Q: Lion randomly crashes - black screen

Well here goes - The Black Screen of Death

The App Store wouldn't even let me review Lion. Have they banned users who have issues from posting one star and warning others? I would be interested to hear if anyone else cant review the software.

I have phoned apple support. I was given 2 x options to help.

1. System Preferences > Energy Saver > Untick Automatic Graphics Switching

2. Open in Safe mode by clicking shift on start up.

Both these steps didnt help. However I have put them here as it may help someone. However I really have my doubts about these.

I have gone back to using a bootable version of snow leopard which i made using a great program called super duper.If you havent upgraded to lion yet i recommend using this. Works better than Apples Time Machine.

I am going to wait a few weeks and see if apple has any software updates.

Dead lion OS - the operating system that won't wake up!

I have noticed that crashes can occur on the following. Not all the time but some of the time:

1. Making a facetime call

2. Making a skype call.

3. Pressing Space to see an image or document.

4. In the App Store

5. Running a logo program called logo creator.

I wish I had the Lion reviews first in the App Store - I just thought apple would not have launched a program unless fully tested.

I have the same problem..the screen blackens out and the OS is unusable at this stage.. on opening App store for me..Keynote works fine..

Worked for me: logic board replaclement.

Got my MBP 2010 2.66 i7 (not SSD) back from Applecare. No more (GPU-related, BSOD) problems. Not a one. Still a few other problems (e.g. All My Files in sidebar does not show all my files--just nine).

I called Applecare here in the US about Lion and my BSOD; as it was a Lion issue, I was covered with Applecare (my hardware warranty had expired within a couple of months). Sent off the report their software generated about my Macbook Pro. Two days later I was approved for a logic board replacement. Sent off on Tuesday, returned on Thursday morning.

Running just fine now...EXCEPT...the fans run more often / louder / faster. Used to be quite quiet in my office, just me and my laptop. Now w/ CPU activity at 1-2% fan is at 2825 (Mail, Activity monitor, LaunchBar, Spell Catcher and Firefox open with two windows -- not running any movie or using intense scripting on any of the two pages). CPU and GPU both read 124 F. The new normal?

Booting back into SL and I have to tax my Mac before the fans spin up. Good or bad? I have no idea.

This is going to sound crazy but my computer says "serious or curious??" about every 10 minutes.  I can barely make it out because it is so fast.

To try and deal with the black screen death, I have installed gfxcard in integrated mode.  I have growl running, temperature monitor lite as well.

Does ANYONE have any idea why my computer would randomly say "curious"?

Barry

I saw a post about installing CUDA to perhaps help with Black Screen of Death.  Will this do anything for a me a normal MBP user? -- Barry

Important Update

Hi guys, please listen what I am saying. I bought 2 brandnew Macs last week and I can report seriously two facts:

• The first mashine I bought is an iMac, early 2011. It works fine with Lion and Lion Server. It has no problems and this Mac runs 24h per day.

• The second Mashine is a MacBoook Pro 15'' with an upgrade to 8GB ram. This mashine crashes every **** 10 minutes and has exactly the same problems like you. BUT IS HAS NO NVIDIA GRPHIC CARD!!! So the problem is NOT the overheating graphic chip!

• Then I start to compare the two devices, the ONLY difference is that the iMac run under 10.7.0 and it work perfectly. My MacBook Pro , which crashs, run under 10.7.1

• Before my MacBook Pro crashs, the kernel_task from the system is going crazy (40 % CPU usage, at an intel i7) and spontainiously need a lot of ram (about 1.5 GB).

I don't know if the kernel_task or the Lion version is the problem but I definitely can say that my MacBook Pro from 2011, with AMD graphics have the SAME issues. Please regognize this when you diagnose the problem.

If you want I can post my latest crash report. Sorry for my english, I will do my very best.

Barry, if you have SpellCatcher installed that would explain the "Curious". SpellCatcher defaults to saying "curious" when it encounters a word you type that it does not understand. Hope this helps.

orsa47 wrote:

 

This is going to sound crazy but my computer says "serious or curious??" about every 10 minutes.  I can barely make it out because it is so fast.

 

To try and deal with the black screen death, I have installed gfxcard in integrated mode.  I have growl running, temperature monitor lite as well.

 

Does ANYONE have any idea why my computer would randomly say "curious"?

 

Barry

FabienB wrote:

 

Important Update

 

Hi guys, please listen what I am saying. I bought 2 brandnew Macs last week and I can report seriously two facts:

 

 

• The first mashine I bought is an iMac, early 2011. It works fine with Lion and Lion Server. It has no problems and this Mac runs 24h per day.

 

• The second Mashine is a MacBoook Pro 15'' with an upgrade to 8GB ram. This mashine crashes every **** 10 minutes and has exactly the same problems like you. BUT IS HAS NO NVIDIA GRPHIC CARD!!! So the problem is NOT the overheating graphic chip!

 

• Then I start to compare the two devices, the ONLY difference is that the iMac run under 10.7.0 and it work perfectly. My MacBook Pro , which crashs, run under 10.7.1

 

• Before my MacBook Pro crashs, the kernel_task from the system is going crazy (40 % CPU usage, at an intel i7) and spontainiously need a lot of ram (about 1.5 GB).

 

I don't know if the kernel_task or the Lion version is the problem but I definitely can say that my MacBook Pro from 2011, with AMD graphics have the SAME issues. Please regognize this when you diagnose the problem.

 

If you want I can post my latest crash report. Sorry for my english, I will do my very best.

Do you have any software that affects the CPU clock or the fan speed?

I have a MBP with an NVIDIA 9400M GPU that was crashing after I upgraded to Lion. Removing smcFanControl and CoolBook Controller completely cleared up the problem. Also, it's possible that your RAM upgrade is interacting with Lion. A clue that Lion may not be the problem is if, when your MBP crashes, you don't get a completely black screen, but you get the kernel panic screen that tells you to restart.

Had the same problems.  Panics and blackscreen on some graphics events like clicking a download in Chrome or while working in VMWare fusion virtual machine.

The gfxcardstatus things worked if I kept it on integrated. Not a great workaround though.  Luckily there's a new fix for this issue that seems to be working.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/08/buggy-nvidia-drivers-giving-2010-macbo ok-pro-owners-lion-upgrade-headaches.ars

UPDATE: A commenter noted that Apple Care support technicians have offered another solution which appears to have permanently solved the problem on his machine. Navigate to ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/, delete any files that contain "windowserver," and reboot the machine. The procedure may need to be repeated if you regularly connect to an external monitor once it is also connected.

I'm now 24 hours without panics and without the gxcardstatus workaround.   Fingers crossed

Hi Maxm007...I had the BSOD and permissions issues, etc, and I tried your posted windowsserver fix a while ago...turns out that I never had any windowsserver files in my library in the first place. People have also stated the same in this discussion. My BSOD only shows up every few days (only coming out of sleep mode.) and it's a good thing I don't use sleep much...I'm always backing up or doing work on external drives...I hope your solution works for you, but the Arstechnica suggestion is not THE fix for these issues

I thought that the windowserver solution had fixed the black screen problem for me too, so I stopped running gfxCardStatus. Unfortunately, I have had the machine go black on me three times in the past two days. This did not involve waking from sleep. One of the three occurrances happened when I wasn't doing anything.

I am back to running gfxCardStatus with it set to "Integrated Only" with the hope that I can get some work done until Apple fixes this.

I sure hope Apple fixed this in either the 10.7.2 update or in a separate update (hopefully sooner).

I'm tired of applying "work arounds" and "fixes" to an issue that Apple identified in Beta testing. I need the external video for a meeting I'm doing September 6th. If there isn't a fix out by then I'm going to have to re-install Snow Leopard and give Lion a pass.

I have to say, the complete and utter lack of official response from Apple on ANY venue is very frustrating and not what I've come to expect from them.

Perhaps the time has come to show our displeasure with them and boycott their products, services, and software until this issue is resolved or at least acknowleged by Cupertino.

martinfromeugene,

I do have Spell Cather installed.  Thank you. -- Barry

update: since then, I had one more crash. and then I quit the email clinet I used: Sparrow. Ever since no more crash.

THINGS THAT NO LONGER WORK IN LION

1. Embedded hperlinks in printing pdf documents in Safari

2,  My WiFi Time Machine backup

3.  So far sleep going to coma on wakeup hasen't happened, but I'm waiting

4.  Rosetta based programs

5.  Some of my graphics programs (Genuine Fractels) only 1 year old

6.  my Epson printer, despite having it's drivers in Lion---OK, it's very old and maybe I should get a new        one

Sorry to say that all the eye candy in the world in the form of launch pad and mission control can't make up for the ease of use and convenience that I used to have in Snow Leopard. Lion is faster...BIG DEAL...NOT!

whetty101 wrote:

 

Lion crashes ever now and thenand stays on a black screen. Its totally unresponsive, all I can do is force shut down but I've done this about 4 times already today any idea what's going on, or how to fix?

 

Thanks!