Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

Thanks alpacino!

Will do the same in Milan... let's see...

My black macbook still has this issue. I did report it here [https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3586759].

Mine is a Mid 2007 black macbook [http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/stats/macbook-core-2-duo-2.16-blac k-13-mid-2007-specs.html] .

Am I out of luck with Lion?

You're out of luck period. This has nothing to do with the 2007 models nor any MacBook at all. Only the 2010 MacBook pro with 330m Mid 2010 MacBook pro. You're issue pertains to something other than what this thread was created for.

Lol should've proofread that post.

Hey all, I'm writing this, hoping and crossing my fingers that I won't come back soon to say that I was wrong. But I got my hands on OS X Lion 10.7.3 build 11D42 over a week ago; downloaded and installed the developer preview (combo update). So far I've been running it on my MacBook Pro 15" (Mid-2010 Model) [MacBookPro6,2], and everything has gone back to normal like it was with Snow Leopard 10.6.8. Not a single black screen of death, and not a single visit to the Apple Store for logic board substitution. I must say that I practically read through all 157 pages of this thread hoping to one day find a fix that didn't include hardware replacements.

So, given that this build seemed to have fixed the black screen problem, I'm putting my money on the fact that the final (public) release of 10.7.3 will have fixed it as well.

I hope this news could cheer most of you up, knowing that there is still hope via a simple software update, and that it may be coming very soon. :-)

Hallelujah!! Its only taken Apple 6 months to resolve the problem. At least now I just have to wait for the 10.7.3 public release. Very poor customer service! (E) for Egg rather than (A) for Apple... must try harder

Tommo, would you mind trying something for testing services?

Just so we can maybe narrow this issue down a little. If you can just restart your Mac (uncheck "Reopen windows when logging back in"), and after it boots leave it for a minute or two. After that open Activity Monitor, and force quit the "WindowServer" process; it should restart automatically. Once it restarts, proceed and work with your Mac as you would, and keep it running normally to see if any of these abnormalities have been solved or are they still around.

It's just that I'm beginning to wonder if it's the process kill that caused my laptop to work normally again, or was it indeed the upgrade itself.

I am looking forward to 10.7.3.

I took my laptop (mid 2010 15" MBP) to Apple Service Center in Hyderabad, India. They ran tests and told me that the tests did not fail and hence I do not qualify for replacement of the logic board. They formatted my hard disk (wrote all zeros) and resinstalled Lion. The crash happened as soon as they were done. But the service personnel said they were helpless (me too).

I installed GfxCardStatus and set it up to use the integrated graphics card all the time. Since then (last 3 days) my laptop has not crashed even once. I have been using VMWare Fusion, Mail, Safari, Pages all at the same time. Earlier (without GfxCardStatus) I could never do that without crashing the computer.

I hope 10.7.3 has a fix for graphics switching.

Tommo, did this work for you?

I'm really hoping it did... this would mean that we narrowed down the problem to an issue with WindowServer crashing, and that it's not a hardware issue. *fingers-crossed*

TN-Johnny and Simpatico my apologies for the slow response.

In my experience/opinion this issue relates simply to the NVIDIA 330m video card driver. GfxCardStatus offers a workaround to the BSOD...at the cost of NOT being able to connect an external monitor. I have friends with the same spec laptop albeit with the AMD video card and they have not experienced any problems whatsoever.

Previously I tried isolating the issue to WindowServer or the upgrade process from 10.6.* ...with no success. BSOD was totally random even with a fresh install of 10.7.2 (w/base-build apps only). On booting, the laptop has an uptime anywhere between 1 sec to several days before falling flat on its face. Often the laptop would experience 5 panic attacks in a row literally seconds after logging-in <sigh>

..

What about the update that Apple came out for the video?

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1469

Did that work for anyone? Didn't work for me.

ps. sorry if this was answered, 157 pages of comments takes too much time to read.

After following this thread from the very begining, I think there are 2 plausible causes to the problem:

1) Software problem - although some report the issue under snow leopard or boot camp, I think it's darn too much of a convenience for all of us to start experiencing these problems after lion installation. I'm hoping that TN-Johnny is right and that 10.7.3 silently fixed the issue. that would certanly be apple's style of fixing embarrasing bugs, sigh...

2) It could be a hardware issue in a way that sudden heat spixes mess up with some GPU registers, so that seems okay, it could be that some insulation got worn of after a year of use and that indeed 330M GPU's are defective. So only a logic board replacement would really solve the isssue.

I'm still hoping it's a software fix.. Anyone know when 10.7.3 is due btw?

Hey Dadotron, I think I can safely say that the video fix you're referring to didn't fix this issue for most of us... it definitely didn't fix it for me.

Hey kspes, I definitely agree with you, it really is in Apple's nature to streamline such fixes with their updates, without mention... I actually even wrote a blog post about it once, here:

http://technodedigest.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/apple-buffs-up-mac-os-x-snow-leop ard/

Let's just hope it's true and that it sticks. :-)