Owners of 15-inch and 17-inch 2011 MacBook Pros are reporting that their notebooks are freezing up entirely under extensive load… and the problem is so persistent that one sufferer was able to reproduce it on every MBP at his local Apple Store.
Apparently, owners of 2011 MacBook Pros are reporting that under heavy load, their notebooks will freeze, even as sound continues. The cursor will still be movable, but the computer is completely unresponsive, and the only way to solve the problem is a hard reboot.
Just one of the Apple.com Support Threads about the issue is now 41 pages long, and the word “systemic” is being thrown around. One fix being suggested is to try to limit yourself to using software that only uses the integrated Sandy Bridge GPU on the MacBook Pro, instead of the ATI one.
Given how wide spread this issue is, hopefully Apple will release a fix sooner rather than later. Have any of our readers noticed this problem? Let us know in the comments.
[via MacStories]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
34 responses to ““Systemic” Issue Freezing Under Load Affecting 2011 MacBook Pros”
cant tell if it happens by heavy load of gpu, but my 15″ mbp (2011) freezes with showing confusing stripes on the screen, mouse and keyboard dont work – only way to get back to work is a hard restart – this even happens by trying to install mac os x on an erased hdd.
will be at the apple store in oberhausen (germany) later today – get back to you with an positive answer, i hope!
It’s only happened once to me, and I hardly had any programs open… (I think it was just iTunes, Twitter & Chrome) After the hard reboot, the computer was still behaving strangely (no sound), but one regular restart set it right!
I have actually had this happen on my iMac. I will have several apps open and then it freezes. My iTunes continues to play, cursor can move, and I can even close out the window but it won’t let me open new apps/folders or force quit any apps running at the time. It is quite bazaar.
The “weird” thing is that this is the same exact problem I’m experiencing since like an year, more or less, on my old late 2006 Mac Book Pro (ATI X1600 GPU). And it happens like many times a day, when I use heavy apps like videos or even Flash.
This does not just occur under heavy load conditions, unless exporting an Imovie project is considered heavy load. (note cynicism) After three days of being able to produce my low level Keynote-Imovie presentations, and talking with tech support for hours via phone, I brought my 2.2ghz 15″back after 7 days.
This happens to me whenever I try to convert video files. I am forced to close every program except for iFlicks (the program converting the files), and even that doesn’t always work. Please Apple, fix this!
We are developing an all CPU based realtime raytracing application that freezes my MBP 15″ with the Sandy-Bridge processor after 30 sec – 1 min. Interestingly enough I don’t have that issue when running it under Windows in the same machine.
I am an apple fan, but I am sorry to tell you that Mac OS X is not as stable as it used to be back around pre 2006. Macs used to never crash.
Currently I won’t be amazed to force reboot my system
I just got my MBP a week ago today, and while using Photoshop and a game, I’ve had this issue. Glad to know I’m not alone, but I really hope they get this fixed…
Mine was doing the same thing. If I seemed to put the mac under any sort of “normal” work load it would freeze entirely no mouse/keyboard (bluetooth either) would work. Sometimes the screen would go stripped. Often times it would give me the grey screen and the black restart box. I would restart my 17″ MBP (2011) and it would panic numerous times before finally booting up. I figured it would be a good thing to keep a well up to date time machine backup, but needless to say it would lock up before it could successfully backup my information. After 10 or so tries it successfully performed a backup. The strange thing was during this time, there was nothing running on my mac except the time machine backup. Support asked me into insert my install disk into the laptop to run some diagnostics, but every time the CD would begin to boot, the computer would lock up give me the good ole grey screen, or panic. One day it took me over 2.5 hours to get the stupid thing to even boot. They decided that they needed to ship me a new one which I had to wait a week for (it had to be built and shipped from China). It arrived today so now the long process of restoring.
Your comments make me start to think it’s a software glitch then…which can ( and hopefyllu) will be fixed with a firmware update…
apple will now change my logic board – hope to get it back early next week!
This happens often on my old MBP (2007).
also the 13.3″ 2011 i7 version MacBook Pros had the same freeze twice within 2 weeks… luckily i’m not alone in this… Apple fix it
I have the newest July 2011 refresh MacBook Air 13″ 4GB and it happens to be giving me a freezing issue as well. I suppose I had over 7 applications open which could cause a possible overload, but come on now, this is an Apple we’re talking about… quite frankly I’m very disappointed. This happened to me twice already, once completely freezing and locking me out thus having to cold boot again, and another time I was able to move my mouse a little bit but unable to click anything as it was constantly lagging to keep up with movement. Seems OSX Lion isn’t made out to be as good as it seems as I’ve never had this problem in my older 2010 MBA 13″ running Snow Leopard… what a shame.
I deal with this daily… and after I try to reboot… it freezes again while trying to logon… a few restarts and then it finally starts up… APPLE PLEASE FIX THIS!!!
Mine only freezes when i open iTunes, which is kind of an important program to me. Since, you know…. syncing my iPhone and iPod and listening to music and whatnot.
Hoping they figure this out soon, otherwise this 2 week old macbook is being returned and I am going back to windows.