Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

I was able to recreate the crash by going to Google Analytics. I experienced crashes when I visited GA already on Snow Leopard. Maybe it has something to do with Flash turning on the graphics card as mentioned above.

However I just reinstalled Snow Leopard (over Lion) and now everything is fine again. It doesn't even crash on GA anymore. And Spaces is back too!

Endareth wrote:

 

Just to make things worse, since restoring back to Snow Leopard on my MBP, I've been getting hit with this crash every day or so (had previously only happened 2-3 times since purchase). I'm wondering if the Lion update made a firmware change which has caused this. It would explain my problems even back in Snow Leopard. Would be interested to know if anyone else has returned to Snow Leopard and experienced the same as me.

I'm seeing behavior back on Snow Leopard that I wasn't seeing before: my Logitech bluetooth mouth disconnects 38 seconds after the last click - every time. It never did that before, not once. Batteries are new (and show that way on the Logitech battery status). I saw a solution posted by others who had the problem independent of Lion, which involves removing the batteries and putting them back (turning the mouse off isn't enough). This works for me, but every once in a while, I have to do it again. No idea why. Like I said, it never happened with Snow.

I had suspected it was a pRAM setting that Lion fouled, but resetting pRAM didn't help at all. You might be right that it's firmware (bluetooth is handled in firmware). I sort of wish I had taken note of the version number before installing Lion, but who knew?

Oh well, it will all get fixed. But I'm a little concerned that it's cooking people's graphics chips ... it wouldn't be very nice to have to get that replaced because of a problem that clearly didn't exist in Snow Leopard. That sort of thing gets class action lawyers all fevered up.

Here we go again, i forgot to switch the gfx to integrated while browsing and instant panic:

Interval Since Last Panic Report:  143396 sec

Panics Since Last Report:          5

Anonymous UUID:                    E299F35F-3658-46C6-A6AC-5DD89C239E4D

Fri Jul 29 11:19:40 2011

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff7f8094b2bf): NVRM[0/1:0:0]: Read Error 0x00000100: CFG 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0xffffffff, BAR0 0xc0000000 0xffffff80a05e8000 0x0a5480a2, D0, P3/4

Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address

0xffffff807ce632b0 : 0xffffff8000220702

0xffffff807ce63330 : 0xffffff7f8094b2bf

0xffffff807ce633c0 : 0xffffff7f80a3b3fc

0xffffff807ce63410 : 0xffffff7f80a3b4bc

0xffffff807ce63470 : 0xffffff7f80ce5749

0xffffff807ce635b0 : 0xffffff7f80a5a519

0xffffff807ce635e0 : 0xffffff7f80954c4a

0xffffff807ce63690 : 0xffffff7f8095054c

0xffffff807ce63880 : 0xffffff7f80952151

0xffffff807ce63960 : 0xffffff7f8184b008

0xffffff807ce639a0 : 0xffffff7f81859e06

0xffffff807ce639c0 : 0xffffff7f818756d4

0xffffff807ce63a00 : 0xffffff7f81875739

0xffffff807ce63a40 : 0xffffff7f8185dc51

0xffffff807ce63a90 : 0xffffff7f81815753

0xffffff807ce63b10 : 0xffffff7f818141c4

0xffffff807ce63b40 : 0xffffff7f81819bfd

0xffffff807ce63b70 : 0xffffff80006524ad

0xffffff807ce63be0 : 0xffffff800065284c

0xffffff807ce63c40 : 0xffffff8000652ff0

0xffffff807ce63d80 : 0xffffff80002a3738

0xffffff807ce63e80 : 0xffffff8000222ff6

0xffffff807ce63eb0 : 0xffffff8000214829

0xffffff807ce63f10 : 0xffffff800021bb58

0xffffff807ce63f70 : 0xffffff80002ae380

0xffffff807ce63fb0 : 0xffffff80002d83a3

      Kernel Extensions in backtrace:

         com.apple.NVDAResman(7.0.2)[7E65ECA2-D3A1-35F8-B845-C975FB531E7E]@0xffffff7f808 eb000->0xffffff7f80bc1fff

            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.6.5)[95ABB490-3AB5-3D5E-9C21-67089A9AE6A1]@0xffff ff7f80877000

            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.3)[E99C8907-946D-3F1A-A261-4C0F2D5D0451]@0xffff ff7f808d9000

            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.3)[897EB322-FD55-36D7-A68E-9E9C3

Model: MacBookPro6,2, BootROM MBP61.0057.B0C, 2 processors, Intel Core i7, 2.66 GHz, 4 GB, SMC 1.58f15

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M, PCIe, 512 MB

Graphics: Intel HD Graphics, Intel HD Graphics, Built-In, 288 MB

Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x80AD, 0x484D54313235533654465238432D47372020

Memory Module: BANK 1/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x80AD, 0x484D54313235533654465238432D47372020

AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x93), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.100.98.75.6)

Bluetooth: Version 2.5.0f17, 2 service, 12 devices, 1 incoming serial ports

Network Service: Ethernet, Ethernet, en0

Serial ATA Device: Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02, 500.11 GB

Serial ATA Device: MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-898

USB Device: hub_device, 0x0424  (SMSC), 0x2514, 0xfa100000 / 2

USB Device: Internal Memory Card Reader, apple_vendor_id, 0x8403, 0xfa130000 / 5

USB Device: BRCM2070 Hub, 0x0a5c  (Broadcom Corp.), 0x4500, 0xfa110000 / 4

USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller, apple_vendor_id, 0x8218, 0xfa113000 / 8

USB Device: Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad, apple_vendor_id, 0x0236, 0xfa120000 / 3

USB Device: hub_device, 0x0424  (SMSC), 0x2514, 0xfd100000 / 2

USB Device: Apple Optical USB Mouse, apple_vendor_id, 0x0304, 0xfd130000 / 5

USB Device: IR Receiver, apple_vendor_id, 0x8242, 0xfd120000 / 4

USB Device: Built-in iSight, apple_vendor_id, 0x8507, 0xfd110000 / 3

You can of course set gfxCardStatus' preferences to always use the integrated GPU when on battery and when plugged in to a power source.

I've got the same crash 3 times already.

Panic(CPU 1): NMIPI for spinlock acquisition timeout, spinlock: 0xffffff80008ba500, spinlock owner: 0xffffff8013dfb580, current_thread: 0xffffff8013dfb580, spiRAX: 0xffffff800085e400, RBX: 0xffffff801542e100, RCX: 0x0000000000000000, RDX: 0x0000000000000001

I was doing nothing. It was a boot from cold start. Was just about to login. Apple needs to fix this ASAP.

To everyone getting this issue, please make sure you go to bugreport.apple.com and file a new bug report. Posting a "me too" on this thread doesn't really do a lot, as this is a community support forum, not official Apple support. Raising a new bug on the bug reporting site will have 100 times more effect than commenting on here (and will also make it easier for Apple to track down and debug the problem).

Now would it be bad to send a bug report to Apple each time it crashed?

Hi all,

For what it's worth, I have successfully resolved this exact issue (nvidia 330m driver crash) on my Mid 2010 MacBookPro ... I was tearing my hair out for a solution and spent hours pouring over this thread hoping someone had found a solution ... BUT, 2 days now with a STABLE, & FAST install of OS X Lion.

Ok, so what I ended up doing to fix mine was -

* remove any instances of FanControl you may have installed from suggestions here.

* an SMC reset (<- suspect this was key -- I had no visual cue that this was successful so I tried about 5 times)

* Zap PRAM 3 times (yes, hold those keys until the machine reboots three times and your here the chime noize three times).

* Once restarted, I used iStat to confirm that my MacBook pro was able to control the fan speeds and accurately detect the temperatures and react accordingly ...

Again, 2 days now and I am trying to make it crash, but it's working like the day I brought it!

Hope this helps someone.

Tried it. Doesn't work for me. I get the Black Screen of Death immediately after logging in following a cold boot. My MBP is configured to reboot after a freeze, which it does, and that allows gfxCardStatus to load and change the GPU to 'integrated' before the Nvidia GPU can kick in. After that switching to either 'discrete' only or 'automatic' modes for the GPUs, will rapid lead to a crash.

Warm boots usually (about 80% of the time) don't result in crashes. After that my system is fine, but of course using only the integrated Intel GPU.

Looks like some mid-2010 MBP's have it worse than others. Mine is in the 'basket case' category.

Hmm,

I'm using automatic switching in gfxCardStatus... The only other thing I double checked before doing this was re-check my firmware version against apples efi/smc firmware version list (it matched). Also is a clean install of Lion.

I 'suspect' I may have caused this when I installed the 10.6.7 update? I read closer and it said for 2011 MBP. Either I'm misreading it or I n00bed pretty bad when installing it lol. My MacBook Pro did go full-retard after that patch >.<

Apple responded to my bug report with "After further investigation it has been determined that this is a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering.  This issue has been filed in our bug database under the original Bug ID# 9533294. "

Given the degree of variation in severity of this issue (though all with supposedly the same hardware), I'm more and more leaning to the suggestion that this is a hardware issue, with a case of some graphics chips that scraped through the QA process when they probably shouldn't have. Those with the slightly better quality chips have been able to resolve the issue by locking down the graphics switching and/or pumping up their fans, while those of us whose chips are a bit worse again seem to be out of luck. The Lion update will have updated the firmware on our MBP's in such a way that this hardware issue becomes more obvious.

Guys I saw this problems only on MBP but i have the same thing on mY IMAC

Anyone have this on IMAC ?

27' 2,93ghz, 8gb

I am worried about that this only on MBP here.

hello! same issue here. macbookpro 6,2. random black screen since mac os x 10.6.7... everything was fine before this update. A few black screens on 10.6.7 ans 10.6.8 ... Then lion made my mbp unusable (10 min max).

waiting for the 10.7.1 with bug correction.

a mac fan french boy, who still believes in apple.

You're wrong: this is a software issue.

All of us already spent over 200 replies to explain that with Snow Leopard all of our machines work perfectly, and it started to have issues after Lion update.

Apple knows the issue, and it is working on it. We've just to be patient and wait for the next software update.