Aug 6, 2011 09:43 GMT  ·  By

The latest update to the operating system of MacBook Pro systems has already stirred its share of conflicting reactions, but it looks like things are more complicated than they first seemed.

Apple customers are probably aware by now of the problems surrounding the update to the OS X Lion, the ones that caused hard disk drive failure.

The company has already set up a program involving USB Stick rescue partitions, but it seems there is something else users might want to learn of.

As recently discovered, the Apple Support discussion thread have filled with crash reports on the same day that Lion became available on the App Store.

Since then, the conclusion was drawn that the MacBook Pro machines made last year and equipped with NVIDIA GPUs are among those worst affected by unfortunate happenings.

The graphics driver that shipped with OS X 10.7 are believed to be behind the kernel issues and system freezes that end in a black blank screen.

Jokes about Black Screens of Death aside, repeated kernel panics are among the most often symptoms, as is the inability to wake up from sleep mode.

It is unknown exactly which graphics functions are behind the issues and how long Apple will take to fix the compatibilities, but a solution, at least, has apparently been suggested.

One needs to travel to ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/ and delete all files containing "windowserver" before rebooting. This should permanently resolve the matter, although the procedure will have to be repeated if an external monitor is regularly connected.

To get the Library folder to show up (Lion has it hidden by default), users need to hold down the option key (in the Finder's Go menu) and use the Go To Folder command. Terminal can also be used to make the folder permanently visible.

Recovery from black screens can also sometimes be done by switching between internal or external displays.

Finally, gfxCardStatus can, reportedly, also force a system to use the integrated Intel graphics and disable sleep mode to prevent the issue from happening.