think that some firmware had been updated and possibly corrupted. The apple store sent his laptop out for a new logicboard and all is well now. No BSOD. His machine was the version that was part of the NVIDIA recall so it sort of made sense that the error appeared and that they covered it under warranty. Before Lion, he had no problems.

Anyone else have success on an external installation, but then have issues after installing on local drive? Would firmware be updated on the local machine when I ran the installation on the external firewire drive? I haven't upgraded my local drive yet as I fear that the BSOD error may then appear. If I decide to give the upgrade a shot this weekend, I will post a status update.

I have a Mid 2010 MacBook Pro i5 2.4 Ghz

  Nom du modèle :          MacBook Pro

  Identifiant du modèle :          MacBookPro6,2

  Nom du processeur :          Intel Core i5

  Vitesse du processeur :          2,4 GHz

  Nombre de processeurs :          1

  Nombre total de cœurs :          2

  Cache de niveau 2 (par cœur) :          256 Ko

  Cache de niveau 3 :          3 Mo

  Mémoire :          4 Go

  Vitesse d’interconnexion du processeur :          4.8 GT/s

  Version de la ROM de démarrage :          MBP61.0057.B0C

  Version SMC (système) :          1.58f15

NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M :

  Jeu de composants :          NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M

  Type :          Processeur graphique (GPU)

  Bus :          PCIe

  Longueur de la voie PCIe :          x16

  VRAM (totale) :          256 Mo

  Fournisseur :          NVIDIA (0x10de)

  Identifiant du périphérique :          0x0a29

  Identifiant de révision :          0x00a2

  Révision de la ROM :          3560

  Version gMux :          1.9.21

I have the BOSD That's is really not cool i can assure you, men at work at Apple Cie

First Time i upgrade my snow leopard account :

BOSD with Photo booth, or Safari just surfing, or transmit

Second Time i have install LION freshly on my internal Hard disk formatted and imporet my account with the assistant from an external Hard drive :

BOSD

Third Time i install LION freshly without importing anything

BOSD

All this randomly, but can be reproduce easily with photo both effect well know here ...

With or without GFX card statut install : same BOSD

Cards switching automaticly or not--> Same thing

On power mor often than on Batterie, but i have it on the 2 sources

Return to Snow Leopard and see if i get a BOSD

CountDrachma01 wrote:

 

I cannot believe Apple's arrogance in failing to publicly acknoledge this as a problem.  I get that it is embarrassing for them (and rightly so) but how long do they expect people to put up with rubbish systems that have you operating on them just wondering when the next crash is going to happen?  

A long time if this article is anything to go by it's been over 7 months already!

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/21/freezing-macbook-pros

Have had the same issue, MBP 2010, NVIDIA 330m, crashes on any animation in Lion when on Discrete card, on some animations Snow Leopard.

Crashes occur in OSX, and bootcamp to Ubuntu / Windows.

Took it to the apple store, they matched the Panic message to an issue which is 'under investigation', their internal documentation suggested downgrading the OS to 10.7.0. I got it back, and it crashed before I even got through the initial set up!

Second visit they downgraded it to 10.6.something, still crashed, they tried an older 10.6.something else, no fix, but the crash is less frequent.

Not sure how accurate this bit of info was, but apparently there was no firmware change in any of the updates to Lion, so that rules that theory out.

On my latest call with them, when they returned my still broken 'book, the guy told me that a resolution is probably going to happen, hopefully soon, and that they have narrowed down the issue to a specific chipset - this is all promising!

It's frustrating, but ultimately, I have an out of warranty 2 and a bit year old laptop - I can only imagine where Asus would have told me to shove my previous machine :-)

I was trying to figure out if it is the trackpad?  Because sometimes I'll be chatting on a forum like this with *no* speakable moving animation on my portion of the screen and I run one finger upwards and the other downwards at the same time and I get a crash.  I can't narrow it down myself either, but sometimes all I did was move the mouse and try to click and I get the black screen.

Lately for some reason it seems that just by opening App Store I can cause it to crash more often.

So perhaps NVIDIA isn't an actual Apple compatable brand.  Will Apple swap them out for another brand if under AppleCare? (I think I paid for 3 years? of AppleCare) As of August I just passed my second.

'Animation' could be anything including a hover effect on the link or button you were moving to click. It's not so much about how major the animation was, but more about which part of the graphics memory that particular animation writes (tries to write) to.

NVIDIA caards were the cause of a similar issue back in 2007 with the macbook Pro - and the newest macbooks are using AMD - I think you're on to something there - or at very least apple aren't keen on NVIDIA any more.

You still have valid apple care? Take it back to them, they will help you out! Not ALL of the 330m's are broken, just some, so they will probably just give you another.

Yes, the issue is not simply the nVidia graphics card, or firmware/drivers. It's several things going wrong that is causing the problem.

Resetting the SMC, disabling the sudden motion sensor and disabling gfx switching using either the intergated or the dedicated card has so far eliminated the problem for me.