Mid 2015 MBP, Windows 10, freezing on battery only...

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Mid 2015 MBP, Windows 10, freezing on battery only...

I'm having freezing issues with my Mid 2015 MBP (2.8Ghz, AMD GPU, 512GB) running Windows 10 (bootcamp) but only when running on battery power. The OS completely freezes without a BSOD and the only way to reset it is to hold down the power key. I have left it in a frozen state for 10-15min and it does not come back on its own.

I have not experienced the same issues in OSX though I haven't spent much time in it.

I have the latest bootcamp 6 software installed and all the updates loaded for both OSX and Windows.

The Apple Diagnostic tool (boot with D key) and the Windows Memory diagnostic tools didn't find any errors, memtest86 freezes.

I'm also running Windows 10 on a late 2013 MBP without any issues.

Any ideas?

Would it be worth taking it into the apple store or will that not be helpful since the issue only happens on Windows? Windows 10 is listed as officially supported now though...

Thanks

MacBook Pro with Retina display

Posted on Aug 14, 2015 9:06 AM

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Answer 1

Loc Bui

Level 1

0 points

Aug 22, 2015 11:26 PM in response to ants

I have the early 2015 model and encounter exact issue same as your.

I made a check and find some following solutions as follow. I am not sure if a particular solution among them or a combination of those solutions work, but I have processed them all and my Macbook Pro is now running smoothly on battery without randomly freezing as before.

1. Go to command prompt (as administrator) and then type this command: bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes

2. Set your Power Options as High Performance (or Power Saver), not Balance (the default mode)

If the above two do not work, further try following:

3. Download the latest driver of Broadcom Wifi card driver for Windows 10, uninstall the current driver and install the downloaded one.

4. Do the similar thing with VGA driver.

I guess that the Balance power mode of Windows 10 has some conflict with Macbook hardware as it limits the performance to save battery, which cause the system freeze because the battery power is insufficient to handle all the tasks. Another possibility is that the default Wifi card driver is not completely compatible with the Macbook hardware, and a reinstall may work.

Hope this helps and sorry for my bad grammar 🙂

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Answer 2

ants Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 24, 2015 5:12 PM in response to Loc Bui

Thanks for the suggestions, I ended up taking into an Apple store and they replaced it with a brand new unit which hasn't experience the same problems so I'm suspecting that it may also have had some sort of a hardware issue. The replacement MBP has the same specs as the previous one (same model) except for an upgraded 1TB hard-drive (previous had a 512GB drive).

Unfortunately the reason for the replacement was the Apple store experiencing some water leak/flooding so I'm not sure if their testing actually found any other issues with it (left it there for testing over the weekend) but since the new one hasn't crashed once yet I'm suspecting there might have been a hardware issue as well...

Maybe you should also take yours in and see if their tests can spot a hardware issue, or it could be a really random software issue but I would expect more people to experience it if it was a software issue...

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Answer 3

Dec 7, 2015 10:58 PM in response to Loc Bui

Hi chaps,

I was having exactly the same issue as ants. I had worked out it was only on battery, and I was wrongly blaming the video drivers.

For me, the penny dropped about power management in Windows 10. It runs on 'High Performance' on power, and 'Balanced' on battery. Loc Bui was on the right track with the Wireless adaptor. However, rather than update the driver, I just went into Power Options->Advanced, and set the settings for the Wireless adaptor to be the same in Balanced mode as they are in High performance mode. I now seem to be stable. My guess is if I update the driver, I could probably carry on with the original settings.

I love the Apple Mac hardware, but I have to say, the bootcamp drivers this time are below par:

1. On install, it freezes on the Realtek audio drivers - there is an easy enough workaround, but I had to reach for Google.

2. Graphics drivers keep trying to update, but they fail signing. Again, if you google there is a way around it, downloading some newly signed drivers - I tried this, thinking it was the graphics drivers freezing my system. It didn't help, although hats off to the chaps who got it running, as if you are a gamer (I'm not), getting the latest graphics drivers would be a bonus.

3. Finally I started from scratch, and hit on the change in the power plan. What gets me is £2500+ for a laptop, and had Apple just tried to install Bootcamp, it would have failed on Windows 10. Had they fixed that and ran it for 10 minutes, it would have frozen on battery power. Nice testing Apple!

I purchased a Macbook Pro 15 in Dec 2015 + ticked all the boxes.

I hope this helps some others to save the time I spent running in circles. Apple almost got this machine back!

Graham

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Answer 4

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 8, 2015 3:16 AM in response to GrahamEHughes

Perhaps Apple should help Microsoft, by becoming a Microsoft Windows reseller. 😁. Most users on this forum buy Macs to run Windows, when OS X natively is much more stable.

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