Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

That's apple for you. They will never admit there is a problem. This problem will be fixed eventurally, but you will never know when and how or what cause the problem.

i'm working with a tech from the express lane too. before getting my call escalated to an expert, the techs b4 the expert claimed they hadn't heard of the issue till i called. the expert i'm workign on will call me back tomorrow (i sent him a data capture file and he sent it off to be analysed).

before the data capture i did right after i got the black screen and rebooted. we tried changing preferences, resetting the hard drive, doing a reinstall and then another clean reinstalled of lion and nothiing has worked. i stil experience the issue. it's very random. i can go on and on for hours without an issue and the next day it can happen 3 or 4 times within 4 hours.

Okay, I may be having a seperate problem from everyone else, as I am on an iMac without an Nvidia GPU, but here's something I've done that seems to have helped:

People have been talking about how Lion may be taxing the GPU a bit more than Snow Leopard. The only time my iMac has crashed with the black screen of death is when the GPU overheated (for some reason, things run hotter in Lion than they used to in Snow Leopard).

I installed SMCFanControl and turned up the default fan speeds a bit and left it running. So far, I have not had a crash and I was getting like 5 a day under Lion before. (it's ran three days with no crashes).

Sorry if this doesn't help you Nvidia folks. I realize this may not be an overheating issue. Sounds like a lot of people turn their computer on to immediately experience a kernal panic. In that case, this isn't going to work =(

Hi everyone, I've faced a similar issue when I received my mid-2010 15" MacBook Pro back from Apple after they replaced the logic board (faulty GPU), and then installed Lion that very day.

I would reliably get the black screen issue just before the login screen appears - every single time. If I booted up in Safe Mode (holding down shift when booting) then I could log in fine, etc. In Safe Mode, everything would work fine until I tried something taxing like playing a hi-def movie - then it would crash.

The weird thing was that if the machine was cold, then the problem was tricky to reproduce (e.g. when I took the MBP back to the Apple store). For me, the most reliable way to reproduce the problem was to warm up the machine first (tax the CPUs with something processor intensive, make lots of HDD activity, etc) and then start playing an H.264 video - it was enough to show the guy in the Apple store.

I switched back to Snow Leopard and everything worked perfectly fine - so I thought it must have been a software issue. Anyhow, I thought 'screw it' and sent the laptop back to Apple for repair.

Well, I got my laptop back from Apple late last week and they confirmed that there was indeed *another* logic board fault (the one they'd just put in!), and replaced it with yet another logic board.

Now Lion works fine for me no matter how I tax the machine. If your MBP is still under warranty/AppleCare, perhaps this would be the easiest way to go...

I've posted this a few times but this is in response to the recent couple people saying they are dealing with apple escalation support etc.

I've already gone through the steps with escalated apple support. We reached the point of installing a fresh lion copy on external HDD - no extra software installed. I was still crashing randomly using mail or safari and could 100% produce the kernel panic via photo boot > Effects > tab 2 or by going to documents directory in finder and clicking spacebar for quick view. Then using up/down arrow keys to flick through files (while having safari, mail, itunes open).

After doing all this he came to the conclusion it must be a hardware issue. But didn't know about these issues with Lion (as others have said). I was told to take my machine in for motherboard/GPU replacement (when work allows next week). This is quite worrying as Apple will be wasting a LOT of money replacing motherboards when its Lion causing problems...

However, there are many people (especially with mid 2010 i7 + 512 330M GPU MBP's) who were previously crashing in SL. This motherboard replacement should fix this. I've read in other forum threads of people before lion saying as such. So i think there is problem with a batch of nvidia GPU's in mid2010.

I think there is another issue with Lion's firmware/drivers which is causing a further batch of machines to crash. Its these machines which Apple will be wasting money replacing motherboards for naught. After replacement i plan on going back to SL on another External HDD from my timemachine backup and see if i'm atleast 100% stable again.

I really hope they fix this as my laptop is effectively devalued or worthless if i sell it and upgrade in a year or so.

@naskies wow thats interesting, and raises my hopes of getting this resolved. this makes more sense and works with my thoughts above.

1) I think there is a problem with GPU's which was rarely showing up as Kernel panics in SL.

2) I think there is a FURTHER problem with GPU's which is showing up far more often in Lion. (which is why you were still crashing even after the first MB replacement).

3) My work mate has never crashed in SL or lion. I feel he was lucky enough! to get a machine with perfect GPU. (just as you got in your 2nd MB replacement)

So... I believe we need to keep up having MB replacements until we luck out and *finally* get a working GPU/motherboard setup which is compatible with Lion.

Please keep us posted how you go Naskies, if you end up crashing it will destroy my positive hopes haha. also, i think you should make sure Apple knows of your case (if you continue to be stable). Possibly even log it as a bug with bugreport.apple.com so they can understand that there are many batches of their GPU's with the problem. I'm sure they can isolate the issue via serial numbers / build dates or something...

I'll be getting my first MB replacement next week...

I definitely am now convinced this is a logic board problem. It has been over 24 hours and my MBP mid 2010 has not crashed since the replacement. I also believe that the logic board could function in snow leopard with some fault in it, but with Lion it needs to be without fault or at least little fault.

I also am now thinking if this was software much more people would be having this issue. If you had a logic board replaced and had no luck, my guess is you were given another faulty board.

Will definitely let you know if I crash. But it never took more than an hour with normal use for me to crash before my replacement.

Updated:

After a fresh install of Lion, the Black Screen happened before I was able to login.

Also, after 1password was installed the Black Screen happened again.

This test proves it is hardware related, so now it's time to call Apple support again.

Not good...

@naskies

Can you try the following?

- Open Chrome, Open Apple Store. Then go to your documents folder (or wherever you have a few text files). Select one and press space bar (this goes to quick view). With the arrow keys, flick through different text files. Do you get a black screen?

- Alternative, open iPhoto, open a random picture, click on Edit, then effects, then go to the second tabs of effects. Do you get a black screen?

I just want to make sure that this was a hardware issue for you.

I just got my logic board replaced and I'm still experiencing the issue on Lion if I do any of the 2 things described above (I had to go back to SL to do some work). I don't know if I should take my mac back to the store and ask for a second logic board replacement... that's going to be another few days without a computer and I really need it this month for work... but I'm scared that they wouldn't help me if I don't report to the store for that long.

Just had my logic board replaced and no crashes. Went through both of your scenarios (although only 1 tab of effects for me in iPhoto)

I also have MBP 15" mid 2010.

Your replacement board may also not been good.

another way to force crash for me on fresh Lion is goto Photo booth and goto Effects then click 2nd tab of effects. that instantly crashes me. Hows that work for you verbaL123 and naskies?

If all good, then i look forward to getting this resolved.

Also what specific MBP 15" are you both running? i7 + "upgraded" 512 memory 330M GPU?

did you have the xtended warranty for you MBP mid 2010?

wired00 wrote:

 

@naskies wow thats interesting, and raises my hopes of getting this resolved. this makes more sense and works with my thoughts above.

 

1) I think there is a problem with GPU's which was rarely showing up as Kernel panics in SL.

2) I think there is a FURTHER problem with GPU's which is showing up far more often in Lion. (which is why you were still crashing even after the first MB replacement).

This sounds about right to me, and fits with what most people have been posting on here (especially as the silent majority of MBP 2010 users seem to have no problems). This would indicate that a software/firmware update should solve the problem for most people, at least those who are only getting the problem on Lion (only slightly lower quality chips).

I think that anyone who's getting the issue on Snow Leopard should be pushing this back to Apple support, and try to get a logic board replacement. While this doesn't appear to be a 100% solution, several people seem to have reported this as fixing things for them, and at least it'll get more notice from Apple. I'm planning on trying this shortly, just making sure I have everything backed up and reinstalling a clean install of Lion to an external drive.

Tried the photo booth and was able to use a second tab effect with no crash.

My laptop is

MacBook Pro mid 2010

Processor  2.66 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory  4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Graphics  NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB

Software  Mac OS X Lion 10.7 (11A511)

I did not have the extended warranty. The cost I was quoted was $310, although with some discussion they helped me out.

@mayte_eme

The rationale on why I felt some relief was deserved, was the reason why they thought I now suddenly had problems. They stated that Lion presses the GPU more than Snow Leopard and that is why I did not see any issues with Snow Leopard. My argument then was that my GPU could have had an issue when they sold it to me and I had no way of knowing there was an issue to have it replaced under the warranty.

Thanks for reporting back @verbaL123. I have your exact same system config.

So quick summary of where I am at right now:

- Last week, they replaced my logic board (for free and even when it was out of warranty for 1,5 months), but I kept experiencing the problem on Lion.

- I rolled back to Snow Leopard. After one day without crashing, today the crashes are back -had 5 so far just today-. (I did experienced some isolated black screens when I was on SL a few months ago).

I'm now leaning to believe that my first logic board was faulty and the replacement was faulty too. I will go tomorrow to the Apple Store (AGAIN!) and will ask them for a new logic board (again). This time, I will leave them a piece of paper with all the steps they have to follow to reproduce the issue in Lion.

I'm very ****** off that when they first replaced the logic board, the computer came back showing exactly the same problem. A problem that was very easy to reproduce and it seems that they just changed the logic board and shipped the computer back blindly, without even checking that what they did actually worked or not (I'm even suspicious now that they did any work on the mac at all...). That's very unprofessional, specially when the steps to reproduce the issue are so easily to follow and it is so obvious that it was still not working.