Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

Apple gave me a unique solution after my MBP back 03 times for technical assistance.

Downgrade to Snow Leopard , wait for the update software and install again "MAC OSX Little Cat"

It's frustrating but it was the official solution that Apple Care gave me ! Doing !

Or if you call to Microsoft Care, they will recommend you to install Windows 7 because the OS will work full without black screen ! 

Profits before acknowledging that they have many angry customers

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/18/apple_profits_jump_54_on_record_sa les_of_4_9m_macs_11_2m_ipads.html

Apple replaced my logic board in Aug. this year, everything was working great till I went to Lion now I get the Black screen. I also had to do a reinstall of Itunes 10.5. Could not sign in to my Itunes account to buy a book. I think Apple brought out Lion to soon sure made a mess of things for a company that has done well in the past. I have a PC that I can use and a I Mac that I won't be putting Lion on!

Just called AppleCare about this problem. They said if your computer is having those exact symptoms in this http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4086 , then it would be solved by the software update their engineers are "working on".

I asked for a timeframe and they said the issue is being investigated and worked on.

My concerns about this is that the article states: "you may also see a restart warning message before the video is lost or the display turns black or gray", I never ever seen that, which makes me doubt if this is the issue we're talking about here.

Thanks.

is anyone else getting these crashes on an older macbook pro from early 2008?

Processor  2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Memory  4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Graphics  NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB

^ Me neither. I never see a restart warning.

Aso, it is never simply a video loss issue - the entire computer is unresponsive (neither caps lock, nor volume buttons are responsive).

I was wondering if this might be happening to others.  Anyone else out there that had their logic board replaced and then upgraded to Lion having the BSOD again?

I agree with UCLAMacConvert's statements.

But we already know that a logic-board replacement is not a guaranteed solution, so I understand why Apple is unwilling to spend lots of money on a "maybe" solution.

As for the Genius Bar folks deferring on a fix, that's also probably a company policy. You can't have 100 stores all doing different things when you don't know what the real fix should be.

I don't deny that it's a serious problem that infuriates many people. But you do want a real fix, don't you? Not something that could come back later to bite you. If this turns out to be an NVIDIA chip problem, then we all want verified proper chips. We don't want a replacement logic board with a questionable chip.

I suspect the problem happens within the video chip, which makes it extremely hard to diagnose. Add to that the possibility that NVIDIA might be a bit nervous, so their engineers aren't necessarily working full-speed to implicate their own company for a multimillion-dollar repair. (Remember, they went through this with the 2008 MBPro.)

Rick is exactly right.

Apple is currently doing the right thing by telling people to "sit tight" while they work on determing the exact problem, and exact solution to that problem.

It still majorly ***** that this happened in the first place, and no one is to blame but Apple for that, but the way in which they're handling the situation is the correct way.

If you want the 'real fix' there's nothing you can do but be patient.

Of all the dozens of BSODs indeed there have been just once a restart warning in a form that I had never seen before: on a semi-transparent grey background. For the rest, all the symptoms coincide with the described in this thread.

That means its as described in their KB article. The guy kinda confirmed that its gonna be fixed in a software update. Am waiting.

In Germany Apple´s 15" MacBookPro video fix is available:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4088?viewlocale=de_DE

With the 2008 MBP issue Apple offered free repairs 4 years from date of purchase http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2377

Hmm.  Apple have just released faster MacBooks. Interestingly,  the video cards are RADEONs

i didn't take advantage of that offer because i wasn't having any trouble with my older laptop. now with this new OS X suddenly i'm experiencing many kernel panics. do you think the old fix would work for this newer problem?