Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

Wow, I posted on this thread when there were only two pages - look how it has grown.

So after calling technical support, and going to the Genius Bar, as well as, both channels raising to engineering - I was told that I need to have the logic board replaced, which includes the GPU (they believe this is the cause). So I have handed over my laptop and am willing to be a guinea pig (I have a backup laptop).

Will let you know what happens. Hopefully this will help pinpoint software vs. hardware. Honestly I am still thinking software.

please keep us informed about things turned out for you. though I too still believe that our problem is software centric

verbaL123 wrote:

 

So after calling technical support, and going to the Genius Bar, as well as, both channels raising to engineering - I was told that I need to have the logic board replaced, which includes the GPU (they believe this is the cause). So I have handed over my laptop and am willing to be a guinea pig (I have a backup laptop).

Wow, I find it interesting that they are replacing main logic boards. That's about the most expensive thing you can do, not to mention that it's very unlikely to fix this problem, which we have all concluded is SW/FW. Either they really haven't heard of this in the stores (in spite of presumably thousands of bug reports), or they are just biding time, in effect, like the old windows telephone support trick: "please reinstall windows and call us back". That gets them two or three days at least, and they can pretend they lost all record of your trouble ticket. Apple doesn't actually run their support business like that at all, of course, but I'm just saying ...

Still waiting for the update ...

Hi again,

it's not a hw problem. I went to an App Store. They changed my motherboard and the problem still happens... But with gfxCardStatus it seems to solve temporally the problem..

What the **** is doing Apple?

Hope this help

Yeah it's not a hardware problem - my logic board was recently replaced due to a similar issue under Snow Leopard, but now I have this blackout issue, on a brand new logic board.

It's software-related - something in Lion is causing a kernel panic when the logic board switches between the integrated Intel HD card and the GT330M card.

Save the effort of leaving your Mac with Apple Store for several days, the problem will persist even with a new logic board.

Only a patch will remove this bug.

I'm pretty sure it's due to automatic switching but I've tried keeping 'Automatic graphics switching' to off in my System Preferences and it still happens. So something's up singularly with the higher performance graphics driver.

Like I said, I tend to think it is not hardware and I beleive the folks who state that hardware fixes have not solved the problem.

The issue is, right now Apple (at least according the their representatives I have spoken to - in stores and on the phone) still believe this to be a one off issue and nothing systemic. I think this is proven by the point that when people are going into Apple Stores, they are being told they have not seen this issue before. Also, this issue is really not getting huge press - I know there was a small CNet blog article, but right now it does not seem to be monitored by Engadget, MacRumors and other popular blogs. Apple representatives also do not take this discussion forum as conclusive fact.

So in my mind, since it does not affect me greatly, I want to give Apple consclusive proof this is systemic.Worst case scenario is that they come out with a patch, while they are making an unnecessary repair and I could have had a working computer a few days sooner. 

So there is a dev bug report still open on this problem, and I have a trouble ticket open with Apple Asia. I also escalated to higher management. I hope the higher management's minders pass on my email.

Sorry for the long post. I just want to share with all my puzzling experience. I had the same problem as all (see my two earlier posts).

After several reinstalls (never on a clean disk - I preserved all my data) it was still giving me the NVidia issue.

Then I installed gfx=i/smc=high rpm and all worked fine for me.

Unfortunately I needed to present so I switched the card to discrete. All continued OK. Pleasant but puzzling surprise 1.

Then I needed to get on a flight and decided to preserve power, therefore smc=default.  Pleasant but puzzling surprise 2.

Then I started wondering. So gfx=dynamic, smc=default. Pleasant but puzzling surprise 3. Still no crashes

So, here is the situation. I tried all the tricks - started many apps; second screen of effects in photobooth; rebooted and didn't press shift at login to load all my dozen or so apps; loaded the system in aperture processing, lots of flash in chrome etc. I have had so far 7 days of stability. 5 of them after the reboot and on the gfx=dynamic, smc=default. In that time I connected laptop on several projectors and LCD screens, did my image processing etc... still no issues (well - one issue - at some point the screen got all corrupted with blocks of random segments of windows but it recovered after a bit).

WHY? I don't know. I wish I did, because it would improve my confidence in my laptop. There was nothing in my part between the lots of system crashes to the stability other than <2 days on the smc=high/gfx=1.

MBP mid 2010

So we are now speculating its not a hardware problem based on continued issues after the logic board is replaced . What doesn't makes sense to me is why my work mates machine which is identical to mine has had zero crashes. we bought machines at the same time, last year and upgraded to lion at the same time. I had crashes back with SL and many in Lion he has never crashed.

Also i read in other KP crash threads back with SL of people having their login board replaced and it DID fix the problm. food for thought...

Ha. we're all still getting those emails your censoring in our thread alert emails. nice one

So, I've been 1 hour with a senior tech from Apple Support.

First, he sent me a Data Capture tool, I generated a report with it and sent it back to him.

Then, he asked me to restart the computer pressing the SHIFT while booting and try to reproduce the issue.

I was NOT able to reproduce the issue (neither following the Quick View steps I mentioned above nor the iphoto steps).

For the apple technician, this proves that it is an issue with something not-apple related, something that I brought to the system that's not working well with Lion.

I had done the clean reinstall before and I was able to reproduce the issue. I'm going to try to do the complete erase and reinstall once again and then call the senior tech again (he gave me his phone and extension to report back).

a few examples of Snow leopard mid 2010 KP's with "logic board" replacements fixing the issue:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3095950?start=15&tstart=0

I am having the same problem as most people here, however my issues arose in Snow Leopard and have continued exactly the same after updating to Lion. I was hoping that the entire OS update might have fixed the problem, obviously not.

I'm getting the instant shut down/black screen on my iMac (mid 2007) since upgrading Lion and never had it happen in Snow Leopard. I'm using an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro Graphics Card, so the problem does not seem to be isolated to Nvidia and the MBP. Just thought I'd throw that out there. It's really annoying. I feel like it can't be good on a Mac to shut off all the time.