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2016 MacBook video crashing

T

truth1ness

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 8, 2011
109
4
https://imgur.com/a/vc1Le

Above are some pictures I've taken of my new MacBook Pro when the video card glitches out. It seems to happen completely randomly about every other day or two and is unrelated to high graphic demand tasks. I've run a video card stress test and it ran fine.The mouse moves around and moving it around will make the patterns change occasionally. I can put the computer to sleep and wake up with the touch bar sleep button but the patterned screen remains.

I've read about some 2016 MacBook Pro issues that were supposedly fixed 10.12.2 and I have 10.12.3. Also, the glitching shown in these articles looked very different, a more psychedelic effect coming through the windows and the computer still functional, whereas mine is more like a static image and I cannot do anything until reboot. Also I'm not using any Adobe programs which some people had issues with, sometimes it will happen just moving my mouse between applications.

https://9to5mac.com/2016/12/07/appl...-2-update-according-to-craig-federighi-email/

Does anyone know what type of problem I might have on my hands here? Should I try to get a replacement before my 30 days are up?
 
Last edited:
Wow, your machine is outstanding for the variety of graphics glitches! Are you running any unusual software, even without high graphic demands? It could well be a hardware issue even if it passes the hardware tests if it's intermittent.

You should definitely contact Apple about this, with the photos.
 
I'd exchange it. Very likely a hardware defect. Exchanging now is less hassle the. Dealing with warranty later. P.S. 30 days? Wow! I thoughts its 14?
 
You're right it's actually 14 days, I haven't bought a MacBook in years so I forgot or it's changed. I guess either way I am going to have to deal with the warranty at this point since I'm over the 14 days already, so I can be patient and collect a little bit more information.

Are there any other diagnostics I can run before taking it in?

I'm not running any weird programs that I can think of. The heaviest application I've had running chrome with a lot of tabs but that is not abnormal. This is happened within a few seconds of waking my computer up before I've had the chance to do anything even modestly graphically intensive.

One other thing I noticed is when the screen is asleep it'll keep waking up every few minutes and then going back to sleep. I'm not sure if this is related. The problem is this happening so intermittently and randomly it's very slow for me to find any kind of correlation.
 
If you aren't running any unusual software (doesn't necessarily matter if it's graphics intensive), I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to diagnose this, unless you're far away from am Apple Store or have no backup machine. I'd just take it in with the photos. They'll run more thorough tests probably. or they might just replace it.
 
Hi all, the problem is still occurring though more intermittently. I have not been able to discern any pattern of what software or conditions might be triggering it even after creating a written log. My question now is what logs would be helpful to capture immediately after a video card crash so that I have as much info to show when I bring it to apple (since I can't cause this crash on demand I likely won't be able to demonstrate it while I'm there).
 
  • When you contacted Apple the first time, what did they say/do?
  • Are you using an external display or any other input/output devices when this happens?
  • If you boot into Safe Mode, does this problem still occur?
  • If you reinstall ONLY macOS, and no other Apps, does this problem still occur?
  • If you disable GPU switching, does this problem still occur?
  • Does Apple Diagnostics indicate any hardware problems?
  • Are there any system logs corresponding with the problems in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ or any messages in Console that correspond immediately in time with the moment the system has issues? - ex: soon as a problem starts, write down the precise time, then after resetting check the Console relative to that time and forward
 
There are three crash logs a couple minutes after each crash. However, these three crash logs also appear on dates that there was no GPU crash and on further testing they show up after any time I reboot my mac, so I don't think they are actually correlated to the crash. I've uploaded them anyway.

Regarding the Console, I don't know how to grab this after the crash. When I reboot my computer and re-open Console it starts blank. How do I get the Console records from just prior to the crash?




I didn't contact Apple yet. Since I was outside the initial return period I've been trying to note conditions prior to each crash to figure out a common cause but have not found one. Also, there was one 4 week period where it did not crash at all.

No external display/input/output

Safe mode - because this happens every few days (sometimes not several weeks) and this is my main computer it's not feasible to run and wait that long in Safe Mode. This creates the same problem with reinstalling only MacOS, I would have to run a crippled computer for 4+ weeks to know if this problem has gone away which is not feasible.

Apple Diagnostics reports no problems

GPU switching - I have not disabled discrete mode for an extended time (as I need the card for my work) but I have put a menubar app that shows which it is in when it crashes. The one pattern I've noticed is that often when it crashes the computer will get 'stuck' on Discrete mode, like some apps that don't normally use discrete seem to hold it in discrete (and not always the same program which makes this even weirder) and when I catch it at the right time it will crash exactly when I quit the app. Once in a while there is a 'fluke' where the screen will crash but it actually recovers for a few minutes, indicating the computer is still working underneath the gpu crash screen. This happened once when I tried unplugging the power cable which I assume switched it to Integrated temporarily, but did not work subsequent times. Like I said this is frustratingly erratic. I think disabling discrete switching would stop the problem, but I have left it on in an effort to collect data thus far.
 

Attachments

  • gpu crash reports (after).zip
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