Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

10.7.1 haven't solved the problem. So I decided to contact the support and they suggested me some things to do:

- SMC reset: MacBookPro shut down then press ALT+CMD+shift

- Parametric RAM reset: MacBookPro shut down the press ALT+CMD+P+R and start, release after 2 bong

- remove any login app (included itunes helper)

- empty caches

For the moment it works.

To echo @kentarooe, I have a Macbook Pro mid-2010, and was getting constant black screens in 10.7.  I'm getting a lot more stability now, (4 hours and counting) since doing the following:
- Installed 10.7.1 (immediately got a crash after doing this)

- Delete references to "windowsserver" blah blah blah, mentioned previously in this thread

- Did a PRAM and NVRAM reset

- Did a SMC reset

Hopefully this is stable for good, though I'm much relieved even to have gotten through a few hours. 

I wish Apple could be more up front with this issue - is a shame to need to rely on public hacks.

This happened to me this morning also. I'm able to go as far as logging in, then i get my screen flashing from desktop to black repeatedly, but unresponsive to anything else. I was able to boot up in recovery mode but that had no benefit what so ever, and alternatively I could have re-downloaded & installed Lion (at the expense of a few hrs wait), so I just stuck in my snow leopard disk, wiped the HDD & got 10.6 back on. Will not be going back to Lion until there is a 10.7.2 release that says it's fixed this. Far too much hassle, and time consuming.

MacBook 13.3" White (Late 2007), Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM

@Linda.H:

I, too have a 2009 MBP. I NEVER could upgrade it (even just the regular updates for download) from the originally installed Leopard operating system without having iMovie -- and other stuff -- lock up or the whole thing crash. I finally bit the bullet a few weeks ago and upgraded to Snow Leopard (before Lion came out). Crash, crash, crash! Had to keep repairing permissions all the time. Reinstalling the OS didn't help -- the problem just built up again.

We have a fantastic Apple repair business (NOT the Apple Store) where I live, so I brought it to them. It took a while for them to figure it out, as they, too thought it was the logic board or mother board. But after two weeks of testing, guess what? It was a bad AIRPORT card!!! I have had it back for a month and have been using it heavily. NO PROBLEMS.

I don't know if this is a problem with 2009 MBPs, but I thought I'd pass my experience along!

Also encountering freezes on my MacBookPro mid 2010 i7 2.66Ghz.  Did the new lion update and so far have had two freezes.  Might have to go to apple for repair.

Already out of warranty, so hoping its not a hardware problem or they do it for free like yours!

I have been experiencing the same kernel panic problem with SL since I upgraded to 10.6.8 – but only if the MBP is attached to external monitors.

Lion, as people noticed, aggravates the problem so much that it turns out to be completely impossible to work with the computer - with Lion the computer basically becomes an aluminum brick… a nice one, by the way.

Nonetheless this should not be neither a sculpture, neither a toy. The name "Pro" should indicate that it is target at professionals. And if the computer has a problem, which is understandable, Apple's attitude should be professional. But until now at least, Apple's attitude has been everything but professional – as wired00 commented before in this topic...

Oh, I almost forgot to say that my i7-MacBrick Pro is out of warranty.

So, after 11 years using nothing but Apple computers (and supercomputing facilities) to do my work, I am terrible sad to say that if this problem is not solved in two weeks time, when I will be traveling to several countries, I will be forced to acquire a new machine… probably from a more professional brand...

After all, computers are just means, not ends in themselves… and no computer is irreplaceable.

PS: For those who are interested, I'll probably buy from the same family of laptops certified to fly to the ISS (in order to do real work, not marketing), as they should be at least a little bit more reliable than my brand new MacBrick Pro…

The recent update to Lion cured this issue for my machine entirely.  OS X Version 10.7.1.  I run a MBP 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo.  The video card was replaced on the recall about a year ago.  Some people still don't know there was a recall on nVidea cards put in MBPs.  My card did not show many issues, but one day it just freaked out and stopped working altogether.  I know my card behavior was atypical of the recall. 

It bricked with Lion about 10 times, which was quite common when dealing with ITunes and iPhoto.  So far, no issues and I am quite pleased.  By now it should have bricked again.  I typically could restart it, and it would immediately shut down for good and would not restart for at least a half-hour, sometimes longer. 

Just got my callback from Apple. Not very helpful. I had to send in some computer statistics and they told me that this was a known problem and are working on making a fix in a future software update. I was told that this was NOT a hardware issue. Existing logic-board errors and other factors may play a role in how often you have your kernel panics. If the next software update doesn't fix these problems, I will be calling up Apple again and asking for a replacement Macbook Pro.

Two days of stability and counting...I did a re-install of Lion, which seemed to work in my case...no BSOD or kernal panics so far...will post in a few days with an update if this miracle continues. Since all these crashes started happening, I've become very observant of the error reports in the console.app. I was noticing a ton of Adobe Air errors every timeI started a MSOffice 2011 program...pages and pages of system errors...this can't be good for our systems, which don't need anymore stability issues because of strange programming. I found out that the Microsoft auto-update feature is accessing the Adobe Air update installer and causing all kinds of errors...the solution? If you have Adobe Software and MSOffice 2001, just disable the auto update function in word and do your updates manually so you can have a handle on this....go to help and enter "office updates" and select "manually." If you have MS Office installed and don't have any Adobe software, I would still disable the auto update function right now... from what I see it is always trying to access to the Internet.

First thing you want to do is try a Safe Boot holding down the shift key. Then restart computer and see if issue continues. If issue continues, reset PRAM. If issue continues, reset SMC. If issue continues, repair Disk and Disk permissions from the Lion Recovery partition. If it still continues, reinsttall the Mac OS X Lion (Archive & Install). If it still doesn't work, erase and install (hopefully not).

Went to Apple store today and the Genius said he had never heard of this issue and they had no internal knowledge of the problem. He started the the computer in safe mode and did not have the issue show up. He said it is likely a kernal extension that is causing the problem. I went to user account and deleted all login items. The problem does not show up. went through a process of elimination by adding one login item at a time. It seems that Launchbar5 is the culprit for me. Have only done some brief testing, but will repost if the issue returns.

I am sorry to say this but my experiences with those Apple genius were pretty negative. They duno nothing more than what you can find on internet for sure. And most of time, they would say they have never heard of the problem or things like that. I am wondering they are just a group of people not even very into computer technology at all, called them genius really makes it sarcastic.

That being said, I do encounter this problem thus find this thread. Mine is a 2010 MBP i7 2.66Ghz 8GB ram with 128gb SSD. Actually after upgraded to 10.7.1, the problem happened much more frequent than before to me. And yes it is pretty random. Very annoying. Avoid using my laptop now if possible, hope 10.7.2 bring the fix to this problem.

Update on my mid-2010 i7 mb pro. 

I tried it all. 

I gave up and went to the apple store.  The genius looked at the logs for about 3 minutes and declared that there was a hardware problem.  They swapped the mainboard out Monday night and I have been using my machine with dynamic video switching in 10.7.1 pretty much non-stop since - zero reboots, zero hangs and zero kernel panics.

In my case it seems safe to say that an existing hardware issue was exacerbated by the upgrade to Lion.  The genius confirmed that Lion is somewhat more resource intensive than SL, so I am guessing I had a marginal 330M chipset on the original mainboard.

If you live close to an apple store it is probably worth the effort to go back and ask them for a mainboard replacement.  Unless I am mistaken, most (all?) who have gone down this path have ended up with working machines - even if it took more than one mainboard swap.

kind regards,

i005754

Same issue here.  2010 15" Macbook Pro I7 with the rom version 3560 on the geforce GT 330M.

I've been in and out of the apple store and on and off the phone with apple care for two weeks now.

I've tried everything including reinstall and full wipe of hard drive and reinstall the osx.  I still get the kernal panics, and blank black screens.

Today i got the 10.7.1 update, and still the kernal panics.

Very VERY frustrating.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M:

  Chipset Model:          NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M

  Type:          GPU

  Bus:          PCIe

  PCIe Lane Width:          x16

  VRAM (Total):          512 MB

  Vendor:          NVIDIA (0x10de)

  Device ID:          0x0a29

  Revision ID:          0x00a2

  ROM Revision:          3560

  gMux Version:          1.9.21

  Displays:

Display Connector:

Display Connector:

  Status:          No Display Connected