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Bug: Personal Hotspot causing 2011 MacBook Pro to crash (replicable).

MikeELL

MikeELL

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 18, 2006
127
1
Perth, Australia
Hi Guys,

I've just come home from the Perth Apple Store today with a brand new replacement Macbook Pro (2011 13 inch i7). The reason they replaced my previous one (same model) was the following bug. Unfortunately it's now causing the new MBP to crash as well. I did try to make the new MBP crash like this in the apple store, but it didn't happen so I assumed it was fine. I've sent in the report to apple but I'm interested in how widespread this is and whether it's just limited to my hardware.

1) Turn Personal Hotspot on the iphone on (mine is an iphone 3gs on iOS 4.3.1).
2) Plug in via usb cable.
3) Between one and 20 minutes later, my computer (both of them) freezes completely (I gather this is a kernel panic), and needs to be rebooted by holding the power button on for five seconds, after which it seems to be fine.

This does not occur when using personal hotspot over Bluetooth (this is what I'm doing now). This doesn't need Safari to be open. It's usually when iTunes is in the process of syncing with my phone, but not always. It has however always happened when itunes was open.

You would think this would be a fairly common problem if it was every iphone owner who uses personal hotspot with their 2011 MBP, but I haven't heard anything about it. It has happened on the old MBP using OSX 10.6.6 and 10.6.7. This new MBP is currently on 10.6.6, and I'm currently downloading 10.6.7 (over 3g via bluetooth :p).

Can anyone else replicate the problem?
Cheers,
Michael
 
Mine (2011 13") crashed when I tried to use USB tethering with MyWi. It's just something to do with the drivers when using the internet over USB.
 
mulo said:
this is a known issue with the usb i/o kexts, just use personal hotspot with wifi.
Click to expand...

Ah ok. As long as it's a known issue then I expect they will be coming out with a software update soon. For whatever reason Apple disabled the ability to use Personal Hotspot with wifi on the iphone 3gs, so I'm stuck with bluetooth until they fix the usb bug. A bit arbitrary really, I hope they'll change their minds.
 
MikeELL said:
Ah ok. As long as it's a known issue then I expect they will be coming out with a software update soon. For whatever reason Apple disabled the ability to use Personal Hotspot with wifi on the iphone 3gs, so I'm stuck with bluetooth until they fix the usb bug. A bit arbitrary really, I hope they'll change their minds.
Click to expand...

sadly this also happens over bluetooth, same kext.
try limiting the number of connections, etc don't torrent, as torrenting will cause a KP in a matter of minutes.
 
Is anyone here still experiencing this issue? I thought that iOS 4.3.2 was supposed to fix the issue, but I am still experiencing it via USB tethering with AT&T iPhone 4. WiFi tethering works fine. Haven't tested Bluetooth.
 
My computer still has this issue over USB as well. I am using the AT&T tethering plan with an iPhone 4 on the latest firmware. Computer is a 2011 MBP 13", my second with this same issue. I can replicate it as well by simply loading pages that are data intensive, such as youtube.
 
Solution: Reboot and explicitly force it to the 32-bit kernel. Pressing 3 and 2 keys at startup until grey Apple logo appears will load 32-bit for that session only. Booting into 32-bit permanently requires Terminal commands. Google for more info.
 
Additional Note: Late 2011 MBP with 10.6.8 did not produce KP but simply could not initiate iPhone USB Ethernet connection unless booted up in 32-bit kernel.
 
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