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Resolved Macbook Pro 2015 with OSX El Capitan 10.11.4 system wide freeze (Read the details)

What type of Macbook are you using?

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throAU said:
Presumably though, running 10.11.4, i am using the same driver as everyone else?

(And thus, i should be able to replicate the problem...)


edit:
Oh, i never use in clamshell mode. 99.999% of my use is internal screen, trackpad and keyboard only.

Maybe there's something in that? For those having crashes, are you swapping between external display and internal display without rebooting? Not apple hardware, but the intel video on my Surface Pro 4 totally loses the plot and has display driver crashes on a reasonably regular basis, and I dock/undock that on a reasonably regular basis without rebooting it.

I know - windows driver vs. OS X driver, but as I understand it intel probably provide most of the driver reference code, so wouldn't surprise me if there's some common video mode switching bug in there somewhere... i.e., switching between internal and external display may trigger some dodgy code in there which doesn't reset things properly when switching?
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As others said, this is not a problem easy to replicate. I had crashes very close together and then nothing for a week. I'm 99.9% certain that this is a software issue because a) it never happened before, and b) it never happened again after I downgraded to 10.11.3.

Edit: better than check with year your Mac is or what OS came installed, is to check what CPU is included. The problem seems to be very common on Broadwell architecture CPUs.
 
dmnc said:
As others said, this is not a problem easy to replicate. I had crashes very close together and then nothing for a week. I'm 99.9% certain that this is a software issue because a) it never happened before, and b) it never happened again after I downgraded to 10.11.3.

Edit: better than check with year your Mac is or what OS came installed, is to check what CPU is included. The problem seems to be very common on Broadwell architecture CPUs.
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I too wish it was easy to replicate the problem so I could bring it in to the Apple Store and show them exactly what's going on. Other than noticing it never happens in clamshell mode with an external display, there's no rhyme or reason with when it'll happen.

I've used my machine without a display for the better part of a couple days and it doesn't happen at all. Then on the third day it locks up. I reboot. An hour later, lock up again. Frustrated, I reboot and go to bed. Next morning, no issues all day. Next morning, a lockup. Put it in clamshell mode for almost a week, not one lockup.

Could there also be any correlation with the laptop freezing on battery vs ac power as well?
 
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PieTunes said:
I too wish it was easy to replicate the problem so I could bring it in to the Apple Store and show them exactly what's going on. Other than noticing it never happens in clamshell mode with an external display, there's no rhyme or reason with when it'll happen.

I've used my machine without a display for the better part of a couple days and it doesn't happen at all. Then on the third day it locks up. I reboot. An hour later, lock up again. Frustrated, I reboot and go to bed. Next morning, no issues all day. Next morning, a lockup. Put it in clamshell mode for almost a week, not one lockup.

Could there also be any correlation with the laptop freezing on battery vs ac power as well?
Click to expand...

No, there is no correlation to using AC or battery power, at least o haven't noticed it. It is completely random, probably bug in some code specific to broadwell architecture Intel CPU's. Maybe some kind of deadlock, but this is not our problem, apple devs should find it and repair it asap but, before two days i reset completely smc and nvram on my MBPr 13" early 2015, for these two days i was watching A LOT of videos in safari and also opening many video links, using photo app and quick time (the most frequent triggers of freeze) and no freeze so far.
 
While the problem seems to be software based (you can downgrade to 10.11.3 with no freeze) I agree that it has to be somewhat hardware based as well hence not every single macbook freezes but just ours.

There's no correlation between external monitor, clamshell mode, power adapter or on battery or VRAM or SMC reset, I've tried all of those and I never use external displays or anything attached to it. I have a Macbook Air 2015 in the household and that one never experienced a freeze so I'm not using it "wrong".
 
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I´ve gotten so used to my iMac freezing several times per day, so used to it in fact that it feels really odd now when my late iMac 2009 have not frozen after 4 days continuous use on 10.11.5 PB4

I will throw in PB4 on my mid 2015 rMBP and see if it works on it too, would be nice to start using it again, have barely touched it since Februari thanks to 10.11.4 :mad::mad:
 
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Since my update to 10.11.5 Beta (15F31a, I have not had any freezes/crashes or mouse lags (my mouse was freezing for 1/2 to 1 sec here and there)
 
macmac0119 said:
Since my update to 10.11.5 Beta (15F31a, I have not had any freezes/crashes or mouse lags (my mouse was freezing for 1/2 to 1 sec here and there)
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How often did you have freezes before update to latest beta?
 
Mouse pointer would get stuck/freeze for a 1/2 sec maybe every 10-20 minutes. It was often. Entire system freeze/lockup would happen maybe once a day or once every 2 days. So far I've had this new beta for 2-3 days and there has been no freezes/crashes or mouse lags/stuck/freezes.
 
I'll chime in and say that I've been freeze free for the past almost 6 days now on 10.11.5 beta 4 (15F31a). I usually get a freeze once a week but I've been using exclusively Safari for the past week with 12 hours a day on average and no freeze.

I'll check and see the other threads and see if this is actually moving somewhere or it's just a coincidence. So far one person on this thread reported freezing under the new beta 4 with a rmbp 13 2015 that specified he is on the latest beta, there's another person on apple forums "broozar", he is using an iMac retina 2015.
I wonder if apple started quietly working on this.
 
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Good to know that it may appear our freezing issue might be resolved with 10.11.5. I've never installed a beta OS before, I'll just patiently wait for final release. I at least feel better knowing that the issue looks like it's being worked on.
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macmac0119 said:
Mouse pointer would get stuck/freeze for a 1/2 sec maybe every 10-20 minutes. It was often. Entire system freeze/lockup would happen maybe once a day or once every 2 days. So far I've had this new beta for 2-3 days and there has been no freezes/crashes or mouse lags/stuck/freezes.
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Just curious, is it a wireless mouse you are using? If so is it a Bluetooth mouse, part of a keybaord/mouse combo that uses a little USB receiver?
 
Antonnn said:
I'll chime in and say that I've been freeze free for the past almost 6 days now on 10.11.5 beta 4 (15F31a). I usually get a freeze once a week but I've been using exclusively Safari for the past week with 12 hours a day on average and no freeze.
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Please keep us informed. At least there's hope...
 
Well I just started having this problem today. Twice in under 24 hours. Scared me half to death. Hope they fix it soon.
 
streetfoldsfive said:
Well I just started having this problem today. Twice in under 24 hours. Scared me half to death. Hope they fix it soon.
Click to expand...

Such a relieving feeling to know that it's happening to all of us, ain't it? I was super relieved to see that this was a bug and not a hardware issue.
 
mantelvaviz said:
I don't want to give false hope to anyone, probably it's just a coincidence, but in my specific case, after weeks of freezing, I'm now using a combination of Safari Technology Preview (without Flash) for everything including Youtube videos plus Firefox for Facebook only and I had zero freeze in the last week. I will keep you updated, but I cannot say this should be a solution for everybody because as previously explained by others the freezing also happens in some cases without any browser involved.
Click to expand...

Update: at the moment I have a 12 days uptime record just following the previously described guidelines. I know it can be just luck or something about my specific software configuration, but for now I have not experienced any more freeze (MBPr 13" 2015)
 
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I took my iMac in to the Genius Bar and they told me it was a logic board problem, even though it only occurred once I upgraded 10.11.4. It was crashing almost every 30 minutes. New logic board, and the freezing is not occurring, yet. So, is the issue totally hardware independent? Hard to say.
 
mb3152 said:
I took my iMac in to the Genius Bar and they told me it was a logic board problem, even though it only occurred once I upgraded 10.11.4. It was crashing almost every 30 minutes. New logic board, and the freezing is not occurring, yet. So, is the issue totally hardware independent? Hard to say.
Click to expand...

Was it crashing on earlier versions of OSX as well?
[doublepost=1462829627][/doublepost]Just an update. I have been using just chrome for over a week now and no crashes. This is the longest I have got, with Safari it crashes every day or so.
 
Still having this issue. I have been experiencing it since 10.11.1..... I have reported feedback dozens of times, finally got an Apple Senior AppleCare exec to answer me, he gathered some logs and submitted them to the engineers. Running 10.11.5 build 15F31a, Safari 9.1.1.
 
Hello! I'd also like to share my story with this issue, note that I was currently using an mid 2013 13" MBA:

Back in late January 2015 when YouTube released their finished HTML5 player, I saw my first freeze in February. I didn't care much about it at first since they only seemed to occur once a month, but then in May they started to occur ALMOST EXACTLY every 2.5 weeks.. I found out that every time I closed a tab with the YouTube player on, it froze and I could only move my pointer and had to either force a shutdown or in some cases I was able to re-gain control after waiting a while(All from 30 sec to 10 min+). Although there was this one time when it froze when I opened Launchpad.. Not sure if I had a video playing or not.

After trying to troubleshoot the issue all summer every time it occurred, I still couldn't figure it out... But then in early September, I finally found a working solution: DON'T close tabs with the YouTube/any HTML5 player on them and simply go to etc Apple's or Google's homepage that you know doesn't have a HTML5 player and THEN close it. And if you're unsure if a page has a HTML5 player or not, just follow my earlier suggestion to be safe(For example when sometimes MacRumors has embedded players on the front page). I also stopped open a new tab for every video I wanted to watch and moved to the "Watch later" playlist. And since, I haven't had a single freeze for 8 months! :)

When I first had this issue, I couldn't find anyone else who had it, but during the recent months it has blown up a lot. Wherever this is a Safari or WebKit issue or not, I don't know. But since Launchpad which also uses WebKit(Source needed, I know I read it somewhere but I can't find it again...) made it freeze and the fact that the very last log message was always WebKit related, it seems to point to an WebKit bug.

I've since upgraded to a 15" rMBP with a dGPU and I haven't seen a single freeze(Except from a kernel panic that occurred when I unpaused a YouTube clip, but that seems to be a bug in the automatic graphic switch feature).

Also, has anyone reported this on Apple's bug report page with any response?
 
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edmundostudios said:
Was it crashing on earlier versions of OSX as well?
[doublepost=1462829627][/doublepost]Just an update. I have been using just chrome for over a week now and no crashes. This is the longest I have got, with Safari it crashes every day or so.
Click to expand...

Nope--I had no issues until I upgraded to 10.11.4. I have been hammering it all day in Illustrator, playing music in iTunes, videos on youtube. No issues yet! I doubt that this many people had logic board issues at the same time they upgraded to 10.11.4, but, in my case, I think it was actually a hardware issue that correlated with upgrading. At least I hope so.

Essentially, it's likely worth it to bring your computer to the genius bar to rule out any hardware issues.
 
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