Exposé crashes Yosemite, must hard-restart

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Level 1

13 points

Exposé crashes Yosemite, must hard-restart

Invoking the Exposé feature on my Mac (MacBook Pro mid-2010 15" model 6,2) has been causing it to crash. I have Exposé set so that moving the pointer to the upper-left corner shows the open windows of the front-most running app. I have the upper-right corner set to show clusters of windows for each of the running apps.

Moving to the upper left causes all of the open windows to clear from the screen altogether, leaving a blurred backdrop that's the color of the picture on my desktop (a picture of the Mars landscape from an orbiter). The mouse pointer is still visible and can be moved normally, but it can't select anything, After repeatedly moving the mouse to and from the upper left corner, eventually a scrambled arrangement of fragments will appear on the screen, as shown in the screen shot below, and the pointer changes to the beach-ball. Notice that the icon of the hard drive on the Mac desktop appears in three places.

(description continues after this screen-shot)

This seems to happen only when the pointer/cursor/mouse is moved to the upper left very quickly, or by mistake by brushing the track pad. My theory is that this is happening because the animation of the windows, as they are moving to their positions in Exposé, is happening too fast for the graphics RAM buffer to handle.

I opened Console to see if I could figure something out, but I didn't know what to look for - maybe someone reading this can tell me, so I can help trouble-shoot this. I don't have much hope that there is an easy fix...

In case this is another hint, this MacBook Pro is one of the models that had graphics processor issues in Mavericks, which were eventually resolved with a later dot-release of Mavericks. See this thread: Graphics corruption issue continues in Mavericks 10.9.1

PS - This situation may be the same issue that's also reported here:

App Expose freezing Yosemite

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), 15" Model 6,2-Mid-2010 w/4GB RAM

Posted on Mar 25, 2015 4:27 PM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Mar 25, 2015 8:10 PM in response to Steve H

You have the MacBookPro6,2—the Edsel of Macs. It may have the logic-board defect that was covered by a recall program that has now ended.

Residents of the EU may be entitled to warranty service for up to six years after purchase.

Make a "Genius" appointment at an Apple Store, or go to another authorized service provider, to have the machine tested. The routine hardware diagnostics used by service providers do not detect the fault. There is a specific test for this issue that Apple calls "VST" (for "Video Switching Test.") Ask for it. A "Failed" result means that the fault is present.

You may be quoted a price of about $300 (in the U.S.) for a "depot repair," which involves shipping the unit to a central repair facility and takes about two weeks. For that flat fee, anything found wrong with it should be fixed, not just the logic board.

Sometimes the replacement part is also defective, so be prepared for that possibility. If you decide to pay for a new logic board, test thoroughly during the 90-day warranty period on the repair. Some owners have reported that they went through as many as three replacement boards before getting one that worked.

If you don't want to pay for the repair, you may (or may not) be able to work around the problem by disabling automatic graphics switching. To use the discrete graphics processor, you'll need a third-party utility to switch to it manually.

Often the problems start after an OS upgrade. If the upgrade was recent, and you have backups, then you can revert to a previous OS X version.

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Answer 2

Steve H Author

Level 1

13 points

Mar 28, 2015 9:23 AM in response to Linc Davis

Hi - Thanks for the reply and the consolation! In an attempt to take charge of this issue on my own, I have turned off Exposé's animation (using Onyx, parameters settings), and the problem hasn't yet returned.

With Mavericks, there were three problems with this machine: 1) there was color 'noise' in the finder (e.g. when moving, opening or closing windows, whatever was under the window would be random colored dots and rectangles), 2) the drop-shadows surrounding windows were black instead of gradient, and, 3) the entire screen would take on a blue cast when launching some programs.

In-store testing prompted Apple to replace the logic board - first time as a mail-in (depot) repair with 2-day turnaround, and second time at their expense in the store while I waited - despite that my AppleCare had expired. So I can't fault them for trying.

Anyway, both problems ended up being the graphics processor. Turning off 'automatic graphics switching' solved the issue in Mavericks, and after several dot-releases, the problem itself was somehow solved (no longer any need to turn off graphics switching). Probably memory-management issues.

But now, under Yosemite, the blue cast has returned. Again, turning off graphics switching solves it. This doesn't interfere with my use of the machine for most things, but of course the color is wrong in my photos unless I turn off graphics switching, which impacts Photoshop performance...

In addition to posting here, I also post to Apple's 'suggestion box' - since (supposedly) nobody from Apple reads these discussion boards - which I can't quite believe, for a company as obsessive as Apple. But I must say that Apple's attention to detail has slipped noticeably in recent years. I do fault them for bad regression testing methodology.

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Answer 3

Jul 17, 2015 8:20 AM in response to Steve H

I have the exact same problem with exposé - my mid-2010 MBP freezes when I use hot corners to enter exposé (not every time, but often enough to be extremely annoying!). I still hear alerts telling me that I have new email messages, and if I have a podcast playing it doesn't stop, so it seems the computer is still running ok - I just can't escape from the exposé screen! And sometimes it shows the broken-looking graphics shown in your picture.

I upgraded to Yosemite from Mountain Lion about two months ago, but have only started having this problem in the last week.

Could you explain a bit more about the Onyx solution - does this allow you to use exposé, just without the fancy animation? Or has it turned exposé off completely? So far I have just killed all my hot corners through System Preferences, but I am so used to using them that it's very frustrating! Thanks for any tips 🙂

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Answer 4

Steve H Author

Level 1

13 points

Jul 23, 2015 6:30 PM in response to OrphanPiglet

Hi - In response to your question:

"Could you explain a bit more about the Onyx solution - does this allow you to use exposé, just without the fancy animation? Or has it turned exposé off completely? So far I have just killed all my hot corners through System Preferences, but I am so used to using them that it's very frustrating! Thanks for any tips..."

..... The setting in Onyx does not disable Exposé, just the animation.

However, even with that fix, my computer is still crashing 1-2x/day, and I think it's related. I'm on 10.10.4

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