Solution: MacBook Pro Freezing in Vista

[winston_smith]

I have a new MacBook Pro (2009) running Vista x64 on a 60GB Vertex, and I was experiencing random freezes. To make a long story short, the problem was not with anything related to the SSD, as I had initially suspected. After a few hours of trying to pin down the problem, I stumbled upon a fix. I suspect an number of people may make the same mistake, as apparently this is a fairly widespread problem with MacBooks and Vista. It turns out that the video driver was to blame; I was running the default BootCamp driver for Vista.

Update Driver
1. Download and install the latest NVIDIA driver from here.

RivaTuner
1. Download and install RivaTuner from here.

Magic
1. Open RivaTuner and switch to the "Power User" tab.
2. Expand the "RivaTuner\NVIDIA\Overclocking" Tree.
3. Set "EnablePerfLevelForcing" to 1.
4. Switch to the "Main" tab.
5. Under "Driver settings" click on the small arrow left to "Customize..." and choose the first icon "System settings".
6. Set "Force constant performance level" to either "low power 3D" (suffient for 2D audio work) or "performance 3D" (used for 3D gaming).
7. Click OK and let the computer restart.

No more freezing.

Original solution found here.

[HDCHOPPER]

Nice find !

[harshw]

I have a new MacBook Pro (2009) running Vista x64 on a 60GB Vertex, and I was experiencing random freezes. To make a long story short, the problem was not with anything related to the SSD, as I had initially suspected. After a few hours of trying to pin down the problem, I stumbled upon a fix. I suspect an number of people may make the same mistake, as apparently this is a fairly widespread problem with MacBooks and Vista. It turns out that the video driver was to blame; I was running the default BootCamp driver for Vista.

Update Driver
1. Download and install the latest NVIDIA driver from here.

RivaTuner
1. Download and install RivaTuner from here.

Magic
1. Open RivaTuner and switch to the "Power User" tab.
2. Expand the "RivaTuner\NVIDIA\Overclocking" Tree.
3. Set "EnablePerfLevelForcing" to 1.
4. Switch to the "Main" tab.
5. Under "Driver settings" click on the small arrow left to "Customize..." and choose the first icon "System settings".
6. Set "Force constant performance level" to either "low power 3D" (suffient for 2D audio work) or "performance 3D" (used for 3D gaming).
7. Click OK and let the computer restart.

No more freezing.

Original solution found here.

Cheers ! Perhaps you should change the thread title to reflect that it is the Macbook Pro and not the Macbook

[FZ1]

A few questions:
> Are you using bootcamp or Parallels, VMWare, etc?
> Were you using this on an HDD before or was the first install on the Vertex
> If yes, were you having the freezing on the HDD as well? I'm guess no if it is truly a vid driver issue.

Good job in tracking down the issue rather than blindly blaming the SSD.

[winston_smith]

@FZ1

I am not using any sort of virtualization. I am running Vista x64 as my primary OS off of a 60GB Vertex. I have rEFIt and a slimmed down OS X installation on a secondary HDD mounted in an OptiBay. This was the first installation on this machine, so I did not have a frame of reference when the freezing problem began. I am certain, however, that the described solution has fixed this issue.

[LunchTime]

How long did it take you to partition everything?? I've been trying to think about this and i will probably do Employee Liability Insurance but its just depending on how long it took.

thanks in Advance

[stylinexpat]

Running well now? I have been debating about installing Windows XP or Vista on my new Macbook Pro as well. Also wondering which is better to use between Parallels or Bootcamp?

[winston_smith]

It has been running quite well. I didn't use Parallels or Bootcamp, I partitioned everything manually. The first hard disk is partitioned with an MBR partition scheme, and contains two NTFS partitions, Windows Vista resides on the first. The second disk, which is now mounted in a drive caddy from newmodeus.com, is partitioned with a GUID partition table, and contains Mac OS X and rEFIt. I plan on encrypting both NTFS partitions with TrueCrypt, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

[winston_smith]

There isn't anything special about getting things set up, everything is fairly trivial. I guess it depends on your experience level. The easiest way to get the partition tables sorted out it by using a live CD of some sort, the Mac boot disk works well enough. You can also use something like GParted.

[dogmatix]

4. Switch to the "Main" tab.
5. Under "Driver settings" click on the small arrow left to "Customize..." and choose the first icon "System settings".
6. Set "Force constant performance level" to either "low power 3D" (suffient for 2D audio work) or "performance 3D" (used for 3D gaming).
7. Click OK and let the computer restart.

No more freezing.

Original solution found here.

running vista 32

however after changing value to 1 when I got back to the main tab the driver option is not available, I have definitely installed the latest drivers... any suggestions (just looked on main thread and someone ( gnaughton ) has posted the same issue as me)

[dogmatix]

after messing about I just used one of the older sets of drivers off guru3d.com website and it ran fine, no idea what the issue is with the latest drivers off nVidia wesite.

[jmbeaumont]

I've experienced the same problem while playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on Windows 7 - 64bit Bootcamp (v3.0). After a while My screen freezes but I still hear the entertainement sounds on the background.
When I press ALT CRTL DEL, I to go to the taskmaster and ESC when taskmaster is loaded, I get back into the game and I can continue player (The game freezes again like 30sec-1min later)
I had already reinstalled windows and the game 3 times before I found this page >.>
Do you guys still Install the drivers with the Mac OS X Snow Leopard CD before downloading them from the Nvida-page? Or do I just have to download the software from the Nvidia-page and leave the Mac OS X CD in it's box?

[Laithe]

Hey guys, I noticed a recent post today so I thought I'd add my 2 cents. I was having this same problem with windows freezing, so here's what I did:

I installed Windows 7 using BootCamp. I installed all the drivers from the OSX CD like instruced. Then I went to nvidia's drivers download page (http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us) and found the most up-to-date driver by searching for the GeForce 9M Series driver. It works with the GeForce 9600M GT in my macbook pro.

This driver fixed all of my problems. It's newer than when this thread started, so I don't need rivatuner or whatever it is. So far it's been 3 days and no more freezin gissues for me.