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MacBook Pro Retina 2015 Randomly Freezes When Try to Watch Video

Hi all,

I purchased a MacBook Pro Retina Early 2015 Model and is currently running OS X 10.11.4. From day one, there has been an inconsistent issue where my whole Mac would freeze as soon as I try playing a video. This did not occur consistently so I thought it had been a small issue which would have been fixed with an update. Soon enough, earlier today, the same thing happened, whole Mac froze (trackpad no longer clicks, keyboard is unresponsive and screen is frozen) when I tried to play a video on FaceBook. I've tried disabling flash, use Chrome or other browsers, did a fresh install of OS X El Capitan as well as OS X Yosemite, but that did nothing.

Any possible suggestions as to what is going on? I was going to take it in for inspection under warranty but want to make sure before doing so as it is so inconsistent and happens randomly.

Thank you.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)

Posted on Apr 29, 2016 5:40 PM

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Posted on Apr 29, 2016 8:01 PM

The problem may be caused by a bug in OS X, triggered by "Flash Player."

If Flash is installed and you haven't already done so, please update to the latest version by opening the Flash Player pane in System Preferences and selecting the Updates tab.

If Flash is already up to date, or if the update doesn't solve the problem, open the Safari preferences window and select the Security tab. Uncheck the box marked

Allow Plug-ins

See whether there's an improvement.

You can watch videos on YouTube and some other sites without using Flash by installing the "ClickToFlash" or "ClickToPlugin" Safari extension. That's not an endorsement. You must always do your own research to determine the safety and effectiveness of any third-party software before using it.

10 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Apr 29, 2016 8:01 PM in response to Jonathan Thamrin

The problem may be caused by a bug in OS X, triggered by "Flash Player."

If Flash is installed and you haven't already done so, please update to the latest version by opening the Flash Player pane in System Preferences and selecting the Updates tab.

If Flash is already up to date, or if the update doesn't solve the problem, open the Safari preferences window and select the Security tab. Uncheck the box marked

Allow Plug-ins

See whether there's an improvement.

You can watch videos on YouTube and some other sites without using Flash by installing the "ClickToFlash" or "ClickToPlugin" Safari extension. That's not an endorsement. You must always do your own research to determine the safety and effectiveness of any third-party software before using it.

May 5, 2016 2:51 AM in response to Jonathan Thamrin

If it survived disabling Flash, occurs with more than one browser and is intermittent it's almost certainly a hardware issue. You should take it in for a Genius appointment ASAP.


It is a bad idea to wait to see if intermittent faults that have been present since 'day 1' magically repair themselves. Short answer is that they don't and the longer you wait the weaker your rights to remedies become.


C.

May 7, 2016 1:37 PM in response to Jonathan Thamrin

There is a 400+ thread on the topic on macrumors. I am having the same issue with my 2015 MBP retina since 10.11.4. Some seem to believe it is a bug in the Intel graphics drivers introduced in the 10.11.4 update but nobody has received any useful response from Apple to acknowledge the issue. My machine freezes 1-2 times a day and it is extremely frustrating

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-pro-2015-with-osx-el-capitan-10-11-4 -system-wide-freeze.1963711/page-18


Additionally, Apple forum has dozens of threads on the issue and none have any useful response. Let's hope Apple is looking into a fix

https://discussions.apple.com/search.jspa?type=discussion&q=freezes&showAnswered First=true&place=%2Fplaces%2F5955124&aft…

May 8, 2016 6:40 AM in response to dlandz

Agree completely Dlandz!


There are hundreds of suggestions of how to fix this in the OSX Support forums ... some folk do try various notable suggestions and in response post notes to say "everything worked fine" ... then some time later, back they come with the problem.


It's high time Apple did something about this issue which is being suffered far and wide.


I've had Mac computers since OS System 7 in the early 90's and irritatingly they've never liked to be helpful by owning up to known problems. Think of the hours of frustration they'd save hundreds of thousands of people if they'd simply put a page on their site for people to check if their issue is a "known" one? Even if this was a major issue caused by a third party ... in this case perhaps Flash? Then a note against it from tech support with possible "workarounds" would be helpful ... but hey, that might make a tiny dent in their falling multi-billion dollar profits!


Shame.

May 13, 2016 3:25 AM in response to Jonathan Thamrin

I have the very same problem with my MacBook Pro Retina 2015. It started a few months ago and happens every few days. The whole screen simply freezes, the sound plays for a few seconds and then nothing. Only hard reset works…


However: it is definitely not Flash! I don't have Flash installed!


It happened for me while movie editing in Final Cut Pro (with no Browser opened), while watching a small movie clip in Messages sent via iMessage, while watching Youtube Videos (H264 - HTML5).

Nov 21, 2016 5:12 PM in response to Jonathan Thamrin

Any updates? I also have a Macbook Pro Retina 2015, and my mac will freeze, white screen, audio will continue playing, and i have to hard restart every time.I have already tried all of the flash related fixes as well as some other reccomendations. This happens sometimes when I am watching a video online , but , I work with audio and It also happens when I am In the middle of producing in my audio programs so it's definitely not a flash issue. It has also happened when i have just walked away from my computer for a while. I'm really frustrated that i spent 2k on a laptop for it to be freezing and crashing every day, thinking about going back to windows soon I bought a Mac fully upgraded, becuase of all of the hype over how good it is for music production and I can't even get through one session with out It freezing up . I am going back-up my files today and try a factory reset , If that doesn't work I'm selling it.

MacBook Pro Retina 2015 Randomly Freezes When Try to Watch Video

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