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2010 MacBook Pros i5/i7 Having Freeze issues

djasterix said:
Is the freezing happening when using the MBP on battery or connected to th charger? I've noticed on my 15" i5 that when connected the automatic switching goes disabled and the 330m keeps engaged.

I haven't suffered any freezing, but my MBP is connected 90% of the time...
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My MBP hasn't been on a trip yet since I've had it, so it's been plugged in > 95% of the time so far. So all of my freezes were on AC power.

How can you tell that automatic switching is being disabled while on AC power? (And I still think it's stupid that you can't set that separately for battery vs AC...not to mention not being able to set Intel-only, as well.)
 
I have had 1 freeze - the mouse was moving, but the screen was frozen. I had iTunes up, syncing my iPod, and then I was also on iPhoto. I think that both programs tried to sync with the iPod - music and photos - and so the computer crashed. It may have also been the graphics switching when iPhoto came on. BTW, I have a Core i5 w/ 500gb Toshiba HDD (5400rpm).
 
psychos said:
My MBP hasn't been on a trip yet since I've had it, so it's been plugged in > 95% of the time so far. So all of my freezes were on AC power.

How can you tell that automatic switching is being disabled while on AC power? (And I still think it's stupid that you can't set that separately for battery vs AC...not to mention not being able to set Intel-only, as well.)
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I installed gfxcardstatus by cody krieger, and it shows that the MBP is always switched to the nvidia when on AC. You can also switch manually between intel hd and nvidia with this free app...
 
Same problems here stock 2.66 i7 freezing

I have had the same problem of a few random freezes since I unboxed my 15" 2.66ghz i7 MBP a week ago. The mouse stays working but nothing else responds. I'm not patient enough to wait 15 minutes for it to run though all the keystrokes etc... so i have just hit the power button to get going again.

Clearly it's a problem on Apple's end since there are so many posts across the web that are mentioning this issue. I hope Apple addresses it asap. It's a shame to see such a widespread problem like this because otherwise it's a great machine.
 
djasterix said:
I installed gfxcardstatus by cody krieger, and it shows that the MBP is always switched to the nvidia when on AC. You can also switch manually between intel hd and nvidia with this free app...
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Interesting. If you look at the drop-down, there's a "Dependencies" list, which seems to be a list of whatever's open that's causing the system to prefer Nvidia graphics. However, the one thing that shows up there for me at the moment is X11.app...and I *always* have X11 running, even if I'm not running any X apps. The X server probably triggers it because it has OpenGL support. If I quit X11, it does switch to the Intel graphics, even on AC power.

But since it's always open, it's probably a somewhat safe assumption that during my past freezes, I've been entirely on the Nvidia chipset. There could be additional stuff going on, e.g. some of the processing units on the Nvidia chip shutting down under low load as part of the whole switching process.

This somewhat contradicts my earlier assumption that I was always going from Nvidia->Intel graphics when I had a freeze...though the app itself could be doing something weird, and I may have indeed been switched to Intel graphics in the past. Or something with power-saving on the Nvidia chipset as I surmised.

Perhaps someone with much more frequent freezes could try using this app and forcing it to Intel-only and see if that helps...

(Rather stupid, too, that a completely idle X11.app keeps the thing on Nvidia graphics, even on battery. Now I know I have to quit the X server if I'm going to be on battery for a while since Apple fails again with their graphics switching...)
 
jsan said:
Clearly it's a problem on Apple's end since there are so many posts across the web that are mentioning this issue. I hope Apple addresses it asap. It's a shame to see such a widespread problem like this because otherwise it's a great machine.
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Since this is Nvidia's technology that works in other non-Apple systems, and not Apple-proprietary technology, I'm pretty hopeful that this can be addressed with a software fix. Plus the systems eventually coming back after the freeze...that portends well for a software fix too.
 
psychos said:
Since this is Nvidia's technology that works in other non-Apple systems, and not Apple-proprietary technology, I'm pretty hopeful that this can be addressed with a software fix. Plus the systems eventually coming back after the freeze...that portends well for a software fix too.
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Well I hope they fix it soon because I have some presentations to do at work over the next few weeks, and what will I say if it freezes up...."Apologies for the new $3000 computer but you will just have to stare into empty space for nine minutes everybody until it starts working again"...Maybe I'll have to think of a funny story that lasts 9 minutes I reckon as a backup plan
 
Konker said:
Well I hope they fix it soon because I have some presentations to do at work over the next few weeks, and what will I say if it freezes up...."Apologies for the new $3000 computer but you will just have to stare into empty space for nine minutes everybody until it starts working again"...Maybe I'll have to think of a funny story that lasts 9 minutes I reckon as a backup plan
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My point was more that it'll likely be a software fix, and not a hardware fix, not how quickly they'll fix it...though a software fix of course would get rolled out faster than having to service tens of thousands of machines.

There's no empirical evidence that this will work, but you can install gfxCardStatus (thanks previous poster for pointing me to that), and then set it to Intel-only for your presentations. I've been running Intel-only since last night, but of course there's no way to tell if that actually temporarily fixes things other than to wait a month or more and see if I crash or not...

There's also a beneficial side effect of my machine's temps being SIGNIFICANTLY lower. Right now I'm "idle" (~10 apps open but none that eat CPU, typing in Safari obviously) with the enclosure at 35C and the CPU at 42C. Previously, when I had it on auto (and it was always Nvidia because of X11 running), "idle" would have the enclosure around 37 - 40C and the CPU around 51 - 54C. I *never* saw the CPU temp drop below 50C until I switched to Intel graphics only. So the Nvidia GPU is probably located somewhere near the CPU and putting out a ton of extra heat. The machine is noticeable cooler as well, on the bottom towards the back in the center, where it's always had a hot spot.

Reported battery life is also way better. Playing 720p h264 content in mplayer, with graphics set to auto (and it picking Nvidia), it was giving me an estimate of 3:30. With it forced to Intel, it gave me an estimate of 5:38. (And video quality/speed/etc is absolutely the same, since I'm doing purely software decoding, other than some colorspace conversion and other minor things that the Intel GPU has plenty of power to do.)

Seems that any program that is linked against OpenGL or whatever pieces of CoreVideo allow for 3D cause the Nvidia chip to always get picked, quite often needlessly.
 
My machine froze twice in the morning. Same issue. Pixel corruption. And the "OpenGL Channel exception" every time it froze. I went to the genius bar with machine frozen (I had made an appointment for today). Unfortunately, I didn't get assigned a very good "genius". He basically refused to troubleshoot the machine and said that since the MBP was less than a week old, the thing to do was to exchange it for a new one. I was hoping he could look into it a little bit into it in order to get to the bottom of the problem. However, he didn't want to work on it, and said it was either HD or logic board. That I should get a new machine.

Anyway, since it is a custom config, I am supposed to call Apple to get the exchange. The thing is, what is the likelihood of getting a machine that does not have the problem. Even if it is a hardware issue, my machine is less than a week old, so they are probably still building "bad" machines.
 
Ok, I was hoping for a software issue. Maybe it is still... but I got blank screen and looping sound while playing yt fullscreen on Windows 7 x64. It was one-time thing for now. So what is apple saying about it? I'm in Poland and the fight for replacing my machine may be hard, so before I'm going medieval on their asses I want to know is Apple going to address it by software/firmware fix, or there was just some ****up with relatively small part of MBPs.
 
I've had my 17" i7 8gb/500 7200 three weeks and so far (fingers crossed) it's been a fantastic experience. I run Illustrator, indesign and Photoshop all the time and this thing never misses a beat.

I hope I haven't spoken too soon. :eek:
 
AdeFowler said:
I've had my 17" i7 8gb/500 7200 three weeks and so far (fingers crossed) it's been a fantastic experience. I run Illustrator, indesign and Photoshop all the time and this thing never misses a beat.

I hope I haven't spoken too soon. :eek:
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Have you run any of those things on battery? Try using the NVIDIA GPU on battery. It seems the problem is easier to reproduce while running on battery. In fact, in my case, I've never experienced it while on AC power.
 
bigcat said:
Have you run any of those things on battery? Try using the NVIDIA GPU on battery. It seems the problem is easier to reproduce while running on battery. In fact, in my case, I've never experienced it while on AC power.
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Yup. I tend to run the battery down every day out of habit. The only problem I've had is Illustrator CS3 crashes on a regular basis. I really hope I haven't jinxed things because I love this machine.
 
AdeFowler said:
Yup. I tend to run the battery down every day out of habit. The only problem I've had is Illustrator CS3 crashes on a regular basis. I really hope I haven't jinxed things because I love this machine.
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hate to say it but because you haven't had the issue yet doesn't mean that you wont have it in the future, mine was fine for 3 weeks and it's now had the issue twice in the last couple of days.
 
Just had my 2nd one (in 3 weeks since i've had my computer). It lasted about 30 seconds before it unfroze itself, and again was caused by switching from full-screen Youtube to windowed mode (which switches from the 330m to the intel card if automatic graphics switching is on.)

I've had no freezes when I've disabled automatic graphics switching though.
 
Well I finnaly found out the problem of my freezing issues. I have turned off the automatic graphic switching (although I have a display hooked up all the time) and all the freezing has stop for a week now! Great success :D So all this will be fixed with an update by Apple soon!
 
Got my second freeze today (two total freezes since owning the MBP - I bought it the same week it came out).

the first freeze I got was a screen freeze, no mouse, no keyboard, but iTunes kept playing.

This freeze was just the beachball of death. Mouse would move, but none of my programs were responding. command, option, escape did nothing, so I had to hit the power button.
 
Melodeath said:
Got my second freeze today (two total freezes since owning the MBP - I bought it the same week it came out).

the first freeze I got was a screen freeze, no mouse, no keyboard, but iTunes kept playing.

This freeze was just the beachball of death. Mouse would move, but none of my programs were responding. command, option, escape did nothing, so I had to hit the power button.
Click to expand...

Try turning off "Automatic Graphic Switching" see is that helps out.

screenshot20100518at152.png
 
I have my macbook i7 since 4 days and it freezed two times while using iphoto. This coloured ball was spinning and even so I could move the mouse I could not open any programm or anything. So I pressed the power button. Can this also be the problem with the switching of the GPU? Or do I have another problem? Does iphoto use the discret GPU and would it switch while using iphoto to the discret if needed?
 
hi, guy... sorry i'm just upset for my first freeze...
10pages of answers in english... i' m reading too slowly.. who can sum the situation?
so, there is this freeze issue with new line of macbook pro, what can we do? is there a patch? are They working for fixing? is someone working for it?
 
Today I received a message from my Apple Reseller about my MBP's status:

"...it appears to be a defect SATA controller in the Northbridge...".

So, it actually IS a hardware problem :(.
 
StEvEnGtR said:
Today I received a message from my Apple Reseller about my MBP's status:

"...it appears to be a defect SATA controller in the Northbridge...".

So, it actually IS a hardware problem :(.
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Which issue were you actually having? There seems to be a few mentioned in this thread.
 
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