Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

There's a lot of discussion here about hardware problems. It seems to me that the basic problem lies with the Mac Operating System, since for most people, the problem didn't exist until they installed Lion. That certainly was my situation. So replacement of boards and other hardware targeted activities seem to be popular, the ultimate fix, in my mind, has to be Apple making changes to Lion, and possibly some of the latest updates to Snow Leopard, to correct whatever they have broken.

Yes, but with all things said so far, me too still think that the problem is software/driver related, namely to the "resolution manager" (resman) that's responsible for the dynamic switching between the video cards - that's what the kernel panic message is about. I may be wrong, but in my case, with gfxCardStatus used with either "integrated" or "discrete" only, the issue dissapeared completely (MBP i5 mid 2010). Still hope though, that a Lion software(!) update will solve the issue.

Trying gfxCardStatus now on the problematic 2010 mbp model.  I hope it works until apple can release an update!  I agree that it seems most likely to be an OS / driver problem since I NEVER had a crash in SL.  Better judgement told me to hold off on upgrading to Lion until the kinks were worked...I just couldn't resist though.

Confirming same issues on a a brand new MacBook Air 13" i5 / Lion here.

I am also having problems with my WiFi, losing connection / turning itself off, and not responding to "turn on". Please join the thread if you are experiencing anything of the same.

A quick update on my side: NONE of the fixes mentioned in this thread worked for me.

My Lion crashes on Dynamic or Discrete settings with external monitor despite latest CUDA drivers, erasing WindowServer files.

I am taking my laptop to get the hardware checked and see where that takes me.

MB Air as well?

Ugh-ugh. I just ordered an additional MBA 13" i5/Lion to run away all this issues.

OK, if so, I will send back the MBA directly. Apple has to solve this problem.

I got occasional hangs waking from sleep with SL since 10.6.8 (never prior).

The latest CUDA update did not seem to actually update the NVIDIA graphics driver, just the CUDA drivers. No problems running in discrete or integrated or letting it switch dynamically since the first beta CUDA update - as long as I never let my MBP sleep. After sleeping I lose internet connectivity, it can take 3-5 minutes to turn on or off WiFi, Safari and Mail can hang, and I can get a system hang, a kernel panic or the BSOD.

I think my MBP just needs coffee to help it wake up from sleep!

When will this get fixed, it's brutal!  (This is not happening on my 24" iMac by the way, only my MBP, but they are both running Lion.)

I get the black screen crashes too. (2010 15" Macbook Pro).  Seem to happen every 5 or 10 minutes, or sometimes it will go for 20 - 30 mins, however last night I figured out one thing that for sure crashes it.  I was using Google Chrome, and tried to download an image file from the internet.  CRASH.  Had to restart by holding the power button, tried downloading it again, CRASH.  Booted up again, tried using Firefox, and I was able to download.

Other things have caused the back screen crash too, but one app that seems to cause it a lot is when I have Chrome running.  It's happend when I'm running Aperture too.

I have noticed that Chrome causes a swtich from integrated graphics to discrete on launch. I think that is why folks have reported so many issues with Chrome.

I have a mid 2010 i7 MBP nvidia 330 laptop. Once Apple replaced the logic board - no more issues.

Just to add my 2 cents... I have not had a problem with Chrome since I switched over to use discrete exclusively.

As you may see in one of my responses above, I have the same setup - i7 / 330 15" MBP.

(repost)

Same here- 2010 MacBook Pro 15" 8 GB Ram with nvidia330. 

Crashes were happening in Smow Leopard and got much worse in Lion.

I could repeatedly make it crash with iPhoto. Quick look was also a sure-fire way to crash it. When running on battery it never crashed- in the ten mins I tried it for.

I plugged it in and tried and boom. Black Screen.

Unit remains with icentre NL. Has been there 2 weeks... They say they haven't found a fix yet. I hope they are stalling while a new logic board comes in.

This is massively frustrating...the silence from Apple is not helping.

PK

It's interesting, I think there are multiple issues we're experiencing that all produce similar results. Unlike a number of other people in here getting the B(lack)SOD, I never had a crash like this in SL. I played StarCraft 2 on SL and all kinds of other stuff that would have stressed the GPU so I doubt it has anything to do with hardware.

I think those who experienced occasional crashes in SL should probably get their logic board/GPU replaced but those of us who never had crashes in SL will probably have to wait for a software patch.

I filed a bug at http://bugreport.apple.com/ and was told it is a duplicate of a known bug, so I assume that Apple is working on a fix. If you haven't done so already, I recommend filing a bug with the latest .panic file from /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports attached. This will at least get the bug into the right channel because, as others have noted, this is a community support forum, not a technical support channel to Apple.

I have

  Model Name:    MacBook Pro

  Model Identifier:    MacBookPro6,2

  Processor Name:    Intel Core i7

  Processor Speed:    2,66 GHz

  Number Of Processors:    1

  Total Number Of Cores:    2

  L2 Cache (per core):    256 KB

  L3 Cache:    4 MB

  Memory:    8 GB

This is a model from August 2010. It was in November last year when my MBP started with kernel panics (Snow Leopard). From the panic report I always suspected the GFX adapter but was not able to 100% figure out the exact condition under which the kernel panic occurred. Then 2 months later the symptoms disappeard totally with the next OSX updates.

End of June this year it came back. Suddenly the system freezes but the screen would show the last image (or eventually I would see a prompt that the systems needs to be restarted).

So after a few days with up to 20 kernel panics I had a service team diagnose a logic board problem and they replaced it. After running the system again I noticed that booting / resuming from sleep was extraordinarily slow!

Shortly after this repair the kernel panics would appear again. I suspect it came after I installed the latest Snow Leopard update - YES I'm still running Snow Leopard!

And now when the system freezes the screen goes blank and I have to force a shutdown by holding down the power button. So this is the same behaviour that most users of 2010 MBP get with Lion.

I've never had any issue with Mac OS X under SL except for a ****** Hitachi drive going bad. I've since replaced that with an Intel 320 Series 160 GB SSD. There does seem to be a very serious problem with Lion. I've tried doing all the PRAM/NVRAM/SMC resets and they did nothing (except improve battery life). Battery life is useless to me when my computer locks up.

It only ever seems to happen when the lid is left open.

mac.martin wrote:

 

I have

 

  Model Name:    MacBook Pro

  Model Identifier:    MacBookPro6,2

  Processor Name:    Intel Core i7

  Processor Speed:    2,66 GHz

  Number Of Processors:    1

  Total Number Of Cores:    2

  L2 Cache (per core):    256 KB

  L3 Cache:    4 MB

  Memory:    8 GB

 

This is a model from August 2010. It was in November last year when my MBP started with kernel panics (Snow Leopard). From the panic report I always suspected the GFX adapter but was not able to 100% figure out the exact condition under which the kernel panic occurred. Then 2 months later the symptoms disappeard totally with the next OSX updates.

End of June this year it came back. Suddenly the system freezes but the screen would show the last image (or eventually I would see a prompt that the systems needs to be restarted).

So after a few days with up to 20 kernel panics I had a service team diagnose a logic board problem and they replaced it. After running the system again I noticed that booting / resuming from sleep was extraordinarily slow!

 

Shortly after this repair the kernel panics would appear again. I suspect it came after I installed the latest Snow Leopard update - YES I'm still running Snow Leopard!

And now when the system freezes the screen goes blank and I have to force a shutdown by holding down the power button. So this is the same behaviour that most users of 2010 MBP get with Lion.

Hi Mac Martin, If i was you I'd be taking that machine back again for another MB replacement