Q: OS X Lion freezes at login screen + App Store is slow

@hkoci: I had zero problems after deleting the AGPM.kext. But the caveat is that, according to an Apple Certified Tech, it "might, possibly" cause your Mac to fail to boot. If your Mac is identical mine then you are probably safe. Before I tried it I made sure I had an alternate HD to boot from - just in case.

@Metalizer: Thanks - re. Judy's problems. I had forgotten that the early 13-inch MBPs had only one GPU. That wd certainly explain her not seeing the [AGS] button on her own MBP.

Almost for sure her partner will see one. If he "clicks the Red X" I am guessing he spends a lot of time running Windows Apps. My impression (from days as a wage-slave, using Windows) was that this would "Quit" the App. His slowdown could be due to not configuring enough RAM and HD space to his Win partition - and whether or not he is using BootCamp or running in a VM. Etc.

But that is not a topic for this thread.

Judy: as Metalizer mentioned to me, your own MBP is probably one of the ones that had only one Graphics unit, so you wouldn't see the [AGS] button. Also please note that my own hack will only apply to Macs with nVidia GT 240M and GT 330M Graphics units. But AGS Consultant's suggestion to "remove the AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext file might still work for you - if you are having the "Lion Freeze" problem. But keep your original install DVD handy to use as an emergency boot disk, just in case it refuses to boot from your HD after you remove the kext file.

To SDG Consultant...

You have fixed Lion for me!! Lion now runs nicely, no beachballing on login. Perfect.

Merci my little french beauty!!

I have a mid 2010 macbook pro 6,2 which was having the same issue of freezing at the login prompt, if the password entering is delayed by few seconds.

I consulted the techies at apple store, luckily for me the problem reproduced at the first attempt. They suggested me to create multiple users and give it a try. I clearly refused them saying that I dont want to waste time in this as I am pretty sure that this is a logic board fault. I asked them to refer this blog too. They didnt agree and gave me a option to check-in my macbook pro for a clean install. I agreed to them since I had backed up everything. After couple of days they called me after fresh install of osX-Lion. Again I was lucky this time, the problem was caught in first attempt and the system was freezed at the login.

Apple engineer agreed that there is some issue with the video card and agreed for the logic board replacement. I got the logic board replaced within 3 working days and got my macbook pro shipped to my place. There was repair note saying the logic board was replaced and the symptom found was "z33 intermittent black screen or loss of video"

Now its working fine without any issues. My macbook was under warranty period so I didn't face any problem regarding the logic board replacement and everything was free of cost.

I have reinstalled other 2 OSes using reFIT installer (WIN & UBUNTU) along side MAC. Everything seems to be working fine now. Restarted for atleast >20 times now and no sign's of freeze what so ever...

Hello!

I read the SGD Consultant FAQ to fix this issue, but im having a problem, can you help me?

I can find the library dir, by pressing option in the Go tab in the finder, but i can't find the Extensions folder, what I have to do? Dont have this folder inside Library Folder

Thanks for the help

@WasoBH: it is not in the "Library" folder. It is in the System > Library > Extensions ... folder. If you start at the root level of your HD (i.e., click on your 'Macintosh HD" ( or whatever you have renamed it) icon and start from its "System ...." folder.

Thank you a lot Terry,

Issue solved!!

Terry,

Would you be able to copy the Snow Leopard values for the GT330M from the info.plist file? I want to edit the values but I don't have access to the SL machine to see the diff.

Thanks,

Rob

Hi Rob,

Unfortunately I have sent that MacBookPro 6,2 to its new owner (I had enough confidence in the robustness of my hack, after 10 days, to ship it out). I kept a copy of its AGPM.kext/...info.plist file just in case but I do not have it with me. And it could be a while before I have access to it again.

Assuming you have your own copy - to be modified, and are up to making modifications, the only change I would make is to delete that (apparently erroneous) extra parameter: "P3HistoryLength" with value "2". I suspect that this is the one that really matters (it simply shouldn't be there and is messing up the passing of parameter-values between the graphics units). I would try simply leaving the other parameters as they are.

Once again, TextWrangler (programmer's editor,a free download, or BBEdit, web-designer's editor - around $45) will make things much easier because it makes changes to the files involved a simple, 1-click process. Otherwise you'll need to mess with file-permissions, sudo ..., etc, to make the changes. But be sure you keep backup copies in case you need to undo your changes.

~Terry

Terry,

Thanks very much for your help--it was invaluable. After initially trying SDGs fix, I thought (perhaps as you did) that might be a lighter weight fix so I restored a Time Machine backup and started from square one (Lion+Video Update). After seeing your messages, I decided to give your solution a shot.

As you suggested, the only change I made was to remove the 'P3HistoryLength' parameter, and here I did it only for my grahocs card (330M). After making this one change and copying the modified file back, I did a quick permissions repair on the new PList file, rebooted into Safe Mode, and then rebooted again. All is well as of writing this.

I'm still getting the hang of all things Mac, but one thing I did notice is that when I did  copy/paste of the plist file, permissons were changed. after modifying the file and copying it back to the extension folder, permissions were off and because of this, OSX would not initially load the extension. Perhaps I should have chosen the 'duplicate' option? At any rate, after making the permissions repair, the extension loads correctly.

Thanks,

Rob

@Rob: Fab! Kudos. And you make a good point about repairing the file-permissions. It doesn't seem to be as critical as it used to be 5 or 10 years ago, but if you're modifying a system-level file it clearly matters more. I do repair file-permissions periodically but usually in response to some sort of problem that "might be" related to permissions.

Has anyone else tried adding your user admin name to the permissions r&w list on that file list, like I did, a few posts back?

The weird thing is, Terry, that I was able to login again past the 5 seconds, without spinning beachball, with ags enabled.

So, I don't know whether there was/is a cache issue, or whether there's a difference involved between restarting within the Lion volume and switching/rebooting to Lion from the Snow Leopard volume.

All I can say for now is that if I haven't cracked it, using the permissions list route, I have reduced it to being intermittent.

I will update on this as things progress

on the second reboot, I get the spinning beachball again, so I've only made it intermittent ; on a side note, I phoned Apple support here in Cork (Ireland) but the friendly assistant didn't have any extra info; I directed him to this forum. Maybe all of this this will filter through to the OS X core team, hopefully?

@Metalizer: bummer. I just took a look at the permissions on my own AGPM.kext/ ... info.plist (on OEM Lion on this new MBP 8,3). "wheel" is, as I undertand it, a synonym for "root". The three sets of priviliges are for {system, wheel, and everyone}. As far as I know, these "user categories" are fixed. The related privileges are {Read-Write, Read, Read}. These are the same all the way up the tree to the System folder. But I would still have expected that a round of "Repair Privileges" should have fixed that problem if it existed.

Need to refresh my memory re. what you have done so far - I'll have a look backward thru the thread unless you can refresh my memory? BTW, do you have a bootable Snow Leopard volume for safety's sake?

I am thinking that your problem might, in fact, be hardware-based. Someone else (on the thread, I think) mentioned that a batch of these Macs really had been manufactured with logic-board problems - sounded like the GPU socket had not been properly attached/soldered or whatever.