How to repair random crashes on MacBooks. This is when you receive a gray screen
crash notification. A Macbook kernel the lowest level of the operating system
will force-shutdown a Macbook if it feels like there might be permanent
damage that's imminent. In this video we'll cover why Macs crash, how to fix
graphics processor unit crashes, how to fix other crashes and how to permanently
fix persistent crashes. MacBooks have a lot of sensors, just like in the
following example after randomly opening up a window, the computer crashed and
showed the following crash notification. This is common with MacBooks and the
reason why this happens is to prevent your computer from permanently damaging
itself. After showing this notification the MacBook will most likely restart
itself. After the restart, log yourself in. On the window that pops up after you
log in, what you want to do, is you want to click on the report button
and then click show details. This will give you a report and in the first
paragraph you can determine what exactly was the reason that caused the crash to
happen. There's a lot of data and it looks a little confusing but at the end
of the first paragraph, on the last line you can see a "caller" in this particular
instance it's a GPU panic. That means the graphics processing unit failed. More
than half of grey screen crashes happen on Macbooks with dual graphics cards.
When the integrated card attempts to switch to the dedicated card, the system
has an error and it crashes. There's a workaround for this but please note that
this is by far not a permanent solution. The true total permanent solution can be
achieved through the "Apples Repair Program" for any mac book that's between
2011 and 2013. This can be done in any Apple service store for free.
Here's the temporary workaround. Open up Safari and navigate to www.appledollars.com
once at aapledollars.com click on downloads, scroll down to the bottom of
the page and click disable second GPU download. Once this is downloaded go
ahead and open your downloads folder and drag the gfx card status into the
Applications folder. Once in the Applications folder go ahead and open it.
Once running, it will show up as an icon in the top right of the screen. Click on
the icon and select integrated graphics. You should see it switch from "n" to "i".
Click the Apple logo and go to "About this Mac" here you will see that the
graphics now is the Intel integrated one. You can now test out your system and
play some HD content from a site like YouTube. This will allow you to test it
and make sure that you're not crashing because the integrated graphics card is
locked in. It shouldn't have any problems switching between the integrated and the
other GPU. Click on the "i" and go to preferences, make sure to select load GFX
card status at startup. Use smart menu icons as well. Other grey screen crashes
can be fixed by repairing disk permissions and resetting the system
management controller. Go to "GO" and go to "Utilities" in the utilities folder open
up "Disk Utility" select your main operating system hard disk and click
first-aid. Click run, this will repair any disk permission issues. Disk permission
issues caused operating system failure. Other programs can modify your disk
permission without your knowledge, this will fix that issue.
This should be done with a combination of resetting the system
management controller. Open up Safari and navigate to www.appledollars.com
once at appledollars.com click troubleshooting, scroll over and
find "reset SMC". Watch this video on how to reset your system management
controller. This is a remedy to about 20 different crash problems. Of course the
only true way to fix permanent persistent system crashes is to replace
the logic board. You can easily find out how to do this by clicking the Apple
logo going to "about this Mac" and figuring out what MacBook Year and size
that you have. Once you have this information go ahead and navigate to
appledollars.com once at appledollars.com you can select MacBooks from the
home page. Select your macbook size and select your macbook year. On the
interactive how-to video map, find the logic board, go ahead and click the
logic board video. In the very beginning of the video you'll find the part number
to your logicboard and the tools that you will need
the repair it. This concludes our system crash repair video. Thank you for
watching!