MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) freeze with Yosemite

In response to your proposed explanation to the problem above -- that you were seeing the problem due to shorting between the logic board and whatever sits above it -- I should add one other note about the repair I reported above. In addition to the logic board, fans, and heatsink, Apple also replaced the battery and "top case", which is the part of the case that the keyboard sits inside. The repair sheet said that this was done due to something they found during testing.

I don't know if those replacements would also result in replacing the black protective covering between the logic board and what sits above it, but if so that could be another explanation for why this resolved my issue (by replacing the protective covering, they also eliminated the logic board shorts). I'm not convinced that the logic board shorting is what is causing the problem -- since I could get my MacBook Pro to bomb even if I'm not touching / using it -- but I thought I should mention this as possible support for your theory.

Same here! Never happened until Yosemite upgrade on my MBP-retina mid2012. Freeze is triggered by anything graphics intensive (HD video conference, youtube, etc). Can happen with any browser. I believe this happens when the system needs to switch to the more powerful GPU. Once the freeze occurs the screen appears to be completely normal and I can even switch desktops and move the mouse. The only way to recover is the manually power off the machine.

WHAT DO WE NEED TO DO IN ORDER FOR APPLE TO DEAL WITH THIS?!

Hi Ntennies,

First I encountered freeze (requiring hard shutdown) and black screen (with no backlight) symptom, which came progressively from seldom to more time per days. At the end, sometimes the notebook wouldn't even light the backlight once hardshutdowned / powered on ! And that for a random period of time (at my eyes, at this time). Until it would suddenly decide to light the backlight and boot normally.

I first thought it was due to temperature (the reason why I first replaced the thermal paste), but the experience of the symptom showed me that the "no backlight at boot, nothing else than the fan running" symptom was independant of the temperature.

Some days passed and when I had time I tried to understand more precisely the cause of such a behaviour. Until I understood that when I was bending the notebook (moving it with one hand by grabbing it on its corner for example) this had a chance to crash immediately the machine (black screen, fan still running). So I made some tests by bending the machine on one side and the other.

And guess what ? I saw that if my machine was last bended in one side it will display at boot and if the machine was last bended in the other side it won't display or backlight at boot !

I then prayed for an external short-circuit rather than a hardware defect or bad soldering in the mobo and tried the story with the paper stripes you already know.

Since this last modification I can bend the notebook in the 2 directions without it to crash,

To give you an idea : After 8 hours of uptime (with firefox and thunderbird opened), as I was writing this : I just started a film with VLC which caused graphic switching, put the machine in sleep mode (during playback), wake it, plugging an external screen, disconnecting it, connecting a thunderbolt display.

Since the repair some days ago I only experienced one freeze. I recover trust in this machine.

I also have to say that having a windows 7 in bootcamp on this machine, greatly helped me to converge on the hardware cause (as I was also experiencing crazy symptoms from windows).

Keeping my fingers crossed but I haven't had any crashes on my rMBP 2012 since 10.10.2. I have automatic graphics switching turned on and no lock ups or panics. Hopefully that's the end of the matter.

Hello, Thanks for your story.

Unfortunately my problem and problem of a lot of guys in his thread are a little different from your experience. It tells us that in MBP there is a lot of problems with GPU.

I'll try to sum the differ from your story.

1. I tried to see the dependency from temperature, but i couln't see straight correlation. Sometimes it freeze when it's cold.

2. If stress test could give me a freeze, it would be very easy for diagnose. I tried hours of different stress tests - GPU or CPU and NEVER had even one freeze.

3. I don't have black screen, only freezed system and working mouse pointer.

4. I changed my main board and that didn't help

5. I know 1 thing that always work if i want to freeze system - turn ON/OFF switcher Automatic Graphic Switcher on Energy Saver options for many times.

6. I could freeze my MBP in Genius Bar with their version of yosemite (they booted my MPB with their system). But i COULDN't do this in MAvericks. Sometimes system was freeze on 2 seconds, but then it was fine. I think this is program processing of some low level situation in driver. And this is different between Mavericks and Yosemite that cause this bug

If your Mac suddenly locks up or bombs, usually you get offered an option to send a report to Apple when you boot back up. What I and some of the other people here have reported is that, when we look at the contents of that report, it says there's a GPU Panic. I'm sure this being pulled out of one of the logs, but I'm not sure which one.

What's interesting is that it sounds like you are saying that despite your MacBook Pro freezing and restarting, you aren't being offered the option of sending a bug report to Apple. That seems surprising for what is clearly a system crash of some sort. Or are you being given that option, but the report mentions a cause other than GPU Panic?

I hear you. I think the variation in experience with this issue could suggest there are different issues with different causes, or a single cause that is manifesting itself in many ways. For instance, if nrj45 is right about this being from shorting the logic board, it's possible that could show up in different ways. Likewise for some kind of manufacturing problem related to the Nvida GPU. It's also possible that this is a software issue that also existed in Mavericks (hence my ability to reproduce it there) but that for some reason was uncommon.

What I can tell you is that, by mid-December the problem was occurring so frequently for me, it was taking so long to be able to restart my Mac after a bomb,and I was so tired and frustrated of waiting for a fix from Apple, that my only recourse was to actually roll back to Mavericks, since I was also convinced that would fix the problem (or that rolling back to the B02 boot ROM would). I still had a Mavericks Time Machine backup just before I install Yosemite, so this was an option, although I'd have had to manually back-copy any new data or changes since I went to Yosemite. If that had worked for me, I'd be happily running Mavericks right now.

I just played about 3-4 hours warcraftIII in network with my girlfriend and a friend. Without a glitch 🙂

I have to specify that it was with a thunderbolt screen connected (using thunderbolt ethernet too) and from bootcamp, windows 7 pro 64 (so the system ran quite hot, due to the game and due to the external thunderbolt display)

• I then booted under osx 10.10.2, unplugged the thunderbolt screen (dedicated -> integrated)
• played about 5-6 times with gfxcardstatus (integrated <-> dedicated)
• i then started a 4k video in youtube, firefox and continued to switch between cards
• i then started in parallel another video in vlc and put in dedicated mode
• when the 2 videos running I changed the screen resolution to native (2880x1800)
• always during the playback of the 2 videos, I closed the lid (forcing the sleep in dedicated mode because of VLC) and wake it up
• the youtube video continued to play, VLC was paused by the sleep
• I closed VLC and switched to integrated graphics (always with the 4k youtube video playing and with the screen at its native definition of 2880x1800)
• I then closed the lid again to make a sleep with integrated graphics
• and then re opened it

All that without a glitch.

I'll keep you informed if I encounter further graphic issues, but for those who have no warranty anymore and who don't want to pay for the repair, give a try to the paper solution (isolating with paper stripes under the motherboard, keyboard side, especially between the 2 fans)

As stated by Ntennies a short circuit at the bad place can result in more behaviour...

I would like to share my observations:

I have a late 2013 MBP and I too am having the same GPU reset issue. I have a developer account and tested Yosemite through most of the beta releases and did not experience this issue. I admit that I did not install the few ending betas as Yosemite was pretty stable and I was busy. When it went Gold I did a fresh clean install of the final release from the Appstore.

I noticed the GPU switching issue shortly after the fresh install. I even contacted some fellow developers about the issue as I did not see this in the beta. They reported similar problems.

I also teach CS at a university and I had students complaining of the same issue I was having not long after the release of Yosemite. My fix has been to force the Intel GPU via gfxCardStatus. This has helped my students as well.

I then took two weeks and ran strictly discrete graphics. I then took two weeks and ran strictly non-discrete graphics. The system was stable on both GPUs no matter what I threw at them, so I can only conclude the hardware is ok for both.

With the 2014 minor refresh, I did some tests on students who had purchased the newer models and the issue remained with them as well. Again, most students are using either gfxCardStatus or running Nvidia all the time to avoid the GPU switch issue.

I do not understand why Apple has not addressed this. I could careless about features when there is clearly a serious bug in the graphics display system of the OS. Stability is key for me and I can't risk the GPU switching on me and taking down the system so gfxCardStatus has been a splendid resource.

Also, I have dozens of students with wifi issues under Yosemite. Strangely, I have dozens more that do not have wifi issues with Yosemite. They are a mixture of 2013 and 2014 machines.

Presently, I do not have any wifi issues with Yosemite but it seems like further stability issues exist for Yosemite in many areas.

I do feel frustration that Yosemite has been out for such a long time and basic issues like these go unresolved.

Mark

I'm now updated to Yosemite 10.10.2 and I'm getting significantly less GPU panics. Although there's no long pauses some times before it decides to respond again. I'm guessing these pauses are when normally it would have done a panic.

Worse, it does completely fall over every now and then. I've noticed too that WindowServer's memory footprint grows and grows. I suspect the falling over is related to that super hungry process (currently 14GB, seen it double that size - no I'm not kidding!).

10.10.2 is certainly the best Yosemite version yet, but still not as stable as Mavericks.

I am also having all of these problems now that I upgraded to Yosemite. My MacBook Pro used to be fast now it is as slow as a PC. Takes forever to start, programs constantly freezing, browser crashes all the time. I never had any of these problems until after the upgrade. And of course there is no way to revert back to the other OS X. This makes it impossible to use Logic X or Pro Tools. I don't know what happened to Apple but your quality and standards have gone down hill to the equivalency of Microsoft. For the price of your products you shouldn't be releasing crap like Yosemite. It has turned a once great machine into nothing more than a pc to browse the web. So disappointed.

With 10.10.2 installed now (it was a pain, installation crashed several time after downloading it from the app store – only to download the standalone installer on the apple website helped …) and after getting the logic board replaced by apple (before 10.10.2) I unfortunately can experience exactly the same crashes as before (10.10, 10.10.1), when e.g. starting Photoshop while using Firefox.

Macbook pro mid 2014, OS X 10.10.2

It hangs using java, safari, or connecting an external monitor via displayport.

Until the last week I can confirm the bug only using java and the last responses from Apple sounds like "is non a apple software, contact Oracle" I tried to explain that I am not interesting in java but in the GUI lock... with few success.

Now the problem is also with safari and with the monitor, noone seems interested in further information from apple assistance offices, after my repeated invites they accepted to receive diagnostic reports (that comes from kernel, not from java!).

Does someone filled a bug report?

Same here. Early 2013 MBPR 15" 10.10.2. System hangs completely (including cursor) few time a week. It most often happens working in Safari, scrolling official Twitter app or switching between apps. I'm experiencing this issue since Mavericks. Disabling "Automatic graphics switching" helps, but it would be nice to get a fix from Apple.

Since then I got the logic board and SSD replaced.

I got back my Mac Sunday evening and unfortunately, my mac froze again few minutes ago and then shut down. I guess I should go back to the Apple Store.