Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

The extended guarantee for this problem that Apple offered is coming to an end for everyone, this is mid 2012 now. Mine will be over in 6 days.

So if you haven't done it yet, last chance to get your logic board replaced - considering the fact that it took two of those to fix things for lots of us (no need to panic though, each repair has it's own 3 months guarantee.)

It's been 10 days without gfxCardstatus for me now, I'm starting to feel a little more confident. I'm on Snow Leopard and feel VERY reluctant to install Lion now that it's seem to run fine.

As it's been said and repeated, the only solution is the LB change.

Just an update on my situation.

Handed my MBP in for repair at an authorized repair center (Humac, Aarhus, DK) Tuesday morning last week.

Had it back Wedensday afternoon after a LB replacement. Not a single BSOD since.

Signing off,

Lars

Hi all

Just to add to all others that since my LB has been change about 15 days ago no more BSOD and more of that what I haven't took as a problem my SD card reader of my MBP didn't worked anymore before the start of BSOD and since the LB has been changed it work again perfectly....

So even for 450$/€ of repair I am again a happy MBP owner

BKantique

Just a quick update.

I talked to the Swedish apple support today and explained my problem (my MBP was bought in Sweden but I don't live there at the moment). The told me that the guarantee had been extended to 4 years meaning it would expire in 2014. I don't know if this is just certain models or if it's wordwide but it's worth checking out if you for some reason can't access a repair center where you are.

They told me that when I get back to Sweden they will do the necessary repairs/replacement.

I will see what happends in July when I go to Sweden.

I'm having lots of trouble getting them to replace my motherboard. It's obvious I'm having this TS4088 problem but there's nothing very concrete pointing to it so far. VST runs succesfully, but service centers can't find any other problem either.

What I'd like to know is if there's anyone with a bunch of console logs of the random crashes. If it matches mine it could be a good source of evidence.

Mine shows up a lot of:

kernel: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error

kernel: 00000069

kernel: IOVendorGLContext::ReportGPURestart

kernel: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel timeout!

kernel: NVDA(CopyEngine): Channel exception! exception type = 0x6 = Fifo: Parse Error

Yes, that's exactly the pattern in the console log I used to document the problem.

And that has resulted in them replacing your motherboard?

Problem is, they have already used an application to capture logs from my sytem and sent them for inspection, without a positive TS4088 match. I'm also in mail contact with an apple advisor which I have also sent captured data from my machine, which didn't help them identify the problem either. So I'm not sure weither these logs will help me.

Yes, they replaced the motherboard but the system was also failing their test for the issue.  I had to replace my aftermarket Intel SSD with the factory hard drive and a clean install with nothing but Lion + available updates to prove that none of that was relevant, and could get the problem logged several times a day.

Unfortunately my second motherboard had the exact same problem, and this time they chose to swap the entire system for a newer model.  They made a point of saying that this was entirely at their discretion and isn't the normal approach, but I'd been to the genius nine times so far regarding the issue and they were obviously appreciative of my patience and clearly keen to put the problem to bed.

Guys:

Yes, DITTO .. that kernel panic was it for me as well.

Just to emphasize: Many of us including me did indeed have to get our logic boards replaced twice to get rid of the problem. In my case, the VST test won't even run for some reason, it was taking 15-20 minutes to even start and it didn't start, so genius made a recommendation to swap logic board once and then the other time. Just like ReluctantAdept, I also had to replace original Apple RAM instead of the 8gb crucial I had installed to rule that out for apple, however, RAM clearly wasn't the problem, logic board was.

After the 2nd logic board swap, I made them put my crucial 8gb memory back as well.

Almost 15 days after the second logic board replacement and with my crucial 8gb memory in my mid-2010 core-i7 mbp and SO FAR NO PROBLEM WITH BSOD. I hope this continues.

I CAN'T EMPHASIZE ENOUGH THAT YOU HAVE TO BE PATIENT AND COMMITTED TO VISITING APPLE STORE UNTIL THEY HEAR YOU AND REPLACE THE LOGIC BOARD FOR THIS PROBLEM, HOWEVER MANY TIMES IT TAKES TO FIX THIS BSOD ISSUE.

ReluctantAdept wrote:

 

Yes, they replaced the motherboard but the system was also failing their test for the issue.  I had to replace my aftermarket Intel SSD with the factory hard drive and a clean install with nothing but Lion + available updates to prove that none of that was relevant, and could get the problem logged several times a day.

 

Unfortunately my second motherboard had the exact same problem, and this time they chose to swap the entire system for a newer model.  They made a point of saying that this was entirely at their discretion and isn't the normal approach, but I'd been to the genius nine times so far regarding the issue and they were obviously appreciative of my patience and clearly keen to put the problem to bed.

I have aftermarket SSD and RAM too, but they ruled that out at the service center. I also did a clean install, but not without reinstalling third party software, because I need the software for work and such. How did you manage to get the problem logged many times? I still haven't got a clue on how to make it crash, but if I can I could do a clean install without third party software and show them.

I'm trying to be persistent on the issue as well, but only by email. Doing so at the service center will cost me and the only genius bar around is pretty far away. Still I might try that in the end.

jObooW wrote:

 

I have aftermarket SSD and RAM too, but they ruled that out at the service center.

...

How did you manage to get the problem logged many times? I still haven't got a clue on how to make it crash, but if I can I could do a clean install without third party software and show them.

 

I'm trying to be persistent on the issue as well, but only by email. Doing so at the service center will cost me and the only genius bar around is pretty far away. Still I might try that in the end.

I wish they could have done that for me!  Instead the service center sent it back complaining about non-standard equipment, and they forgot to reconnect an internal cable so the drive wasn't even recognized when I got it back.  On subsequent trips I made sure I had nothing but factory-installed hardware.

As for making it crash?  All it took for me was web browsing, generally with lots of tabs openend and videos playing periodically.  Within a few hours it would always start to show symptoms with either the black screen on wake or just everything slowing to a crawl and no longer responding to input.

I'll just add my 2 cents here. I have an early 2008 MacBook Pro (with a Nvidia 8600 GT GPU) that I bought refurbished in 2009 and very recently it started having this issue with the black screen from either waking from sleep or starting up. Kind of tragic cause my applecare expired 2 months ago so now I'm only left with the nvidia replacement program. However I brought my mac into the Apple Store and they said that my mac didn't qualify for the program because the manufacture date is Feb-2009 (I bought it in March 2009) depsite it being a 2008 model. The guy at the genius bar stuck to that manufacture date argument despite it obviously being an 2008 model (I'm not quite sure how much he knew about the MacBook Pro timeline cause any Mac enthusiast will obviously know that all manufactured 2009 MacBook Pro's are of a unibody design and mine is clearly not)  which qualifies for the program. Upon restrospect, if I go into system information in Lion it clearly says that it's an Early 2008 model and I should have done that at the Genius Bar but I think I will call apple for go to another apple authorized repair centre and do that.

My MBP still works, I did the "warm-up" trick and it worked after that. I just don't turn it off or put it to sleep anymore. I ran the ASD (both OS and EFI) and it passed with flying colours. The only thing is that it hangs when doing the Apple Hardware Test on the logic board section.

Apple has really gone down the hill lately. What is going on? I love my macbook. I want to buy a new one but gad **** it. Apple isn't making it easy for me to make that decision. It's completely unbeleivable what is going on. It's such a disgrace. Apple, a billion dollar company, can't get something rudimentary as OSX to run right. What's with all the random crashes, wifi and power issues. I mean, Lion is mostly a cosmetic upgrade. What does wifi have to do with anything. Why would they even touch that? Apple needs to put more money into software development. It's disheartening... I don't want to use windows. Can't anybody just make a computer properly?

OS X is anything but "rudimentary" and Lion is much, much more than a cosmetic upgrade.  Modern computers and operating systems are incredibly complex and it's inevitable that something will go wrong, whether it's a bug or a manufacturing glitch.  The real measure for me is what the vendor is willing to do about it.  In my experience Apple has made right all of the significant issues I've had with their products.  That's in stark contrast to my experience with other PC manufacturers.

Just to share my experience:

- I had the same problem, with a macbook pro i7 from mid 2010. The problem was most noticeable when awaking from sleep. I tried every update, every suggested workaround, and even reinstalling snow leopard. Nothing worked.

My guaranty was to end a few weeks ago, so I decided to take it to repair. The first one took a week, and they did nothing! They tried the standard suit of Apple tests, which does not catch any problem.

So I decided to record the problem (with a mobile phone), gather all links I could think of explaining the problem, including this thread, put all the information on a pen drive, and took the computer back to repair again, this time giving them all the information in the pen drive.

Thankfully, they replaced my logic board (which only then I found out it is simply the computer's motherboard).

After a few days, I still could not reproduce the problem again. I'm happy for now

I can't talk much about apple support, but its strange to me that such issue still was not acknowledged by Apple (to my knowledge). If it was, I probably did not have to take my computer back to repair again, as they would recognize the symptoms immediately. This way, one has to gather all these proofs of a problem they cannot identify!

So, thanks a lot to every one who shared important information around here And good luck to the ones who are still suffering from the problem.