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2010 MacBook Pros i5/i7 Having Freeze issues

Several things:

1. Every computer will at some point in time freeze, period.
2. It is only an issue if it is a habitual problem that isn't the result of end user habits/misuse.
3. Very few Macbook Pro users actually have reported freezing, let alone a true freezing issue with their MBP. It seems the only ones that are not over reacting(as a result of reading a thread like this, with lots of hyperbole) to the typical and unavoidable random freeze, but actually have an issue, experience the same symptoms; excess overheating before the fans kick in, or excess HDD noise.

Last, but certainly not least, the minority tends to be the loudest, and the smaller the minority, the louder each one seems to yell. I have had my 15" MBP 2.4 i5 AG for a month, not a single freeze, and many, many, many other members are in the same boat. It is just that when people have a problem, it gets way more attention than when they don't, plus something like freezing is easily seens as being one of the "defective units" when it is nothing more than normal computer behavior.
 
Macbook Pro Freezing

I just bought a 17" Macbook Pro i7 with 8gb ram 4 weeks ago and have been plagued with freezing problems. Mostly happens when editing photos or creating videos or when the machine has gone into sleep mode and won't come out of it. Apple support said they had never heard of this!!!
Finally I took my laptop to the Apple store and they are to replace ALL the internal components then test to make sure the problem is fixed.
I am not convinced it will be. If I knew about this issue beforehand I would not have bought one.
 
AlexTain said:
I just bought a 17" Macbook Pro i7 with 8gb ram 4 weeks ago and have been plagued with freezing problems. Mostly happens when editing photos or creating videos or when the machine has gone into sleep mode and won't come out of it. Apple support said they had never heard of this!!!
Finally I took my laptop to the Apple store and they are to replace ALL the internal components then test to make sure the problem is fixed.
I am not convinced it will be. If I knew about this issue beforehand I would not have bought one.
Click to expand...

I find it weird that the genius bar doesn't have a standard procedure for something like this. For you, their going to replace the parts. For me, they replaced the whole MacBook Pro.

I had a 15" i7 MacBook Pro with HR AG 4GB RAM and 500 HD. I bought it for a month, and within a month, I had 1 gray screen freeze and 2 instant freezes where everything just froze. And this was on light use with Safari, Mail, Calendar and iChat. I bought it in to the Genius Bar, and they tested it. They couldn't find anything wrong with it except they saw in the log that it had crashed once. Instead of fixing the internals, they allowed me to return it and purchase a new one with the exact same spec. Now I restored the new MacBook Pro with Time Machines so essentially I have a brand new MacBook Pro with the same hardware and software.
 
Apple Store policy

Hi,

The reson they said in the store for not supplying a replacement laptop was because I bought mine online direct from Apple. That seems a bit strange to me. Appaerntly they don't have one with my spec in the store and would have to build one anyway so I guess replacing the bits inside the case is ultimately much the same. Fingers crossed.
 
After watching this topic, I purchased a MBP 15 yesterday. It seems like the issues have passed, but now I am not so sure.

I spend $3,100 laptop, so this issue better be solved.
 
BWhaler said:
After watching this topic, I purchased a MBP 15 yesterday. It seems like the issues have passed, but now I am not so sure.

I spend $3,100 laptop, so this issue better be solved.
Click to expand...

Don't expect a perfect product regardless of the price you paid... Apple products are overpriced and you should know that by now, neither the price implies a better quality control.

But lucky you... (and hopefully me because I will be buying one too) there won't be any problem at all as you say since the amount of people posting about this problem has decreased dramatically which means that this was a bad batch of laptops probably (or Apple fixed the problem internally... like the antennagate :D)
 
ccashman92 said:
I'm getting mine fixed this weekend. It is a RAM issue.
Click to expand...

No it is not. Your laptop's RAM might be malfunctioning but it is not caused by a bad RAM... some people thought it was due to hard disk (Seagate brand) and the famous 7K500 was replaced by many as a possible solution, but some people later reported freezes again.
Others claimed the switch between graphic chips (320 and 330)... and this was/is the problem with a good margin of confidence I would say (remember it was just the screen freezing, network was working)
 
BWhaler said:
After watching this topic, I purchased a MBP 15 yesterday. It seems like the issues have passed, but now I am not so sure.

I spend $3,100 laptop, so this issue better be solved.
Click to expand...

It's not. My guess is it's software/drivers, not hardware. and 10.6.4 didn't fix a darn thing. I hope 10.6.5 will. We'll find out soon, I'm sure 10.6.5 will be out soon. Of course it would be a lot nicer if Apple would just be honest and communicate with its users instead of being stupidly "secret". I mean..what's the point about being secret with updates/bug fixes!?
 
wschutz said:
No it is not. Your laptop's RAM might be malfunctioning but it is not caused by a bad RAM... some people thought it was due to hard disk (Seagate brand) and the famous 7K500 was replaced by many as a possible solution, but some people later reported freezes again.
Others claimed the switch between graphic chips (320 and 330)... and this was/is the problem with a good margin of confidence I would say (remember it was just the screen freezing, network was working)
Click to expand...

The Apple store lent me new RAM for 2 days and it ran smooth as butter. As soon as they put back in my RAM is started freezing again. For me it seems to be a RAM issue. We'll see.
 
Just thought I would chime in again (I think I posted in this thread before) I did experience one or two freezes on this computer back in May but I have not had anymore since and my computer has been running great.
 
Just signed up to report that even my i5 Macbook Pro 17" with Hitachi 7200RPM HD has had 2 kernel panics and a few beachballs already since it arrived yesterday. Now, someone suggested me to return the machine for a new one. But since it's perfectly built and everything else is working as it should, i will wait for a fix or an updated EFI firmware by Apple. Even though, i would had very much appreciated the same switching method as the old Macbook Pro's had.
But anyway, i report that gfxCardStatus is the only working method to prevent kernel panics. Intel HD on battery and Nvidia Geforce for graphics and heavy stuff ;)
 
My freeze issues slowly escalated from isolated, rare kernel panics (+grey reboot screens) to my mbp not starting up anymore. It just freezes on the spinning wheel on the apple boot screen now (sometimes it doesn't even start up and merely chimes with a black screen!).

In the rare event it does boot up, I can 100% reproduce the freeze by toggling gfx cards via either gfxcardstatus or by turning off automatic graphics switching..

Earliest appointment I could get at the store is 3 days from now, we'll see.. (having flashbacks to troubles with my old santa rosa mbp..)
 
torpy said:
My freeze issues slowly escalated from isolated, rare kernel panics (+grey reboot screens) to my mbp not starting up anymore. It just freezes on the spinning wheel on the apple boot screen now (sometimes it doesn't even start up and merely chimes with a black screen!).

In the rare event it does boot up, I can 100% reproduce the freeze by toggling gfx cards via either gfxcardstatus or by turning off automatic graphics switching..

Earliest appointment I could get at the store is 3 days from now, we'll see.. (having flashbacks to troubles with my old santa rosa mbp..)
Click to expand...

By forcing it to run on the 330M, it freezes?
 
Yep, though it seems to have more to do with the switch than the actual chip since it boots up windows every now and then (which only activates the 330m yea?) which works for a short while (~10mins) before freezing.

Oh and every freeze creates a kernel panic log entry with the 'nvram failed to read address error'. I've also gotten graphical corruption before.
 
pjcforpres2020 said:
Last, but certainly not least, the minority tends to be the loudest, and the smaller the minority, the louder each one seems to yell. I have had my 15" MBP 2.4 i5 AG for a month, not a single freeze, and many, many, many other members are in the same boat. It is just that when people have a problem, it gets way more attention than when they don't, plus something like freezing is easily seens as being one of the "defective units" when it is nothing more than normal computer behavior.
Click to expand...

While I generally agree, I've had this issue for quite awhile but haven't really decided to look into it until today. I got my 15" MBP 2.4 i5 in mid-May and can go weeks without freezing...but some days it'll freeze for 10 to 30 seconds at a time up to 4 to 5 times in an hour (at most). I've been hoping that it's a software issue and that Apple will eventually figure out what it is. Although I find it generally annoying on days like today where the freezing has been on the more extreme side than usual, I still love my MBP so I take it just as I've just said - a general annoyance - with the hope that Apple fixes it in the future. I would have brought it in to Apple if I could nail down what the cause was. Unfortunately I haven't been able to, so I can't really expect some techies who don't know much more than I do about tech to figure it out in the short time they'd have to look at it - especially when I have to drive an hour to the nearest Apple store.

I'm going to try unchecking the "put hard disk(s) to sleep whenever possible" and "automatic graphic switching" options and see how that goes. I'll give it a month and report back at that time. Thanks everyone :)
 
Just wanted to chime in and state that I've been having these issues as well with my i7 17" MBP. I'll get random 2 second freezes when watching videos sometimes. My MBP has failed to go to sleep and has subsequently overheated afterwards, and I've had multiple complete freezes of the system where I can move the mouse but can't do anything but power down as I'm stuck with a spinning beachball.

I've got a Momentus XT and 8GB of NuRAM installed as well. I'd like to test if my issues are related to those upgrades at all. Anyone have any thoughts on that?
 
Hey guys,

I'm having a problem with my 15" MBP 2.4 i5 bought in April 2010. Everytime I watch something full screen (youtube or a movie), and i press the ESC button to exit the full screen, my MBP freezes for a good 3-4 minutes...This doesn't happen ALL the time, but it happens enough that it gets pretty frustrating. Also, if i'm watching a video (not full screen) and I pause it to let it load and I click play again, it won't play...I have to either move the scroll bar forward or backwards for it to play again. Has anyone experienced this problem or should I take it to the genius bar? Thanks!
 
Yes, the vast majority of owners are not having problems, but that does not lessen the burden of those who are experiencing these issues. Apple should show a bit of its "attitude" that it has in its ads and address this publicly. Do they really think that a person with a malfunctioning Macbook Pro is going to have the confidence in Apple to be a future iPad/iPhone/iPod purchaser? I think not. Come on Apple, how about providing some true "customer service" and let the consumers know what is really going on and more importantly, when their MacBook Pro will be fixed?
 
My MBP has a sort of problem as similar as freeze issue.
Sometimes, it kills it's hdd spindle and reroad it and I can hear the noise of stop and accelerating sound of hdd spindle.

I use 2010 MBP 15" with Momentus XT 500GB and I already took an RMA from seagate, but same problem happens on and on.
 
So far my freeze seems to have been a one-off incident. From the sounds of the posts above there can be a variety of problems with similar symptoms.
 
I'm also experiencing these random issues. Dock, active windows, menu bar-- all present a beachball and can take up to a few minutes to regain usability after being locked up. Quite frustrating, even when I'm doing very little to tax the computer itself.
 
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