MacBook Pro: light blue screen while closing programs

check software update. It is there.

I have in fact installed it FROM software update.

Firmware Update 2.7 does apply to 10.6.8 eventhough it says for Lion 7.3 and later. These little Apple mistakes make me nervous when I run the updates. You don't know if your better waiting to install them just in case they cause a problem.

Well it didn't solve my problem with the blue screen. I give up. I guess its not that important

I think it's purely a software issue related to Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

I called Apple Support in Belgium and the only solutions for them was to bring it back to an Apple Store (which doesn't exist in Belgium, we have only resellers) and to re-install Snow Leopard from CD.

After re-installing from the cd, I went back to an earlier version of Snow Leopard and after checking I couldn't get any blue screen again.

I tried many times directly by activating/deactiving the GPU switching and leaving programs using the Radeon like Pixelmator or iPhoto.

Finally, Today a friend brought me the Developer Preview of Mountain Lion and after mounting it on a partition I tried the same operation and couldn't get any blue screen either.

The GPU switching was even faster and way smoother than with Snow Leopard.

In Snow Leo I get an error message in Console from WindowServer or RemoteUI when a blue screen appears while switching back to the integrated GPU. So I'm quite sure it's only software related since my Macbook is working perfectly with an other OS version.

By the way, I also use an Early 2011 Macbook Pro.

I installed EFI Firmware update 2.7 and rebuilt my startup cache but it didn't help. I just got a blue screen quitting Palm desktop, a PowerPC app which uses the AMD graphics card.

I doubt that it is purely a 10.6.8 issue because I installed 10.6.8 on 11 August and didn't start getting the problem until after the EFI Firmware 2.2 update on 22 September. I notice that I also installed the Thunderbolt software update 1.0 on 22 September. If Scaly went back to 10.6.7 and refused the 10.6.8 update, he would not have been offered the Thunderbolt software update 1.0, so that also is a possible cause.

However for me reinstalling Snow Leopard from the disc would be too much trouble, so I am just switching off automatic graphic switching again.

i'm in my final year of studies and am facing this problem for this pass few days, only to discover from your discussions that its from the EFI firmware upgrade that's causing it, so the question here is are the Lion users facing this problem? If its too much of a waiting, i'd just upgrade to Lion... anyone?

I don't know exactly if it's from a Thunderbolt, EFI or Snow Leopard update... I haven't heard anybody having the same problem with Lion, and with Mountain Lion I really did a hard test to make sure it won't happen again.

I didn't have it for a while now but it came back today as I was leaving iPhoto.

The error log in console is : com.Apple.RemoteUI - CoreAnimation: Rendering Error 501

Could it be coming from Front Row? Which is no more included in Lion..

My wife has an early 2011 MacBook Pro 17" (ordered the day they were annouced) and it's been fine until a couple of days ago when it had this blue screen appear when she quit an older game (Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab). I did not know to suggest the lid-close trick. It happened again today when she quit the same game. I connected to her machine with ssh but did not see anything obviously amiss so I issued a reboot command.

I'll check for & install any updates and see if it happens again.

Switched to Lion 5 days ago and for now so far so good. 😎

No more blue screen no more crash.

The blue screen you see when launching Snow Leopard or after crashing doesn't even appear/exist on Lion.

Blue screen problem upon quitting applications does not appear to occur for Lion users. They have reported an occasional frozen screen upon quitting applications. This problem may have been corrected recently.

Got my first blue screen after a month when I quit iPhoto after up dating it on 7 Mar. I think the library was still up dating in the back ground when I quit it. Graphic card switching didn't complete. Closed cover, let sleep, re-opened cover and back to desktop. Opened and quit iPhoto multiple times since then with no problem.

I've been fighting this bug for 3 months now and am sick of having to put my MBP (running Snow Leopard) to sleep two or three times a day. Since Apple doesn't seem to have developed a fix for the problem, I upgraded to Lion and have had no Blue Screens so far. Also, I can't get Snow Leopard to run in a virtual world via Parallels, under Lion unless I buy the Snow Leopard Server edition, which I refuse to do.

Interestingly, my 2011 Snow Leopard-equipped Mac Mini has the same Blue Screen problem. Since it doesn't have a lid, I have to power it down and them back up. Surely, Apple must understand that some people still have to run legacy software that won't function in Lion? Oh well, my Apple II still works!

Apple is making lots of money, which is what companies are supposed to do, their share holders love this.

They will not make any money from fixing something they sold us that does not work properly, but they may lose some future sales, they should stand behind their product, but I seriously doubt they will ever fix this.

The fact the same HW does not have the same problem in Lion, which was patched, makes me sure this is SW, and fixable, if they choose to fix it.

Come on Apple, support the people who have supported you, and who are disappointed with an Apple product that is flawed

@Richard Van Nostrand

You should be able to recover from the blue screen on your Mac Mini by entering and exiting FrontRow:

Press Command-Esc to enter FrontRow, then Esc to exit.