David Portela

Q: NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 Kernel Panics/Freezes in Lion & late Snow Leopard

I've found some other reports of these freezes scattered about the forums, but usually other people come in and post something about unrelated video cards. So this thread is specific to NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 running OS X Lion (10.7-10.7.3), to avoid confusion and cross-polination of different issues.

 

Hardware Overview:

 

  Model Name:          iMac

  Model Identifier:          iMac9,1

  Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo

  Processor Speed:          3.06 GHz

  Number of Processors:          1

  Total Number of Cores:          2

  L2 Cache:          6 MB

  Memory:          8 GB

  Bus Speed:          1.07 GHz

  Boot ROM Version:          IM91.008D.B08

  SMC Version (system):          1.37f3

 

NVIDIA GeForce GT 130:

 

  Chipset Model:          NVIDIA GeForce GT 130

  Type:          GPU

  Bus:          PCIe

  PCIe Lane Width:          x16

  VRAM (Total):          512 MB

  Vendor:          NVIDIA (0x10de)

  Device ID:          0x062e

  Revision ID:          0x00a1

  ROM Revision:          3370

 

 

Since upgrading to Lion I have had many issues with crashes and kernel panics characterized by the following symptoms, listed here in detail so that people can find them when they search:

 

  • Pixellation - colored pixels appear in different areas of the screen, in seemingly random bunches.
  • Mosaics - squares appear redrawn in the wrong part of the screen. Sometimes these squares are large, other times tiny.
  • Recovery - sometimes the system recovers once it starts doing these. Other times it just keeps going until it freezes/panics.
  • Kernel Panics - I've only had the "grey screen" appear once or twice. Usually there is a complete system lockup before this can happen, and I have to reboot the system manually.

 

Some solutions/attempts to solve:

 

  • Turn off Energy Saving - This is horrible for the monitor and can lead to burn-in, but I found that many of my crashes occured when the system was trying to recover from "screen sleep". So now I run a screen saver instead, which doesn't seem to trigger it as much.
  • Screen Saver - Sometimes I can "refresh" the system by turning on the screen saver and then coming back. Other times, this doesn't work and the pixellation/mosaic remains. Sometimes I can't even initialize the screen saver at all (in which case a total freeze usually occurs right after).
  • Rebooting - seems to clear things up for a while, but inevitably, the problem resurfaces.
  • Running Windows - Not really a solution, but I have had absolutely no issues with this behavior while running Windows 7 on this same machine (under Bootcamp).
  • Downgrading to Snow Leopard - I have not attempted this, but I've read others say that their crashes went away when they did. I would like some more concrete evidence on this if anyone has it.

 

My diagnosis so far:

 

  • OS X Lion's NVIDIA driver kernel extensions (kexts) seem to be faulty with this GPU. The Windows drivers for this GPU work better on Apple's own hardware than OS X Lion's. Anectodal evidence indicates that Snow Leopard's drivers (at least up to 10.6.3 – more confirmation needed) do not display this issue. I can confirm that this never occurred in Snow Leopard until Lion was released and I upgraded to it.

 

My request for help and information:

 

  • If you are running this GPU (GeForce GT 130) and OS X Lion, please contribute to this thread offering any solutions you may have or, at the very least, listing your hardware and GPU profile.
  • If you can, post crash logs so that we can compare common issues (NVDA Resman seems to be a huge recurring kext in the crash logs, for instance).
  • Post screen shots or pictures taken of the pixellation (colored pixels) and mosaic (squares drawn in the wrong place) phenomenon, so we can build a body of evidence regarding this issue. I will continue to update this thread with the same.

 

I feel Apple has ignored these issues for far too long, and required too many people to simply purchase new computers and new GPUs. If we can build a solid body of evidence regarding this specific issue, it will be a thread that Apple Support can be referred to.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 3.06 Ghz (Early 2009 – iMac9,1)

Posted on May 9, 2012 8:29 AM

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Q: NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 Kernel Panics/Freezes in Lion & late Snow Leopard

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  • by andreukmac,

    andreukmac andreukmac Jul 22, 2012 3:57 AM in response to Zahori
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 22, 2012 3:57 AM in response to Zahori

    Since I first contributed to this thread 1 month ago, I haven't had any new crash - but I stayed on OSX 10.6.8 and it looks to me that the new OS are stressing too much the nvidia card, leading to constant crashes. So don't upgrade if you are facing periodically this issue

  • by Sylvek,

    Sylvek Sylvek Jul 22, 2012 4:04 AM in response to David Portela
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 22, 2012 4:04 AM in response to David Portela

    i'm very disappointed about this story. I sent my imac to the apple care, they changed to me my graphic card and for now (30days) I haven't see any crashes. So ... is there a software problem or hardware? .. maybe both?

    is it possible that the imac is programmed to crash after the upgrade to lion ? O_o

  • by Zahori,

    Zahori Zahori Jul 22, 2012 4:07 AM in response to andreukmac
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 22, 2012 4:07 AM in response to andreukmac

    I have another partition with OSX 10.6.8 in my iMac and I haven't had any crash when using it so far. The problem is that I've payed for having Lion (ok, it was cheap, but I don't like to stop using things I've paid for even if they were cheap), and there are many applications like Aperture which have not been updated for Snow Leopard, so having to use Snow Leopard instead of Lion is quite dissapointing for me...obviously, it is the only option until the problem is solved somehow...

  • by Sylvek,

    Sylvek Sylvek Jul 22, 2012 4:16 AM in response to Zahori
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 22, 2012 4:16 AM in response to Zahori

    the same for me... it's unbelievable to pay something and can not using it. My own problem is solved since the remplacement of the graphic card (300€ payed by the apple care insurance, it's very expensive for an 3 years old hardware) but why Apple do not communicate about this problem ?

  • by Zahori,

    Zahori Zahori Jul 22, 2012 4:37 AM in response to Sylvek
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 22, 2012 4:37 AM in response to Sylvek

    Question is...are there any ways to report this problem to Apple in a written form and try to get an answer about if this issue is being at least investigated or not, considering that apparently there seems to be many cases? is there a way to know how many users are affected by this problem?

  • by Quasimoto,

    Quasimoto Quasimoto Aug 2, 2012 6:12 PM in response to David Portela
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 2, 2012 6:12 PM in response to David Portela

    Anyone upgrading to Mountain Lion see any performance differences good or bad?

  • by Fustbariclation,

    Fustbariclation Fustbariclation Aug 2, 2012 10:25 PM in response to Quasimoto
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 2, 2012 10:25 PM in response to Quasimoto

    I've seen performance differences with Mountain Lion both good and bad:

     

    - Generally it seems livlier. The graphics improvement gives it a good feel and helps you see how things are going - the animated URL bar in Safari helps more than I thought it would. The startup seems quick as well.

     

    - On the negative side, I do get a lot more beach balls than with Lion on my Macbook Pro. I've also had problems with playing videos on DVDPlayer where the movement gets very jerky and a beachball appears - something that didn't happen with Lion.

     

    It seems to be, as the old joke about the Curate's egg went, 'good in parts'.

     

    Of course, my iMac is with the repairers at the moment. No trouble has been found with the hardware, but there are frequent crashes with NVIDIA and other graphics errors such as GPU restarts. This started with Lion, but seems to have involved a firmware upgrade because now the crashes also occur with Snow Leopard. It is with the repearers because, before Mountain Lion, the system was difficult to use, with far too many (daily or more often) crashes - but, with Mountain Lion, it became quite impossible to use. Mountain Lion puts a lot more stress on graphics, so the long-standing bug that causes the kernel panics, hangs and other crashes has made itself more evident.

     

    My iMac is being put through the most extensive hardware tests possible, they have been running at the repair centre all yesterday and all last night, so, if there is any piece of hardware involved, I should know this morning. So far, though, after 22 passes of the Apple test suite, the hardware has been rock solid.

     

    What I'm hoping is that, if Apple gets to the bottom of the video problem (that plagues new iMacs as well as ones like my mid-2009 24" iMac - and has been happening since the last release of Snow Leopard) Mountain Lion will turn out to be a really great system - maybe not 10.8.1 but 10.8.2 might be a stable, usable release.

  • by Jesse David Hollington,

    Jesse David Hollington Jesse David Hollington Aug 3, 2012 2:05 PM in response to Quasimoto
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Aug 3, 2012 2:05 PM in response to Quasimoto

    Sadly, no changes here...  I get the exact same types of video lockups in Mountain Lion as I have been getting with Lion since last summer. They're widely variable, so it's hard to pin down whether they have become more or less frequent with ML, but it ultimately feels about the same.

  • by CFL,

    CFL CFL Aug 7, 2012 10:15 AM in response to David Portela
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 7, 2012 10:15 AM in response to David Portela

    I upgraded to Mountain Lion and besides the spinning beach ball on tasks I thought I was home free of the video shutter and lock up. But at least once a work day I have had complete freezes without warning. Freezes that locks the mouse that I have to do a hard restart.

     

    Today, was the first time since the OS upgrade that I was given a pixelated warning of the screen before the complete screen lock.

     

    Apple, please fix this! These iMacs are still a great computer and the video card bug will keep them useful for many years!

  • by brianhlarose,

    brianhlarose brianhlarose Aug 24, 2012 8:52 AM in response to David Portela
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 24, 2012 8:52 AM in response to David Portela

    I have been having the SAME exact crash as you. Here are some details from my kernel panic.

    I am running 10.8 (they call that mountain lion), though I call it "Plecostomus" (because it 5uckz)

     

    I HAVE TURNED OFF MISSION CONTROL HOT CORNERS, because that seems to make it panic less frequently, but 100% of the time that my machine crashes (10 times in the last 7 days), it is because I am performing graphics operations (moving pictures things around, editing PPT, etc).

     

    Fri Aug 24 10:59:29 2012

    panic(cpu 3 caller 0xffffff7f97e2cc85): NVRM[0/1:0:0]: Read Error 0x00000100: CFG 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0xffffffff, BAR0 0xd2000000 0xffffff812b235000 0x0a5480a2, D0, P2/4

    Backtrace (CPU 3), Frame : Return Address

    0xffffff80ffc736d0 : 0xffffff801761d5f6

    0xffffff80ffc73740 : 0xffffff7f97e2cc85

    0xffffff80ffc737d0 : 0xffffff7f97f265b7

    0xffffff80ffc73830 : 0xffffff7f97f2662b

    0xffffff80ffc738a0 : 0xffffff7f9823b883

    0xffffff80ffc739e0 : 0xffffff7f97f4c75d

    0xffffff80ffc73a10 : 0xffffff7f97e369e6

    0xffffff80ffc73ac0 : 0xffffff7f97e320b8

    0xffffff80ffc73cb0 : 0xffffff7f97e32b3a

    0xffffff80ffc73da0 : 0xffffff7f98e0fc51

    0xffffff80ffc73df0 : 0xffffff7f98e0cfad

    0xffffff80ffc73e30 : 0xffffff7f98e0b1a5

    0xffffff80ffc73e60 : 0xffffff7f98dbbfef

    0xffffff80ffc73e80 : 0xffffff7f98dbd2e0

    0xffffff80ffc73ed0 : 0xffffff7f98dba665

    0xffffff80ffc73ef0 : 0xffffff8017a47078

    0xffffff80ffc73f30 : 0xffffff8017a45b8a

    0xffffff80ffc73f80 : 0xffffff8017a45cb9

    0xffffff80ffc73fb0 : 0xffffff80176b2677

          Kernel Extensions in backtrace:

             com.apple.NVDAResman(8.0)[6A699209-FB98-316B-A3C0-DCA82AA8C86B]@0xffffff7f97dc5 000->0xffffff7f980c7fff

                dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.7)[8C9E06A4-13D0-33F5-A377-9E36F0ECC229]@0xffffff 7f97cac000

                dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.3.4)[E37F420A-B5CD-38ED-9441-5247583B6ACE]@0xff ffff7f97db1000

                dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.3.4)[5D671681-D21B-3CCA-9810-B15E648C1B27]@0 xffffff7f97d6e000

             com.apple.nvidia.nv50hal(8.0)[9CD95A4A-FD94-349E-A4B6-FC3B74E197F5]@0xffffff7f9 80d5000->0xffffff7f983f7fff

                dependency: com.apple.NVDAResman(8.0.0)[6A699209-FB98-316B-A3C0-DCA82AA8C86B]@0xffffff7f97d c5000

                dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.7)[8C9E06A4-13D0-33F5-A377-9E36F0ECC229]@0xffffff 7f97cac000

             com.apple.GeForce(8.0)[91C40470-82BA-329A-A9D7-4C70F28275FD]@0xffffff7f98db6000 ->0xffffff7f98e78fff

                dependency: com.apple.NVDAResman(8.0.0)[6A699209-FB98-316B-A3C0-DCA82AA8C86B]@0xffffff7f97d c5000

                dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.3.4)[E37F420A-B5CD-38ED-9441-5247583B6ACE]@0xff ffff7f97db1000

                dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.7)[8C9E06A4-13D0-33F5-A377-9E36F0ECC229]@0xffffff 7f97cac000

                dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.3.4)[5D671681-D21B-3CCA-9810-B15E648C1B27]@0 xffffff7f97d6e000

     

    BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task

    Boot args: arch=x86_64

     

    Mac OS version:

    12A269

     

    Kernel version:

    Darwin Kernel Version 12.0.0: Sun Jun 24 23:00:16 PDT 2012; root:xnu-2050.7.9~1/RELEASE_X86_64

  • by brianhlarose,

    brianhlarose brianhlarose Aug 24, 2012 11:41 AM in response to brianhlarose
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 24, 2012 11:41 AM in response to brianhlarose

    I just loaded the 10.8.1 update and tried my "REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM TEST"

     

    which had previously worked almost every time..

     

    this time, no failure.  I'm not willing to declare 100% victory yet, but when it comes to this particular nVidia bug, i am certainly optimistic that it might in fact be resolved in 10.8.1 Plecostomus

     

    Thank you Apple!

  • by David Portela,

    David Portela David Portela Aug 24, 2012 11:49 AM in response to brianhlarose
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Aug 24, 2012 11:49 AM in response to brianhlarose

    I have had no freezes yet after installing 10.8.1. Will report back if that changes.

  • by brianhlarose,

    brianhlarose brianhlarose Aug 24, 2012 12:54 PM in response to David Portela
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 24, 2012 12:54 PM in response to David Portela

    CRASH.

     

    Same error as before after running 10.8.1 for about 6 hours.

     

    nvidia driver is the traceback point again.

     

    Thanks for nothing apple.

  • by David Portela,

    David Portela David Portela Aug 24, 2012 4:29 PM in response to brianhlarose
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Aug 24, 2012 4:29 PM in response to brianhlarose

    BOOM. Two crashes already today under 10.8.1.

     

    Apparently nothing has changed and Apple has no intention of fixing these drivers.

     

    I've been a Mac user since 1984. I've put up with all kinds of crap. But making a 3-year-old machine useless because of lazy drivers is seriously pushing me to think about never buying another Macintosh again.

     

    First crash was during video work, only lost a few minutes of work due to auto-save. The second crash was nearing the end of a two-hour upload to Vimeo...basically meaning I have to re-upload the entire video, so that's another two hours.

     

    Whoever is in charge of driver development at Apple is a fink.

  • by David Portela,

    David Portela David Portela Aug 24, 2012 4:37 PM in response to David Portela
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Aug 24, 2012 4:37 PM in response to David Portela

    Now you'll excuse me while my expensive piece of hardware becomes nothing more than a dumb uploading terminal for two hours, lest I open a Safari window and inadvertently trigger Apple's faulty GeForce GT 130 driver.

     

    And as a parting gift, some lovely Apple driver font art which I saw today before my first crash.

     

    /___sbsstatic___/migration-images/193/19372893-1.png

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