Lion freezes after quitting an application...

Thanks for the upate

However I installed a brand new 750GB 7200 HD in my BRAND new 17" MBP just yesterday and tried similar - getting it to hard freeze right out of the gate and it did - several times. A few times when quitting Safari and several times when trying to quit Aperture 3.

It probably happens the most often when I quit Firefox.

I just installed a FRESH partition on my drive. CLEAN install LION. created a user account. made sure i was up to date 10.7.1 (did a software update which downloaded itunes, Thunderbolt update, security update)

restarted. went into applications. launched every app. (only like 30 stock apps in there). then began to press command Tab + Q and BOOM! hard lockup. this is from a clean install on a fresh hard drive.

Definetally an apple software issue with this model. Now we either wait for apple to fix it (if they even read this) or I have to go back to apple and show them on a clean install that it bombs. I suspect a new EFI update will have to come out for this model to rectify this issue.

ok here is the latest update. I got escalated to the engineer specialist at 1800SOSAPPL and we went through some tests. I also replaced the ram on my mac from the 8 gigs i bought to the factory 4 gigs. I also swapped my hard drive from a custom drive back to stock apple drive, format, full clean install. and the problem exists. I captured a system.log of the events as it happened and had the engineer check them out as well as a 50 meg system log from my previous mac. Both logs contained no information pertaining to an actual problem. ie: the logs dont show any bad things. The engineer said that if new software, new ram, new HD aren't fixing it, then it "COULD" be a logic board issue (GPU / CPU / etc etc). So I have my computer at the applestore right now getting a new logic board installed into my Mac. I mentioned the remaining people here on this thread who also have the problem and he said its not out of the question that out of hundreds of thousands of macs sold there could be a coincidence of failure between us.

Personally I think its a LION issue with 10.7.1 and or the latest EFI update that installed the internet recovery / thunderbolt display / thunderbolt target disk mode.. but I could be wrong... Regardless the new Logic board will NOT have the latest EFI update on it, so I am going to run it when it gets back and see if the issues persisit with a new logic board. I know that this is't what we all want to hear, but if apple is going to replace my logic board for free and my mac is still under warranty until February 2012, I might as well take the free board and see if that helps. Turn around time is 2 - 5 days, so I may have my mac back tomorrow (if they have a board at the store) or i may get it back some time after that.

One thing I did do to help replicate the problem is i created a automator action that launched 40 apps, waited 20 seconds, quit all my apps, then waited 5 seconds and relooped the automator app again. With this I was able to crash it alot easier but when I did the "Quit All" method in automator I could still use my cursor, even though the system hard froze and volume / keyboard lights still worked. the display was frozen except for the now moving but once invisible cursor. If you all want to wait this out and hope for a system update, you can do that... or if you want to get new logic boards, you can do that too.. For all I know getting my mac back with a new Logic board may not solve it and we may just be right back here complaining about this issue once more.

As always, I will keep you all posted on my findings and the results of the brain transplant in my baby (MBP).

For me the issue started the day I installed OS X Lion. That was the day after Lion was released so the issue existed in 10.7.0 and before the EFI-update.

Ok another update.

I got my mac back from Apple today with a brand new Logic Board.

Using the exact same clean installed brand new HD, original 4 gigs of apple ram where the problem existed, is now gone. I can run my automator script that launches and quits apps over and over and not a single freeze. How about that? There is only 2 things different between my old mac that crashed and my new mac logic board.

1. The Logic Board.
2. I haven't installed

• a) MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.2
• b) Thunderbolt Firmware Update

Because my new mac logic board hasn't applied those updates, that is the only thing NOT on my current laptop that is different.

so this leads me to believe that a) my logic board was indeed damaged, or b) the 2 updates listed cause issues that cause crashes and freezes.

Now I also have a buddy with a 17 inch MBP 2011 model (same mac) and he doesnt have any issues and he has updated both updates... so if you are following this thread and you can start a case report, i'd go for attempting to get your logic board replaced. I know it seems crazy but so far its worked for me.

I've come up with a theory. I think the issue might be related to Lion switching from the discrete AMD graphics back to the integrated Intel graphics. Switching graphics has been a source of hangups earlier in the history of the 2011 MBPs and this hangup always occurs when exiting an app. Several of the mentioned apps will sometimes or always activate the discrete graphics. When exiting the last app which activates the discrete graphics Lion will switch back to the integrated graphics. Could this be the moment when the screen often freezes? The fact that the screen freeze while music for example keeps playing could also strengthen this theory. Any thoughts?

Will you get the upgrades? Guess this means we'll all have to go get our logic boards replaced. I had hoped for a software patch.

Sorry about the spamming but I just wanted to say that in order to test my above theory about graphics switching i installed the utility gfxCardStatus and set it to "Discrete Only". Haven't had i single crash since. This is not a satisfactory solution to the problem but a temporary one and proof that the theory might be right.

Keep up up to date on the latest: this is a very interesting thread. I really appreciate your keeping up to date with the latest.

One possibly unrelated suggestion we could all learn from: avoid heat with these new MacBook Pros. We already know they run kind of hot, and fried logic boards are not a good sign.

I'll just add that I disabled automatic graphics card swithing in system preferences > energy saver to try and stop a different issue (display not waking from sleep) and I have not had this issue (screen freeze + cursor vanish) since. Maybe they are realted. This is not a solution, but it might help people until we can figure out if it's the logic board or the firmware.

well my apple engineer thought it was the graphics card when we diagnosed the problem, which is why the CPU still works, the graphics seize... he recomended a logic board replacement because they are all soldered on the unit. they don't replace a CPU or GPU, they just swap the logic board. So your theory could be correct, except maybe we all have failing graphics cards and by disabling your switch your are just bypassing the failed GPU.

also to answer the question about heat. i asked the same thing. I was told that the CPU automatically throttles and runs at lower voltage when it detects temps too high, when they get to a certain level the CPU tells the laptop to shutdown and the machine won't turn back on until the internal sensors show its cool enough, so he said the heat wouldn't be the cause.. he said with hundreds of thousands of sold MBP's a rate of failure of a few users is accurate. Just the fact that we all have the same issue could be mere coincidence and / or our batch of CPU/GPU/Logicboard/insert hardware here is all failing around the same time. I bought mine the first week they were out in february.

updated my EFI firmware and am now restoring my backup from time machine. So if this works after my update it would mean that the EFi update is fine, the backup is fine, everything would point to faulty hardware.

I have had a very similar issue with my late 2008 15" MBP after I upgraded to Lion. Every day or two, I'll randomly quit an application such as ProPresenter 4 or iTunes and it will stop responding. When I click to force quit the app, Force Quit will lockup and I have no choice but to do a hard reset. Also, Chrome will randomly stop working, won't quit, and then the whole computer locks up again when I try to Force Quit it. Reset SMC and PRAM haven't helped, haven't tried re-installing cause I don't have all the installers for the programs I need and it doesn't seem to be solving the problem for anyone else anyway. It's really annoying to have to do a hard reset every day when I'm not doing anything very intensive at all. I can't believe it would be a logic board issue for me too. If it is, I guess I better get on it so I can get it replaced before AppleCare expires in two months. Hopefully, some sort of fix is released for this. Maybe 10.7.2 will do this.

ok well I have everything updated. Latest EFI Firmware. Latest OS. In fact I am running the exact same OS I was running before that crashed 4 or 5 times a day (via time machine restore). This thing has Hands Off, Pochade, Total Finder, SIMBL, AutoDesk Backburner Server, Mac ports, XCODE, Teleport, Sizeup, Dropbox, and a slew of other things running at startup and or as system daemons. Its literally a byte for byte copy / restore of what I was running before and I haven't had a single lockup yet. So i know it seemed like it was LION or some sort of software, but honestly everything is looking towards hardware. It could be anything in there that was faulty.. down to a single chip. gpu, cpu, who knows... All i know is that something on the logic board was causing it and now with a new board its swapped. If you have applecare i'd open a case with apple and run through the test. I had to take my system to the store, run diagnostics on it. then format it and install a new system. we tested the HD and Ram (by swapping them with different chips / HD) and its all still there. we replace the logic board and using the same hardware its magically gone. It is what it is... All i know is that now i can confidently work without fear that i will randomly lockup during my daily work.

Exact same problem on 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7 8GB 1333MHz DDR3. I quit an application and the mouse cursor disappears. Really annoying!