MBP i7 crashes

Question

I own a MacBookPro (15” i7, 4GB, 10.6.4) and having problems with "random" crashes. These crashes occur in different situations. In all cases the screen turns black and any sound that was playing in the last couple seconds will loop while the screen is black. The computer is frozen and the only solution I to hold down the power button and then restart the machine all over.
These problems might have started when I attached an external screen to my MBP with a MiniDisplayPort-DVI cable. Now I don’t use an external screen anymore but the problem remained.
A few examples when the problem can occur (most of the time I don’t have a problem while doing these operations):
-When working in Photoshop (same for CS4 and CS5) and doing simple commands like trying to warp an image.
-When I was watching something in Silverlight in fullscreen and left the fullscreen (esc).
-When I watched a movie in Quicktime and wanted to see this in fullscreen.
-When I’m starting up the system and directly start up GoogleEarth or PhotoBooth.
I performed the (extending) hardwaretest and it came up clean. I read about similar problems but I'm still not sure what the problem is and what I should do.
I hope someone can help me.

Answer 1

Hi,
I bought a new 2010 MBP 15" Intel Core i7 about 6 weeks ago and I'm very disappointed with it as it crashes quite often. Twice today in the space of an hour.
It seems to happen if I use it then leave it for a short time then when I come back to it everything is frozen. The mouse doesn't respond, nothing responds. I have to press the power button to switch it off and reboot. It doesn't happen all the time but it is getting more frequent and very annoying.
I switched to the macbook after years of windows because I was lead to believe they are more stable so you can imagine how disappointing this is.
Does anyone know why this is happening?
Rgds
Paul