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

Mr Sifter,

Thanks for the kudos.

The next thing I'd try (if necessary) is replacing your AGPM.kext/Contents/info.plist file with the one from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 up-to-date.

The only wrinkle that might offer some resistance (unless you have used it before) is that you need a programmer's text-editor - e.g., TextWrangler (a free download) or BBEdit to facilitate the replacement.

It is possible to do without, but you'll need to fuss with file-permissions and (possibly) ownership, probably using Terminal and UNIX commands. Also, make sure to save the fie as .txt. Not an .rtf  or other type of file. Downloading TextWrangler (TW) can make this process totally transparent - when you edit (or replace) the info.plist file, TW will simply prompt you to "unlock" the file, by clicking on the associated pencil-icon. Plus, of course, the replacement file's ownership and permissions (for System, Group, and World) should be the same as they were for the original Lion version of the info.plist file.

Sounds complicated, but it really isn't that bad with the right tools. Let us know how it goes.

So it appears that from a cold start is my new problem with the SBBoD.

It hangs on the first log in only now and only if the computer has been left switched off for a few hours.  Each subsequent login is absolutely fine.  Very strange but at least it's an improvement on what went before.

I think I'll try trashing that file again and go from there.  I don't have the confidence or know how for the other recommendation.

there are rumours about an 10.7.3 update that will apparently "- Resolve issues authenticating with directory services " – this might be the fix we're all hoping for?

MrSifter: Fair enough. And as Metalizer mentioned (above), the 10.7.3 update may well resolve the login-freeze. As one of the steps in the login process, Mac OS X retrieves the user's login information from Directory Services. If there's a glitch there, that could be the source of the problem. Keep your fingers crossed.

After the engineers reviewed my data capture, they agreed to replace my logic board.  I got the box today so hopefully I will get it back soon.  I will post my results when I get the machine back from service.

Any idea about the following Terry?

1.  On the old logic board it hung on at least two out of three logins with the power cable attached and at least one out of three without?

2.  On the new logicboard it hangs on a cold start with both the power cable attached and on just battery power?  But after that first login attempt I can reboot, shutdown, switch users etc as many times as I want and it never hangs.

It just seems very odd to me.

Guys, stop looking for an hardward problem. Ok so, some logic boards have a small dirent nvidia 330 gpu, because, in the extension the 330 have two names : 0a29 and 0a34. but the diference are only inside the ship.

The two card have the same problem.

Since 2 mounth, i have put the 10.6..8 parameter in the AGPM.kext plist's. And since my MPB work fine!

this is the 10.6.8 parameters in the 10.7.2 AGPM kext:

MrSifter,

I can offer an informed guess but my background is in (mostly) application software - not hardware. I took one Operating Systems course, decades ago, that covered the interface between hardware (at the kernel level) and program-code that was executing on the hardware. Current hardware may be different but the underlying theory should be the same. Anyway, I suspect that with today's chips - at nanometer-scale - continuing to shrink from one iteration of a logic-board to the next - heat sensitivity of different logic-board iterations (same design using different technology) may well be a problem. I am guessing this is one of the things that "parameters" (as in the KEXT's info.plist) can be tuned to adjust; but there are limits to this.

Re.

1) logic board and power cable - from what you've said, I don't think there was/is a problem with power cable or logic board.

2) I agree - it seems odd that you only need a single "freeze-and-restart" when the MBP is "cold", in order for it to warm up enough for temperature to make a difference. I would have expected "powered-on-time" to have taken longer to "warm-up" the components to the point where the freeze-problem goes away.

Having said that, it's nice to see that SDG Consultant has rebounded with his/her comment about the info.plist parameters (for this specific model of MBP6,2 - the one that I had). I realise that these can be "fixed" by editing the (Lion version of the) file but I think that if you have access to the original file, it should be easier to simply replace it with the one from Snow Leopard. The other wrinkle in this was that the Lion version actually had a set of parameters that were absent from the Snow Leopard version. Same hardware - different parameter(s). Yet replacing the file resolved the problem in my case.

Hello everyone,

So I also have a GT 330M on a macbookpro 6,2. Recently I have upgraded to 10.7, and started having freezes on the system, leaving only the mouse move (but completely unresponsible... only moves on frozen screen).

I have saw lots of posts, with lots of comments, some suggests Flash problem, some suggestes Nvidia driver, some suggests problem with the change between integrated and nvidia video cards.

Digging on Console.app I had some warnings about IOSurface (completely different subject... it had something to do with HASP drivers), and when a freeze happens the log is:

NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception!

NVDA(Video): Channel exception!

IOVendorGLContext::ReportGPURestart

They all happen together, meaning that nvidia driver crashed when trying to process something. Now this could be a hardware problem, but this never happened with mac osx 10.6, and I use opengl all the time, and even on mac osx 10.7 it doesn't happen with my opengl or video programs. Only with WebKit based apps like Safari.app and Mail.app.

Now I read this thread and took a lot of time to find out that AGPM means AppleGraphicsPowerManager.kext, but letting it out of discussion, I took a look at my 10.7.2 Info.plist and compared the differences:

Since my device is also Vendor10deDevice0a29 here are the only parts that differ from 10.6.8 Info.plist:

1) Heuristic / IdleInterval on 10.6.8 we have an interval of 250, and on lion this interval is lower: 100

2) Heuristic / SensorSampleRate on 10.6.8 the rate is 4 but on lion this is 10

3) Heuristic / Threshold_High / Item 3 on 10.6.8 we have this set to 88 and on lion this is 80; this one I think means the temperature on Celsius degrees that the video card accept before sending a "temperature too high" warning and asking for shutdown.

4) Heuristic / PS3History_Length exist on lion set to value 2 and doesn't exist on 10.6.8

These are all the differences (only 4) being the number 3 and 4 related to temperature and log, which we can assume are not the case.

Since, I'm using Qt library to produce a program and this is using opengl, I saw that on snow leopard sometimes the program couldn't initialize, because it was not able to find the correct parameters to use opengl on mac osx.

On mac osx lion I don't have this problem (same library version 4.8.0 and same installer).

This means to me that either something changed on opengl libraries from 10.6.8 to 10.7.2, but when I compared, nothing drastic had any changes, or that something different happened to the driver.

To fix this problem I had to make the program on 10.6.8 idle a while after attempting to open opengl (something around 100 msecs).

I just changed these values on my AGPM info.plist to 10.6.8 values and will check to see if i get some freeze.

If I do get any freeze I'll report, even though this thread reports an error with Login Screen + App Store, and my freezes happens on Safari.app and Mail.app, the problem seems to be the same.

diogoenque: Very interesting. Thanks! When I did my first edit of Lion's APGM info.plist, (as far as I can remember) I changed all these parameters to be what they had been in the Snow Leopard version - and I deleted everything for PS3History_Length. After that, my Lion 10.7.2 (on my MBP6,2) did not freeze again, at login or in any other scenario.

This led me to guess that maybe the kernel-extension (in Lion) was supposed to be changed but the builders forgot to include the new module (?) - even though the info.plist had been modified. I.e., there was a mismatch - and the kext/driver didn't know how to handle the extra parameter.

Your note that the nVidia driver crashes (with both Snow Leopard and Lion) when using WebKit-based Apps (like Safari) is interesting too, because I now have Safari-related freezes occasionally on a new, OEM-Lion MBP8,3.

Even though the freezes seems to be related to P3HistoryLength, I made some tests and saw that the programs that used to cause the freeze, when were using the IdleInterval of 100 (from lion) and SensorSampleRate of 10 (from lion as well), got unstable, getting unresponsive when opening a new tab, or taking a lot of time before getting responsive after a resume from suspension.

From my tests, it seems that the P3HistoryLength is the freeze problem, but the IdleInterval and SensorSampleRate seems to make difference on responsiveness as well.

Now from my searches the P3HistoryLength seems to be Lion only option, no other version had this option, but I can't find anywhere that has a reference documentation about these options to know what it is related to.

Also for those that don't have textedit or bbedit, you can edit Info.plist using Terminal.app and typing:

sudo cp -a /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext/Contents/Info.plis t{,.lion}

sudo nano -w /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext/Contents/Info.plis t

When using nano command you can find the section you want searching with CTRL+W and save the changes with CTRL+O and exit with CTRL+X . This way you will not need to fix permissions, since you didn't change them. And also the cp -a command is to make a backup of the file as Info.plist.lion, so if you do something very wrong and need to go back to lion's version, just enter on single mode (boot holding CMD+SHIFT+S), run fsck and mount commands as instructed, then do the following command:

cp -a /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext/Contents/Info.plis t{.lion,}

Then type reboot to restart.

Event though using TextWrangler is easier because it is graphically, you can do it as well with command line, and if you are not confortable with nano that just use: "sudo open /System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext/Contents/Info.plis t" on a Terminal.app if you have XCode installed, and you will be able to edit it graphically using XCode plist editor, also without creating problem with permissions of the file.

But from what I see here, change those three options gives me better stability, even though the critical option seems to be P3HistoryLength.

Have the same problem: BBOD at login if I am waiting too long.

I was 6 times at the Genius bar in Hamburg:

I got a new Lion installation, some firnware upgrades, a new main board, a new display and finally a new cover (because it has been scratched in the garage). Two days ago I picked up my "new" MBP 15'' (Model 2010) and switched it on and waited for a while at the Genius bar: And?

BBOD!

So, just replacing hardware, firmware or reinstalling the OS does not solve anything. The Genius was frustrated and kept the notebook there.

I think, the solution for me is clear: If Apple does not solve the problem very soon I will replace Lion by Linux.

Hey danstrov,

I was at the apple store in frankfurt. they told me some bull*hit about "it's not a apple problem" and so on ...

So I called the apple support and they connected me with a engineer in irland. He confirmed -yes- that it's a lion problem and cupertino will soon (with 10,7,3) fix the problem. so on ... the whole thing really makes me mad.

later

danstrov: thanks for sharing your experience re. Genius experiences. Hopefully (as hkoci mentioned above) the impending 10.7.3 update will fix the SBBoD-and-freezing problems - real soon now.

If not, there definitely are home-made "fixes" available - at least for the mid-2010, MBP 6,2. (refer to the posts on this page, by SDG Consultant and diogoenoque). If you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself, you might try printing out the several posts, show them to the Genuis Bar and insist that they apply these fixes for you. ...

Hey Terry been following this forum for a long time. i'm using  15 " core i7 mid 2010 macbook pro with momentus xt 500gb  which apple support tech claimed has a fault . i tried with momentus 5400.6 hdd too on 10.7.2. SBBOD at login screen. however i wanna update u guys that i just installed 10.7.3 update 10D42 . switched off automatic login and restarted. bang !!!!!! again SBBOD at login screen . now what ???