Mountain Lion freezing

Running an ATI HD5870 I had no more hangs since the 10.8.3 upgrade. Either I have been lucky (which I doubt, as my Mac hung daily before the update) or they fixed the ATI drivers in the latest update.

Caio, your response is only making this confusing thread more confused. I do not see your point of butting in on this thread with absolutely nothing to offer except trying to back up an already confusing response. Do you have any actual advice for those who may be complaining of this issue that most are not experiencing?

Thanks

Pete

Please, please, let's get back to the point.

We all are human and make mistakes.

This is the everyone so that we can return to the problem that afflicts most of us.

It is only a tiny amount of people. Not most. This is a troubleshooting forums. The many millions with no problems have no reason to post here.

Pete

I experienced this problem for over half a year using a Mac Pro with an ATI HD 5870. After doing a complete reinstall of Mountain Lion (from scratch) and removing all third-party hardware from my computer, the problem continued. It was mostly prone to happen when watching Flash videos or touching up pictures in Aperture, though anything could trigger it (even just scrolling in Pages).

The problem would pop up (on average) about twice per day, though it could go weeks without appearing. Needless to say, it was extremely frustrating and rendered my expensive work computer practically useless. I lost out on many hours of productivity and lost several important files to corruption.

Finally, I decided to replace the graphics card in my Mac Pro with an Nvidia GTX 680 (which is not even technically supported by Apple), and the freezing has not appeared since. I have used Flash and edited graphics in Aperture and Photoshop, worked on videos in Final Cut Pro, etc. The problem appears to be gone completely. Also, iStat no longer shows my graphics memory constantly at 100%.

I am convinced that there is a bug in Mountain Lion, somewhere in the graphics drivers, causing this glitch. It is clearly not affecting the majority of Macs, but it is affecting a large number of very savvy Mac users, and we are being ignored by Apple. I find this very unprofessional. We paid for Mountain Lion, which is clearly broken, and more than half a year later, the company still refuses to acknowledge or refund us.

It probably affects "most" of the people who are posting here.

And as one of the people who could reproduce this completely consistently, I note that it seems fixed in 10.8.4. Tried my usual test, got the crash, updated, tried test, no crash.

Since the failure was about 95% reliable on my system, and I did my test a dozen or so times, I think they finally got it. That they described it as a problem and asked for confirmation that it was fixed suggests, to me, that there really was a problem here...

I upgraded to 10.8.4 and was hopeful my hangs would be fixed. Alas the upgrade did not fix any of the several of ways I can reproduce the problem. My macbook pro experiences the problem 100% of the time. Fortunately my bug report is still open. Perhaps there will be some resolution in the next update. Sigh.... Apple did recently request further information about my system so I'm hopeful they are still looking into it. My workaround is to disable graphics switching and only run using the Intel chip.

Hello people. Try it: update to 10.8.4 if you have Gefoce update cuda for 5.0.59 and seach on tonymac forum or google for freezefiz.

Good luck. This works for me on GTX 670m and 10.8.4

Hello world. GPU Debug issue solved?

I had irregular GPU freezes on my 2010 iMac / Snow Leopard / ATI Radeon 5670 starting around mid 2012 becoming increasingly frequent to the point of twice a week in April 2013 always with the same Kernel log: GPU Debug etc. Now they have stopped.

*** I believe I have found the source of this issue and resolved it ***

( or at least found a permanent workaround )

If my analysis is correct, this solution will apply to any modern Mac and any OS. See below.

First, the analysis:

• Always the same Kernel log after the crashes
• kernel[0]: ** Device in slot: SLOT--1 **
• kernel[0]: ** GPU Debug Info Start **

• Only the user interface / GPU freezes. The mouse moves but no interaction is possible
• I can log in to my frozen iMac from another Mac via SSH / Terminal and see all processes running.
• I was able to terminate processes via SSH which would not take kindly to a forced shutdown and ultimately restart the machine without pressing the power button.

• Restarting the WindowServer via SSH does not restore functionality to the affected Mac
• This suggests the problem is not software / OS related in origin.

• My Mac is 100% up to date for firmware, software and OS (albeit with OS X 10.6)
• The GPU is not overheating. GPU is operating within specified temperature parameters

• My crashes always occurred when using a Mozilla browser to open several tabs at once (never Safari).
• Others apparently experience it when playing Flash videos.
• My logs sometimes point towards a problem with a browser plugin process

• The common element?
• Hardware acceleration - using the GPU to do things it is capable of but wasn't necessarily designed for.

The Solution

Turn off hardware acceleration / Avoid Flash

That's it!

In any Mozilla browser Go to Preferences / Advanced / General and de-select the option: "Use hardware acceleration when available"

Sorted!

From now on, webpages may load slower, flash video may take a while to start and you'll see your CPU usage increase when opening lots of browser pages such as restoring a Firefox browsing session. I will gladly live with that to stop my computer UI freezing.

I have gone from two GPU crashes twice a week down to none at all in one month.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The Fallout

This experience suggests 3 possible source issues:

1. Premature hardware failure in a wide variety of GPUs
2. Apple driver / firmware issues for GPU hardware acceleration
3. Badly written GPU acceleration protocols in Mozilla / Flash

- or a combination of the above.

I'd value any comments, critique and observations.

Please post here if this helps you as it will add to a body of evidence.

I think it's pretty obvious that we are looking at several unrelated bugs here.

The crashing problems I saw were completely restricted to the use of OpenGL applications, and were in no way related to Flash or web browsing; they could be produced completely consistently by using Minecraft. (Log in to world, toggle full-screen.) They were also unambiguously nVidia-specific -- they occurred in the nVidia driver.

There's clearly more than one issue here. The large number of people seeing browser-related or flash-related problems on ATI cards, for instance, are almost certainly seeing a differeint failure.

Interesting point, but I would be surprised if the bugs really were unrelated.

Since making that post I have come to suspect there is a more general issue with GPU harware acceleration, which might point to the implementation of Open GL on the Mac in general.

I understand Aperture causes freezes for some users, which is also a heavy user of hardware acceleration. Minecraft also has well-documented Open GL issues amongst windows users (e.g. http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/709731-bad-video-card-drivers-problem-solved /).

So, the problem may be the same for us all, even if the workarounds vary, namely that heavy Open GL / hardware accelaration is producing graphics card freezes and possibly failure.

The root issue though is something that is probably beyond our scope. Certainly beyond mine.

But if we are able to establish a common cause, maybe - just maybe, we can get Apple to release a new Open GL driver/framework.

I'd welcome input from anybody who understands the Open GL implementation on the Mac...

I believe the problems are related as well and most likely has to do with the opengl/graphics driver implementations on OSX. 10.8.4 has increased the frequency of my GUI hangs. Oracle Java / Internet Settings still hangs 100% of the time with NVDIA Channel timeouts. In addition Safari has started to cause the same GUI hangs. I can visit a specific url (www.vrbo.com) and click on a owner login button which should bring up the login page. Instead Safari either crashes (see stack trace below for thread 0) in opengl code or hangs the GUI with NVDIA channel timeouts displayed in the console log. This occurs 100% of the time. So far Chrome has not encountered these problems. VMWare Fusion likes to cause the GUI hang randomly during startup of various VMs. Again NVDIA Channel Timeouts listed in the Console log.

Process: WebProcess [234]

Path: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/WebKit2.framework/WebProcess.app/Contents/Mac OS/WebProcess

Identifier: com.apple.WebProcess

Version: 8536 (8536.30.1)

Build Info: WebKit2-7536030001000000~9

Code Type: X86-64 (Native)

Parent Process: ??? [1]

User ID: 501

Date/Time: 2013-06-08 22:23:06.641 -0600

OS Version: Mac OS X 10.8.4 (12E55)

Report Version: 10

Interval Since Last Report: 1657 sec

Crashes Since Last Report: 2

Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 135 sec

Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 2

Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)

Exception Codes: EXC_I386_GPFLT

Application Specific Information:

Bundle controller class:

BrowserBundleController

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

0 libsystem_c.dylib 0x00007fff90dffd0e OSAtomicAdd32Barrier$VARIANT$mp + 2

1 com.apple.GeForceGLDriver 0x00000002001cb5d7 0x200000000 + 1881559

2 com.apple.GeForceGLDriver 0x00000002002ef968 0x200000000 + 3078504

3 com.apple.GeForceGLDriver 0x00000002001ffad4 0x200000000 + 2095828

4 com.apple.GeForceGLDriver 0x00000002001ffdf6 0x200000000 + 2096630

5 com.apple.GeForceGLDriver 0x0000000200304972 0x200000000 + 3164530

6 com.apple.GeForceGLDriver 0x00000002003048cf 0x200000000 + 3164367

7 libGPUSupport.dylib 0x000000014606b27c gpusFinishContextObject + 77

8 com.apple.GeForceGLDriver 0x0000000200258fbd 0x200000000 + 2461629

9 com.apple.GeForceGLDriver 0x00000002002588a3 0x200000000 + 2459811

10 com.apple.GeForceGLDriver 0x0000000200204fb4 0x200000000 + 2117556

11 com.apple.GeForceGLDriver 0x00000002002d6d45 0x200000000 + 2977093

12 com.apple.GeForceGLDriver 0x0000000200319c47 0x200000000 + 3251271

13 libGPUSupport.dylib 0x0000000146066fbd gldDestroyContext + 114

14 GLEngine 0x0000000145cdc8fd gliDestroyContext + 162

15 com.apple.opengl 0x00007fff91a800a3 CGLReleaseContext + 190

16 com.apple.opengl 0x00007fff91a7f33e CGLDestroyContext + 29

17 com.apple.WebCore 0x00007fff89848b53 WebCore::GraphicsContext3D::~GraphicsContext3D() + 275

18 com.apple.WebCore 0x00007fff8a22c360 WebCore::WebGLRenderingContext::~WebGLRenderingContext() + 1760

19 com.apple.WebCore 0x00007fff89848891 WebCore::WebGLRenderingContext::~WebGLRenderingContext() + 17

20 com.apple.WebCore 0x00007fff89d99582 WebCore::HTMLCanvasElement::~HTMLCanvasElement() + 162

21 com.apple.WebCore 0x00007fff89d994c5 non-virtual thunk to WebCore::HTMLCanvasElement::~HTMLCanvasElement() + 21

22 com.apple.WebCore 0x00007fff896e7436 WebCore::JSNodeOwner::finalize(JSC::Handle<JSC::Unknown>, void*) + 102

23 com.apple.JavaScriptCore 0x00007fff94d6ef7c JSC::WeakBlock::sweep() + 108

24 com.apple.JavaScriptCore 0x00007fff94d6f2d0 JSC::WeakSet::sweep() + 64

25 com.apple.JavaScriptCore 0x00007fff94c83c13 JSC::Heap::collect(JSC::Heap::SweepToggle) + 179

26 com.apple.JavaScriptCore 0x00007fff94c82a0b JSC::DefaultGCActivityCallbackPlatformData::timerDidFire(__CFRunLoopTimer*, void*) + 315

27 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff9291c804 __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_TIMER_CALLBACK_FUNCTION__ + 20

28 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff9291c31d __CFRunLoopDoTimer + 557

29 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff92901ad9 __CFRunLoopRun + 1529

30 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff929010e2 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 290

31 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x00007fff8a674eb4 RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 209

32 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x00007fff8a674c52 ReceiveNextEventCommon + 356

33 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x00007fff8a674ae3 BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInMode + 62

34 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff8e43d533 _DPSNextEvent + 685

35 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff8e43cdf2 -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 128

36 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff8e4341a3 -[NSApplication run] + 517

37 com.apple.WebCore 0x00007fff8a0e94ff WebCore::RunLoop::run() + 63

38 com.apple.WebKit2 0x00007fff8cecc462 WebKit::WebProcessMain(WebKit::CommandLine const&) + 2586

39 com.apple.WebKit2 0x00007fff8ce92bfd WebKitMain + 285

40 com.apple.WebProcess 0x000000010082ee7b 0x10082e000 + 3707

41 libdyld.dylib 0x00007fff907f47e1 start + 1

Hi all.

I have Mac mini server (Mid 2011) and the same problem with freezing and rainbow circle effect. I can only move mouse, the command 'cmd-alt-esc' is not working. The only way is to turn the mac off with the button. I really can't work because i need to reboot the mac 3-10 times per day and my documents don't save data.

The problem appeared after migration on OS X ML.

I thought that it is memory or SSD-drives problem and passed all apple tests (when type 'D' during rebooting). I made clean reinstall of Mountain Lion 10.8.4 and now don't have 3rd party programs installed at all. The system is completely clean. In console there is no information in the system log.

Don't know what to do. Please help with the advice please. And sorry for my English. 😕

http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-lion-desktop-support/93022-560ti-fermi-freeze -back-latest-drivers-10-8-3-a.html

try it!

James_22, thanks a lot but I don't have Nvidia 560ti chipset. I have Intel HD Graphics 3000. Is it really helps in my situation?