Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

Same thing happens to me.  A lot.  Black screen, with the whole system unresponsive, and the only way to keep going is to press and hold the power-off button.   I notice though that the keyboard is still lit-up when the black screen occurs.  The power-off button is needed to completely turn off the computer.  I have a MacBook Pro with the following specs:   2.66 GHZ Intel Core i7    8GB RAM.    It doesn't matter if I'm just using Mail and Safari, or other applications like Aperture and VMWare.    This didn't happen on my machine before I upgraded from Snow Leopard.  Hopefully Apple fixes this soon!

.

Can folks who installed the Nvidea development drivers for Lion report back in? How effective have they been?

I'm not really interested in trying to troubleshoot this myself.  I just want apple to fix it.  Does anyone have any idea when can expect some fix from apple?  Are they expecting us to live with this problem much longer?  Someone mentioned that this was a known issue before apple released it and had some reason to know that this would have happened to us.  Does anyone have proof of that?

Since we aren't insiders bluegrassbrad, i'm not sure any of us are in a position to answer your question. Multiple posters have reported that Apple has been in contact with them, so this is on their radar screen at some level (presumably the programmer level). Some have contacted Apple Tech Support with mixed results: some techs say they've never heard of it, others say that Apple "knows there is a problem". We don't have an ETA and with the developer builds of the nVidia graphics drivers not solving the problem (at least that's what has been said by the people who have installed them) the outlook looks bleak for the near future. Because one would think that if 10.7.1 fixed this, they'd be using something similar to the newest dev build of the nVidia driver.

Luckily for me, the gfxCardStatus workaround is working - I've had nearly a week of uptime - so I don't need to roll back to SL just yet. And 95% of what I use the MBP for can get by on the Integrated (most importantly, 100% of the for-work things I do can get by on Integrated) so I'll put up with it for a little bit. However if by .1 or .2 they haven't fixed, I'm going to roll back to 10.6.8.

Have been relatively stable last week or so. I posted this on page 2 but have updated nvidia 4.0.21 driver included here

Installed 2 utilities gfx status and fan control + new nvidia driver and seems more stable now.  This is just a temporary fix for me until apple releases an official update. Some of you may experience different results, I only post this combination of utilities and driver because it works for me.

1. gfx status install, click little "i" in top menu bar and (set to integrated only)

DL Link

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33905/gfxcardstatus

2. fan control install, search fan control in spotlight or goto system preferences -> other -> fan control and (set to 2500 default RPM and set low and high temp thresholds to lowest sliders)

DL Link

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23137/fan-control

3. DL Nvidia developer driver 4.0.21 and install

DL Link

http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/4_0/drivers/devdriver_4.0.21_m acos.dmg

My macbook now seems to be managing heat much better with these utilities and settings.

Hopefully a software/firmware update for Lion will apply some of these fixes if this is the issue!

@wired00 - I tried your photobooth test in my clean usb drive install of Lion.  As soon as I clicked on the second effects tab there was a kernel panic with the nvidia laden backtrace.  It is repeatable!

Someone here asked about the beta nvidia driver today...  I installed it on my upgraded Lion system and found that it did not help things at all.  Others may report something different.

When I was contacted by Apple support regarding my original posts in this thread I was somewhat optimistic that a fix would be coming soon.  As time has passed, I am now of the mind that although this is a significant issue, it is affecting a relatively insignificant number of OSX Lion adopters.  I suspect that we are statistical outliers?  My guess is that Apple are focusing on fixing the bugs that are affecting the middle of the curve first (first and second standard deviations from the mean etc.) and will not be in a position to throw serious resources at our problem until after the first post 10.7.0 release has been shipped.

My mb pro is stable in three configurations at the moment:

1.  Lion with Integrated graphics only via gfxCardStatus.

2.  Snow Leopard.

3.  Turned off

FYI

On my mid-2010 MBP 15" Core i5, I have not had the problem for a five days by doing the following (inspired by the cnet article referred to earlier in the thread):

- Install gfxCardStatus and leave it to "i"

- Turn off auto-sleep and automatic dimming of the monitor when on battery power

- Take all apps out of full-screen mode (annoying - I really like full screen mode)

- Don't use three finger swipes

This is working for me as a stop-gap, but is totally ruining the Lion experience, as I'm not using any of its neat features.

Stephen.

I think we should start demanding our money back.

So far I have tried:

1. Using gfxCardStatus to force graphics rendering to the integrated Intel GPU (which is of no damned use to me because I need to connect an external large screen monitor);
2. Using smcFanControl to set the minimum fan speed to 4000rpm;
3. Installed the latest Nvidia developer drivers.

Only #1 above works for sure.

And I finally received a response from Apple about my bug report. Like others I was told that "this is a known issue" and my bug report is being folded into the first bug report (filed by someone else) that reported this problem. I have no way of tracking that original bug report because I didn't file it. There was no indication of when Apple will have a solution.

Mine must be one of the flakier machines because things that worked for others didn't work for me (such as connecting the external monitor before cold booting). Using only the integrated GPU to keep the machine is of limited use to me -- I need to have that large external monitor connected.

Well, I gave it a go. My Mac did stay up for longer than ever before (with Lion, that is); however, even with the forced GT330M function, my MBP crashed and burned. Back to SL for the interim. Grrrrr (filing nails furiously).

After reverting to a clean installation of Snow Leopard, I am still having problems..

Has anyone else still experienced issues after returning to SL?

Now my computer is not useable with any operating system..

Great

I think everyone has said going back to SL does NOT fix the issue.

My Lion partition is separate from my SL partition. I can boot into Lion (though not for long). I can boot into SL.

When I boot into my SL volume all is well. No crashes, no problems. Rock solid.

When I boot into Lion my experience varies, but *always* ends in a crash-to-black event, usually quite quickly. Charming.

So, for me, "going back" to SL solves the issue.

The same problem here. Screen goes black, system is inresponsive and requires a hard reset. This happens prefered when I start iTunes and Fantastical - in these cases within seconds, but also sporadically with any other application. Maximum system uptime was less than one hour. If you don't want to waste your time you better stay with SL or at least make a full backup with SuperDuper or something similar before you upgrade - maybe you're lucky. If you have this problem go back to SL.

MBP15'' i7 (Mid 2010), 8GB, 480GB Vertex II

So I have a 2010 MBP 6.2 Core I7 as many others here. Here's what I found during the past few days of trying to have a working computer (again)

• Lion with original drivers & nothing else: crashing within minutes, regardless of using external screen
• Lion with original drivers & gfxcard set to "Discrete only" on External monitor: crashing within an hour
• Lion with 4.0.21 drivers and "Discrete only" on Ext monitor: crashing within a couple hours

• Windows 7 installed in Bootcamp partition on external monitor: crashing within a couple hours
• Windows 7 in Bootcamp with latest drivers from Nvidia website (ver 8.17.12.7537): crashing within a couple hours.

Both Lion and Win7 were NEW installs on CLEAN partitions. Just like on a new laptop.

To sum up: THERE'S NO WAY TO USE MY LAPTOP WITH AN EXTERNAL MONITOR without CRASHING. Even for ONE day.

The only way I found to go through a day without crashing is disconnecting the external screen and setting gfxcardstatus to "internal only."

This is ridiculous, unusable for me and VERY disappointing.