I have the same symptoms! Gonna try a cooling pad and overrunning the fans until apple decides to help or th machine dies completely. (MBP Early 2011 17")
Have been complaining of issues w/ the discrete GPU since day one of purchasing a $3000 17" Early 2011 MBP. Apple techs gave me the runaround, selling me new HDMI cables, etc.
When the problem was properly identified, my warrantee had just expired. The problem accelerated to the point of rendering my MBP useless (especially when out on a job site, in a meeting).
My experience dealing with Geniuses at the Apple Store was horrendous: I would have had better results and received more respect by taking my laptop into a ghetto McDonalds for help.
I have wasted countless hours and hundreds of dollars to date to get my MBP working as advertised.
As it stands, I cannot use an external monitor/projector and can only get the unit to function using the gfxCardStatus workaround (which is not a fix, it only allows me to partially use my MBP).
The only response from Apple to date is to pay them $600 to replace their defective logic board.
If they do not issue a recall/replacement program right now, we have no choice but to take legal action in our respective countries (against a company that I have championed for thirty years) to receive fair treatment.
There has been a crescendo of calls of legal action (from respective countries) to force a resolution from Apple.
I'm in Canada.
If Apple doesn't volunteer a solution, I will help to lead the charge here. Otherwise, I will go it alone in court/the media and take my chances.
Every country also has its own consumer protection laws: in some countries, manufacturers are forced to honour their goods for up to X years by law; in most other countries, you're only protected by the manufacturers warrantee and it's a strictly civil matter. However, if you have a consumer watchdog group, governmental or otherwise, they should be looped into this erupting issue.
As a side note/rant... this is a throwaway account for anonymity. In this day and age, Apple should realize that they need to act more swiftly for us, if not for their own PR dept.: I work in the media; my teams control dozens of social media assets; and, as such, we have an audience of hundreds of thousands who are increasingly interested in this saga. I, myself, have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter alone, thousands of blog subscribers and the like. I also influence how major corporations embrace emerging technologies: I've kept my trap shut about this for the most part; but, should I champion Apple herein?
All I can do for now is keep the pressure on and share my experiences with the hope that Apple does what's fair/right; and, research next steps in the event that they continue to fail us.
i replaced the Logic board and it still happened, though it worked after hard reset, this is an ISSUE. $611.45 canadian and still a problem, man. Apple, October 22 your bringing out the new, how can we be loyal with issues like this? Disheartening to say the least.
my suggestion : do not replace logic board , i have seen this issue will happen again in many comment , so replacement is not the solution.
it's design fault , apple fault , not mine our yours , so they should accept it as they admit ,it's the hardware issue and its very often happens , it's not 2-3 page of comments or complain it's hundreds of cm , many ppl didnt wrote anything cuz other ppls just said that exact problems so it's even more than that .
I have a desktop computer which works for 12 years it's part of history now ! but it works with it's new powersup and with on-board graphic but still works XD i dont know how but STILL WORKS !! and my 2200$ mbp which i'v bought it for 2700$ as i dont leave in us (import taxes blah blah ) worked for 1-2 years . the point is i had paid that money for more than 1-2 years !
OSX is dead for me as it's not relay able and it's very expensive. i'v paid more than 1000$ for each year of using it and now for each week ( i mean replacement that may happen every week ) 500$ .
if i hit your car by mine i should pay for the compensation . now APPLE CO or INC idc made me lose my laptop ! so they should pay ! not me . i did a fav for them and bought their product now it's their turn ! if it was just me or 2 or 100 ppl it was ok i would pay but it's more than that and they say pay us 500 for replacement and i dont believe it wont happen again after replacement cuz the logic board is the same it's just new one and gave you more time .
I was planned to buy rMBP for now ! Hell NO! this one is enough for me .
BTW !!!! I have a question to ask :
I've tried so much and finally i managed to boot my early MBP 15" on windows ! i'v decided to play a game ! so i installed a game and played with full performances the graphic with game need is 512 , as you know when you are working with win your graphic is RADEON and game run with it ! Yes i played the game for 1 hour and it was fine and then i left my desk to do sth i came back and it went to sleep and ..... the problem of black screen or frozen screen happened again .
So if Radeon is the problem HOW I was playing a 3D game on my laptop ?!
2nd Question ! How the problem started just after warranty ends ?! any bad update for SMC OR EFi by apple caused it ?! or it was a clock-bomb ?! i'm really curious . i had played many games with my mb in it's first days and it was burning hot but NOW when i'm not playing anymore and i'm using it as a mp3 player or web browser it happens !?
if Radeon is the problem HOW I was playing a 3D game on my laptop ?!
2nd Question ! How the problem started just after warranty ends ?! any bad update for SMC OR EFi by apple caused it ?! or it was a clock-bomb ?! i'm really curious . i had played many games with my mb in it's first days and it was burning hot but NOW when i'm not playing anymore and i'm using it as a mp3 player or web browser it happens !?
The heat damages the GPU and then the faults occur at random. Sometimes you can use the machine for long periods of time, sometimes it just dies. Eventually it will get worse and die completely.
The rMBP shouldn't suffer the same problems as it uses the new NVidia GPU, which stays pretty cool but you never know. If they bring one out with Iris Pro, that would likely be the most reliable. There's a video of how 3rd party services can do a temporary repair here:
[VIDEO]
They just solder the connections again. Not guaranteed to work though:
You may be able to completely disable the Radeon GPU by removing the Radeon drivers and forcing it to use the Intel graphics all the time.
Now that's an interesting idea and as long as you don't do anything too graphically intensive, the Intel HD 3000 should be just fine allowing you to keep your MBP.
In theory, disabling the discrete GPU is a great idea. There are a couple of different ways to do it:
1) Switching to "Integrated only" with gfxCardStatus disables it quickly and easily, but you have to manually set it after each boot - so if your computer is having trouble booting successfully, this really doesn't help you. But if it works for you, it's a fairly stable solution, as long as it lasts. It does a pretty sophisticated job of managing and monitoring how the computer uses its graphics processors, and it's regularly updated.
2) The drivers for the discrete GPU are kernel extensions (kexts) in the folder /System/Library/Extensions. It's a bit risky to just yank them out of the folder - you can cause a kernel panic. You'll want to identify the specific driver kext that your computer is using. Open the Terminal and type kextstat at the command line and it'll spit out a big long list of the active drivers. Look in there for anything with the format ATIRadeonX****.kext (asterisks are whatever numbers you're looking for - it appears that the 6490M uses ATIRadeonX3000.kext and the 6750M uses ATIRadeonX2000.kext) to see which one you're using. That's the kext that's running your discrete GPU.
You can move the kext out with these commands:
> mkdir DisabledExtensions
> cd /System/Library/Extensions
> sudo mv ATIRadeonX****.kext ~/DisabledExtensions (replace asterisks with your model's numbers)
> sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions
A number of people tried this, and it helped many avoid some of the frequent freezes and crashes and boot issues... but it also came with unfortunate side effects. Various things didn't work properly because there are other drivers, software, and bits of the OS that are dependent on the discrete GPU and its drivers and will not function otherwise. Some people found that the FaceTime camera and Photo Booth ceased to function. Peripheral displays didn't work. And the biggest one - computers that went to sleep wouldn't wake back up. That was the deal killer for me. I don't want to have to reboot my computer every time it goes to sleep. So I moved the kext back into place (and did the last step again - that updates the folder's timestamps and keeps the OS aware of changes you've made), and everything was back to normal. Including the crashes and freezes.
same happened to me. i was so disheartened that i was very close to abandoning ship. after 30 years of committed support to apple computer, i couldn't believe the state of things, with this and the trackpad problem (my mouse was jumping all over and the apple measurements read it was fine). i decided to give it another chance, cause after all in 30 years it really was the only major problem.. but seriously.. with all the money they have to spend, maybe they could invest it a little bit in making sure they r not ripping off their customers. a little less profit wouldn't hurt them nearly as much as lack of loyalty does. peace
Yeah I would have to agree. Thing is I go in there and he (The Apple Gonad) runs the simple basic AHT, and shows up all good. This was 9 months into the warranty. I really wanted to say, "Would you pull up my rap sheet at this company? I have been buying computers for about 28 years now, and filling out these registration forms just the same. I know what 120 crashes in 9 months mean. Now I know the 22 year old kid has had 2 iPhones in the past 4 years and an iPad and/or iMac too. But I was trying to tell him I have never had any problems with any Macs (or Apples) for that duration but this one has crashed 120 times in the last 9 months!" He just kept replying "I ran the tests and it's passed them 100%." I told him it's a Video Card issue that's been going on with these models, and it was the same response. I hope we get an extension on our Warranties, because I bought this solely cause it's the LAST 17" they will probably ever make!! One thing that really got to me was his solution tho. He said "Do you turn the computer off at night?" I said NO I sleep it. He said "You need to turn these off at night with these models" I laughed inside before I exploded inside" Thing was tho there was like 8,000 people in the store, I just said to myself, this is a joke. The best I could do for now is put the Crucial SSD in because I figured it would rule out the HD if it keeps doing this. Then if this continues at least the reboot time would be under 45 secs with the Lion auto resume where I left off. It's still crap, productivity is about 15% right now can barely work SUCKS off the cliff NOOooooo......
:P I think it's Sandy Bridge myself with the Graphic Switching, cause I got an 11" Air Ivy Bridge, and that thing has not crashed 1 time! not once! I know it doesn't have 2 GPUs etc...
But, I know what you mean with the 30 years with the company!
Apple should start an quality investigation and do a recall on all these flawed models! Join us and comment on the page( mbp2011.com) if you have encounter the same issue! We are trying everything we can so apple cannot ignore this. check this out : mbp2011 dot com
I went with my early 2011 MBP 17" to the local apple store last saturday after waiting almost 2 weeks to get an appointment.
The mac had all the symptoms describe in the article, first graphical glitches and eventually black screen and no way of rebooting the mac.
The guy at the apple store did a master reset on the mac (something they apparently only can do instore as a last resort connecting an ethernet cable).
To my supprise the mac booted up. Image on the screen. He ran a hardware test on it -
It seems like the light detection sensor is failing making it sporadically try to turn off the screen. Only way to repair it is to change the whole screen (about €450 +vat in my case with no applecare or warranty left)
Afterwards i tried rebooting the mac several times in the store. It just worked.
I went home, rebooted the mac and after using it 5 minutes i got a blue screen -
I turned it off and then again the mac wouldn't boot...
I decided to try the trick with covering the light sensor with something opaque that the guy from the genius bar proposed.
The mac started again and has been working like a charm also with gpu intensive applications. And with the radeon gpu (no gpu switching)
I am a bit confused. The mac had all the symptoms described.
The graphical glitches came almost always when opening or working for a while in PS cs6.
Hopefully the problem stays with light sensor error.
I will keep coming back with updates if there are developments.
Comments
Early 2011 15” 2.3 GHz Core i7 AMD Radeon HD 6750M – screen glitches ( Image Distortion, screen blurring, freeze and shift), boot problem ...
FIXED: reballing GPU ~ 50 EUR and now I’m more vigilant with internal system temperature:
1. Installed FanControl – and change (in more aggressive way) relation of fan speed – sensor temperature.
2. I use laptop with an external monitor – now my lid is always open !!!
3. I use a simple cooling pad
4. I use only occasionally Windows virtual machine (Parallels).
Good luck.
I have the same symptoms! Gonna try a cooling pad and overrunning the fans until apple decides to help or th machine dies completely. (MBP Early 2011 17")
When the problem was properly identified, my warrantee had just expired. The problem accelerated to the point of rendering my MBP useless (especially when out on a job site, in a meeting).
My experience dealing with Geniuses at the Apple Store was horrendous: I would have had better results and received more respect by taking my laptop into a ghetto McDonalds for help.
I have wasted countless hours and hundreds of dollars to date to get my MBP working as advertised.
As it stands, I cannot use an external monitor/projector and can only get the unit to function using the gfxCardStatus workaround (which is not a fix, it only allows me to partially use my MBP).
The only response from Apple to date is to pay them $600 to replace their defective logic board.
If they do not issue a recall/replacement program right now, we have no choice but to take legal action in our respective countries (against a company that I have championed for thirty years) to receive fair treatment.
@AtlasMoth which countries are you talking about regarding legal actions?
I would also be interested in providing details about the experiences I had with Apple on this matter.
There has been a crescendo of calls of legal action (from respective countries) to force a resolution from Apple.
I'm in Canada.
If Apple doesn't volunteer a solution, I will help to lead the charge here. Otherwise, I will go it alone in court/the media and take my chances.
Every country also has its own consumer protection laws: in some countries, manufacturers are forced to honour their goods for up to X years by law; in most other countries, you're only protected by the manufacturers warrantee and it's a strictly civil matter. However, if you have a consumer watchdog group, governmental or otherwise, they should be looped into this erupting issue.
As a side note/rant... this is a throwaway account for anonymity. In this day and age, Apple should realize that they need to act more swiftly for us, if not for their own PR dept.: I work in the media; my teams control dozens of social media assets; and, as such, we have an audience of hundreds of thousands who are increasingly interested in this saga. I, myself, have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter alone, thousands of blog subscribers and the like. I also influence how major corporations embrace emerging technologies: I've kept my trap shut about this for the most part; but, should I champion Apple herein?
All I can do for now is keep the pressure on and share my experiences with the hope that Apple does what's fair/right; and, research next steps in the event that they continue to fail us.
Case file open.
my suggestion : do not replace logic board , i have seen this issue will happen again in many comment , so replacement is not the solution.
it's design fault , apple fault , not mine our yours , so they should accept it as they admit ,it's the hardware issue and its very often happens , it's not 2-3 page of comments or complain it's hundreds of cm , many ppl didnt wrote anything cuz other ppls just said that exact problems so it's even more than that .
I have a desktop computer which works for 12 years it's part of history now ! but it works with it's new powersup and with on-board graphic but still works XD i dont know how but STILL WORKS !! and my 2200$ mbp which i'v bought it for 2700$ as i dont leave in us (import taxes blah blah ) worked for 1-2 years . the point is i had paid that money for more than 1-2 years !
OSX is dead for me as it's not relay able and it's very expensive. i'v paid more than 1000$ for each year of using it
and now for each week ( i mean replacement that may happen every week ) 500$ .
if i hit your car by mine i should pay for the compensation . now APPLE CO or INC idc made me lose my laptop ! so they should pay ! not me . i did a fav for them and bought their product now it's their turn ! if it was just me or 2 or 100 ppl it was ok i would pay but it's more than that and they say pay us 500 for replacement and i dont believe it wont happen again after replacement cuz the logic board is the same it's just new one and gave you more time .
I was planned to buy rMBP for now ! Hell NO! this one is enough for me .
BTW !!!! I have a question to ask :
I've tried so much and finally i managed to boot my early MBP 15" on windows ! i'v decided to play a game ! so i installed a game and played with full performances the graphic with game need is 512 , as you know when you are working with win your graphic is RADEON and game run with it ! Yes i played the game for 1 hour and it was fine and then i left my desk to do sth i came back and it went to sleep and ..... the problem of black screen or frozen screen happened again .
So if Radeon is the problem HOW I was playing a 3D game on my laptop ?!
2nd Question ! How the problem started just after warranty ends ?! any bad update for SMC OR EFi by apple caused it ?! or it was a clock-bomb ?! i'm really curious . i had played many games with my mb in it's first days and it was burning hot but NOW when i'm not playing anymore and i'm using it as a mp3 player or web browser it happens !?
The heat damages the GPU and then the faults occur at random. Sometimes you can use the machine for long periods of time, sometimes it just dies. Eventually it will get worse and die completely.
The rMBP shouldn't suffer the same problems as it uses the new NVidia GPU, which stays pretty cool but you never know. If they bring one out with Iris Pro, that would likely be the most reliable. There's a video of how 3rd party services can do a temporary repair here:
[VIDEO]
They just solder the connections again. Not guaranteed to work though:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4659905?start=15&tstart=0
You may be able to completely disable the Radeon GPU by removing the Radeon drivers and forcing it to use the Intel graphics all the time.
Now that's an interesting idea and as long as you don't do anything too graphically intensive, the Intel HD 3000 should be just fine allowing you to keep your MBP.
http://www.mbp2011.com/#
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4637833?start=135&tstart=0
and fill this form:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PuJ2QS2Ri7fw9HVaNHLQ4OYZCb99zonc96HmhTWEAoY/viewform?edit_requested=true
In theory, disabling the discrete GPU is a great idea. There are a couple of different ways to do it:
1) Switching to "Integrated only" with gfxCardStatus disables it quickly and easily, but you have to manually set it after each boot - so if your computer is having trouble booting successfully, this really doesn't help you. But if it works for you, it's a fairly stable solution, as long as it lasts. It does a pretty sophisticated job of managing and monitoring how the computer uses its graphics processors, and it's regularly updated.
2) The drivers for the discrete GPU are kernel extensions (kexts) in the folder /System/Library/Extensions. It's a bit risky to just yank them out of the folder - you can cause a kernel panic. You'll want to identify the specific driver kext that your computer is using. Open the Terminal and type kextstat at the command line and it'll spit out a big long list of the active drivers. Look in there for anything with the format ATIRadeonX****.kext (asterisks are whatever numbers you're looking for - it appears that the 6490M uses ATIRadeonX3000.kext and the 6750M uses ATIRadeonX2000.kext) to see which one you're using. That's the kext that's running your discrete GPU.
You can move the kext out with these commands:
> mkdir DisabledExtensions
> cd /System/Library/Extensions
> sudo mv ATIRadeonX****.kext ~/DisabledExtensions (replace asterisks with your model's numbers)
> sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions
A number of people tried this, and it helped many avoid some of the frequent freezes and crashes and boot issues... but it also came with unfortunate side effects. Various things didn't work properly because there are other drivers, software, and bits of the OS that are dependent on the discrete GPU and its drivers and will not function otherwise. Some people found that the FaceTime camera and Photo Booth ceased to function. Peripheral displays didn't work. And the biggest one - computers that went to sleep wouldn't wake back up. That was the deal killer for me. I don't want to have to reboot my computer every time it goes to sleep. So I moved the kext back into place (and did the last step again - that updates the folder's timestamps and keeps the OS aware of changes you've made), and everything was back to normal. Including the crashes and freezes.
same happened to me. i was so disheartened that i was very close to abandoning ship. after 30 years of committed support to apple computer, i couldn't believe the state of things, with this and the trackpad problem (my mouse was jumping all over and the apple measurements read it was fine). i decided to give it another chance, cause after all in 30 years it really was the only major problem.. but seriously.. with all the money they have to spend, maybe they could invest it a little bit in making sure they r not ripping off their customers. a little less profit wouldn't hurt them nearly as much as lack of loyalty does. peace
Yeah I would have to agree. Thing is I go in there and he (The Apple Gonad) runs the simple basic AHT, and shows up all good. This was 9 months into the warranty. I really wanted to say, "Would you pull up my rap sheet at this company? I have been buying computers for about 28 years now, and filling out these registration forms just the same. I know what 120 crashes in 9 months mean. Now I know the 22 year old kid has had 2 iPhones in the past 4 years and an iPad and/or iMac too. But I was trying to tell him I have never had any problems with any Macs (or Apples) for that duration but this one has crashed 120 times in the last 9 months!" He just kept replying "I ran the tests and it's passed them 100%." I told him it's a Video Card issue that's been going on with these models, and it was the same response. I hope we get an extension on our Warranties, because I bought this solely cause it's the LAST 17" they will probably ever make!! One thing that really got to me was his solution tho. He said "Do you turn the computer off at night?" I said NO I sleep it. He said "You need to turn these off at night with these models" I laughed inside before I exploded inside" Thing was tho there was like 8,000 people in the store, I just said to myself, this is a joke. The best I could do for now is put the Crucial SSD in because I figured it would rule out the HD if it keeps doing this. Then if this continues at least the reboot time would be under 45 secs with the Lion auto resume where I left off. It's still crap, productivity is about 15% right now can barely work SUCKS off the cliff NOOooooo......
:P I think it's Sandy Bridge myself with the Graphic Switching, cause I got an 11" Air Ivy Bridge, and that thing has not crashed 1 time! not once! I know it doesn't have 2 GPUs etc...
But, I know what you mean with the 30 years with the company!
Here is a stupid resolve I use on a monthly basis that helps me get about 3-4 weeks at a time with only about 1 or 2 crashes during that time.
I log out of my account, I have it set to auto login, but I log out and uncheck re-open apps.
I restart and pram zap it twice then option boot into recovery partition
I do a disk utility repair and then privileges repair
I boot with the shift key down and boot in safe mode till I get the login option asking me which account, (auto login is off with safe boot)
I then reboot and let it flow login
I use gfxCardStatus, I set it to i - integrated, do it like 3 times till the check box is there
Go to system preference pane -> energy saver
Select Better Battery Life.
I use an SSD so the reboot is under 45 sec with full resume, oh yeah check that back on, and I get about 3-4 weeks of only 1-2 crashes.
oh one other thing I have found that helps, is to turn off all usage of the ATI Radeon by Adobe Apps.
If I get lazy and don't do this procedure it starts to crash once or twice a day and then I remember to "Clean Up" doing this again...
Good Luck Boys!!!
I went with my early 2011 MBP 17" to the local apple store last saturday after waiting almost 2 weeks to get an appointment.
The mac had all the symptoms describe in the article, first graphical glitches and eventually black screen and no way of rebooting the mac.
The guy at the apple store did a master reset on the mac (something they apparently only can do instore as a last resort connecting an ethernet cable).
To my supprise the mac booted up. Image on the screen. He ran a hardware test on it -
It seems like the light detection sensor is failing making it sporadically try to turn off the screen. Only way to repair it is to change the whole screen (about €450 +vat in my case with no applecare or warranty left)
Afterwards i tried rebooting the mac several times in the store. It just worked.
I went home, rebooted the mac and after using it 5 minutes i got a blue screen -
I turned it off and then again the mac wouldn't boot...
I decided to try the trick with covering the light sensor with something opaque that the guy from the genius bar proposed.
The mac started again and has been working like a charm also with gpu intensive applications. And with the radeon gpu (no gpu switching)
I am a bit confused. The mac had all the symptoms described.
The graphical glitches came almost always when opening or working for a while in PS cs6.
Hopefully the problem stays with light sensor error.
I will keep coming back with updates if there are developments.
EDIT
Safe mode disables the drivers so the GPU wouldn't be functioning. If you remove the ATI drivers mentioned earlier:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/160161/apples-2011-macbook-pro-lineup-suffering-from-sporadic-gpu-failures/80#post_2420378
in safe mode, that might let you use the laptop normally.
EDIT