Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

I tried fighting apple and failed, my local reseller also tried fighting apple and failed but made it right and swapped me out for a 2011 macbook pro.

Its a shame apple didnt have the balls to do the same.

Good luck to all still struggling.

I agree with TN-Johnnny "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."

..

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to this forum but felt like I needed to post a question to you all. I was just about to upgrade from OS 10.6.8 to Lion and noticed this complaint in one of the reviews, and that made me search around and find this 158 page history of all of your problems.

So my basic, stupid quiestion is:

Should I wait on upgrading to Lion until this problem has been officially fixed?

I'm running a 17" MacBook Pro with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M.

@dfgMike, in my personal opinion, I'd say stick to Snow Leopard just a little bit longer just to make sure that the mentioned fix is verified in the 10.7.3 update. If all goes well, then it should be fine, and then you'll be able to upgrade to Lion without any issues... and hopefully enjoy it as much as I did. :-)

Just a sum of my experience

* 15" mid-2010 MacBook Pro

* installed Lion and started to experience this problem

* after many tests read Apple KB TS4088

* take it to the Apple Store (Le Gru, Turin, Italy)

* they run their diagnostic tools: the first test shows that my Mac qualifies to be tested for this specific problem, the second one tests the problem itself: a big "FAILED" text appears, meaning they have to replace my Logic Board for free (i bought this Mac 1.5 years ago, no Apple Care)

* i've been using it for more than a week, no more crashes.. hope everithing is fine.

BONUS FACT: it seems that this problem was reported to Apple for the first time right by this Apple Store in Turin.. according to what they told me

dfgMike wrote:

 

So my basic, stupid quiestion is:

Should I wait on upgrading to Lion until this problem has been officially fixed?

I'm running a 17" MacBook Pro with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M.

According to what they told me at the Apple Store, this problem has not been diagnosed on the 17" MBP... although I remember one user on this thread having the problem on his 17"

alpacino wrote:

 

* i've been using it for more than a week, no more crashes.. hope everithing is fine.

OMG

this **** is crazy.. it just crashed, after a played a while with the trackpad settings.. this is not the same error I had before, but... FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU.. trying to understand what happened by reading the console

NO. NO. this is just wrong.

http://pastebin.com/MSBzkuY6

it STILL happens.. don't know what to say

I installed gfxCardStatus and set it to use only integrated graphics. You might want to try that and pray that 10.7.3 fixes this bug.

I reported the problem when the Lion GM seed was first made available, so I've been experiencing it for as long as anyone and would certainly be in line for "first report" claims.  I've had a motherboard swap and have now been to the local Apple store nine times - including this visit.  I'm beginning to wonderif Apple's succes hasn't overwhelmed their ability to react to this kind of issue.  Has their stellar support finally jumped the shark?

Fingers crossed that they can do something.  They're certainly eager to help, but they've been very slow to acknowledge that there's a widespread issue that they can't seem to fix.

Thanks TN-Johnny and alpacino.

I'll go ahead and wait until 10.7.3  and then see if this gets fied before I put my computer in jeopardy.

I'm crossing my fingers tht they get this thing fixed for all of you guys soon.

I had my mid-2010 MacBookPro6,2's logic board replaced 4 times due to this BSoD issue, but it was NOT related to Lion (it was on Snow Leopard). I know people with the same computer (running Snow Leopard) that also had to replace their logic board more than once to get their MacBooks fixed.

So this GeForce GT330M card is known to suffer dysfunctions prior to Lion launching. It seems that this is a flaw resulting from hardware issues AND software issues. Maybe this is the reason it was not fixed after all this time and all these 158 pages (not to mention other topics) of investigation.

Maybe the sensible decision is stick to Snow Leopard and never upgrade to Lion, just in case. Like you all, I'm hoping 10.7.3 will solve the problem, but even if it does, I will not be surprised if BSoD is back after a few months or years.

So, for all intents and purposes, I'm considering my $2k notebook will last for only 3 years and will probably die in 2013, when my AppleCare ends and it wouldn't be worth to pay for a logic board replacement.

Hi all,

I am on a mid-2010 MacBook Pro 15-inch, running Lion, and am also experiencing this problem. At first I thought it was just a freak incident but it has been occuring with increasing frequency recently. I then did a search and now realize how widespread this issue is.

This is a huge problem for me considering the fact that I use my computer primarily for photography and Photoshop. Consequently, a random crash causes me to lose all work done on a photo since the previous save.

I have tried installing the MacBook Pro Video Update 1.0 which has not resolved the issue.

Would my next course of action be to replace the logic board? What are the steps I should take to do so? What can I show an Apple Store as proof of this issue occuring, since it only occurs randomly? Also, how long can I expect repair to take?

I appreciate any help offered.

Hey, guys did anyone that's currently running 10.7.2 try the WindowServer trick that I suggested earlier?

It's detailed on page 157 of this discussion thread, posted it on January 24th. Please give it a try and let me know if it works out.

Oh and guys, I think that this is both a software and a hardware issue, but very possibly it's the recurring fault in the software that's eventually causing the hardware to malfunction. If the Nvidia card is crashing due to a software fault that maybe causing overheating or such, then the hardware may very well be getting affected, and so since everyone seems to agree that it gets more and more frequent with time, then the relation seems pretty valid.

I guess this might explain why some people have had this issue with Snow Leopard, and not just Lion... it may just be that the 330M GT is a card that runs hotter than usual, and so some extra load from the OS would cause it to stall every once in a while, causing hardware/registers to fail and eventually just crashing very frequently with the slightest loads.

... again, just speculation.

Are you talking about the one where you delete that file? If so, I made a copy of it, put it onto a flashdrive. Deleted it, restarted and it did the exact same thing. Didn't work.  My laptop is part of a work domain, so all we did was instead of logging into it locally, we made it so you have to log into it differently.  Like use domain with your full log in name.  basically if you just change the log in procedure and how it finds the windows server you can avoid what was hapening to me which was the black screen on the log in.  I also do have the 330M and I thought that perhaps during the log in it might me switching from integrated to dedicated so thats why it was freezing up.  I'm still not sure if its the graphics or just the windows server thing.  We have a 2008 version of the server. The exact same computer someone else has.....no problems whatsoever.