Q: Late 2006 iMac, Lines, Kernel Panic, Freeze, Reboot, Restart, Serial W8 ?

Upon purchase of this machine I was intending to retain the iMac as my primary desktop computer till around 2011/12 where I'd take advantage of new tech. A five to six year lifespan for a computer of supposedly (and advertised) superior build quality is reasonable I believe.

To have computers failing 3 years and 6 months into use left, right and centre is awful and I believe that as a general rule people would believe $2500 desktop computers treated kindly would not die so suddenly.

I'm unsure of the delicate tidbits regarding my statutory rights as an Australian consumer, though from what I have gathered I know that the late-2006 iMacs breaches the statutory right detailed at http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/815362.

"Under the Trade Practices Act, you may seek a refund if a statutory condition is breached. This means that you may be entitled a refund if the goods you purchased... become faulty through no fault of your own"

The first five characters of my serial number are W8635.

Horizontal lines appearing on screen, randomly coloured pixels appearing on screen, frequent freezes whenever certain GPU tasks are performed (nothing too intensive either, simply watching a 10mb file on Quicktime would occasionally cause the system to freeze/crash) and many more issues. Initially I thought it may of been a software issue so I reformatted my hard drive, after reinstalling everything the problem lingered.

GaBeech wrote:
iMac's are not sold as having a 3-4 year life span. If a lot malfunction in the same way after 3-4 years use, I think it should of been listed along with all the other features.

AFAIK, Apple doesn't have a real time machine so it would be a little hard to list what might happen 3 to 4 years into the future as a "feature."

But seriously, the best Apple (or anybody else) can do is design for some average longevity target for a reasonable manufacturing cost. Say that target is 5 or 6 years. Some will still fail at the 3 or 4 year mark, just as some will not fail after 7 or 8 years of use. But raising the minimum longevity target to closer to 5 or 6 years gets very expensive very quickly -- think "mil spec" parts that make military grade electronic components cost several times what regular ones do.

There is no way most consumers could afford anything like this. Consumers already complain that Macs are too expensive, when in fact feature for feature they are very competitively priced, especially in the iMac line, & the TCO (total cost of ownership) has been shown time after time to be lower than for PC's.

I know it is no fun to be one of the unlucky ones (been there, done that) but the alternative is much higher prices, a smaller installed user base, & much worse economies of scale. I don't think anybody really wants that.

I am seeing the same. Random freezes, random horizontal lines, random graphical glitches.

Serial number begins W8603

The machine is 4 years old but I'll be pretty disappointed if there is no resolution to this.

Hope this helps. W8640xxxxx

24" iMac

serial - W8745
OS - Snow Leopard 10.6.3

problem: just over a year of having my computer the harddrive died and I had to have it replaced by Apple. Things were going fine until a couple months ago when I purchased a Magic Mouse. That is when I noticed my computer freezing to the point I had to power it down by holding the power button down. This only happened for a show amount of time and disappeared.

That is until about 2 weeks ago...I noticed my computer freezing again when it would go into sleep mode. I could not wake the computer up by moving the mouse, I would always have to hit esc and it would bring up my screen, I could move the mouse again, but I could not click anything. Other times I would be using Photoshop CS5 or Illustrator CS5 and it would freeze while switching between CS5 and another program (I also noticed I cannot double click the taskbar of Photoshop CS5 to make it minimize...but that's probably unrelated).

So...I figure it is either my Magic Mouse or possibly Time Machine.

have verified/repaired disk and permissions, reset SMC/PRAM, everything I can find online.

Really wish I could figure this out because I'm worried my computer is going again and I've only had it a little over 2 years...that is not what I was expecting with a $2000 machine, and I really can't afford to purchase a new one at the moment.

GaBeech,

Count me as one of the affected. My serial no. is W8635xxx. My problems started about 3-6 months ago and are virtually the same as yours. Ever increasing system freezes, ever increasing horizontal lines, cursor that can be moved but nothing else can be done, etc., etc.

The problems seem to clearly increase as temperature rises, so I’ve done what I can to keep temperatures as low as possible in order to nurse my iMac along and postpone the inevitable purchase of a new machine. This includes monitoring temps using iStat Pro, first installing SMC Fan Control and then more recently iMac Fan Control in order to raise default minimum fan speeds, vacuuming and blowing through vents in an effort to remove some of the accumulated dust on internal components, and changing my screen saver and energy parameters (in System Preferences) so that the system goes into Sleep Mode after a very short period of inactivity.

As an aside, many have posted that when these “freezes” have occurred, their Macs appear to still be running, they just can’t do anything else, and have to do a manual reboot. Ongoing cursor control during a freeze seems to suggest that. Several days ago I had an episode that seems to add more credence to this notion. I was watching an online video on one of the cable network shows when my screen froze. The audio continued just fine in spite of the apparent system freeze. I was able to listen to the entire video until it completed. Interesting.

Let me finish by saying I applaud your efforts and, perhaps more importantly, your perseverance. There are those on these forums that clearly don’t like to hear any suggestions of Apple design flaws or nonfeasance. One needs a bit of a thick skin to slog on in the face of attempts to shut down discussion.

I'd like to add my computer to the "problem" list".

iMac white 24" 2.16 Intel Core 2 Duo
Running 10.4.11
Serial W8636xxxx
Purchased late 2006
No longer covered by AppleCare.

I have been dealing with these issues about a year and a half now. I've run Disk Warrior on the machine, with no result or issues found.

Issues the same as previously listed...
Graphic lines/artifacts through windows, colored patches, and blurring of application windows.

Freezes/crashes often, especially after using anything graphically intensive (such as Photoshop, or anything with video). Sometimes the freeze happens slowly, sometimes it's immediate. All on-screen activity will stop for a moment or two, except a spinning cursor.
Screen will freeze, then the black "you need to restart your computer" crash curtain will come down. Can restart, but get the black curtain again immediately. Have to wait several hours before I can reboot without it crashing.

Have installed SMC Fan control, and it helped some, but the crashes still happen almost daily. I plan to use an external fan, and hope that will help. This is my primary desktop machine. To say it's been frustrating is a huge understatement.

As for "life expectancy" of this computer, I have 14 jewel-toned and graphite iMacs in my classroom from the mid 90's that run perfectly, as well as a first generation flat iMac that I use at work (previously my desktop, until I upgraded to this machine). I am a longtime Apple user (mid 80's) and have never had this type of obsolescence happen before. I see no reason to accept "3-4 years" as an allowable lifespan for an Apple product.

Think I might have a fix for some people...

redownload the 10.6.3 download from Apple (which can be found here http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1018)

then install that, which reinstalls all drivers.

Finally download and burn a DVD of TechTool Deluxe (i believe this was on my AppleCare page) and then run the DVD by rebooting your computer and holding down C until you see the grey apple screen.

I ran the main tests and then reran them with a "surface test" which takes forever.

Since doing this I have not had any freezes.

Quid,

Can you elaborate why you believe this might help? Is this directed only to those not on 10.6.3 already, or are you suggesting that re-downloading fixes some sort of glitch in a first download of 10.6.3???

Was explaining to my friend about my freezing issues and that I thought it was related to 10.6.3 and he said he had similar problems a bit ago. Someone told him to reinstall 10.6.3 and it worked. figured I would do the same and it worked for me (so far - as in have not had any issues since reinstalling it). I had tried everything else so far and nothing worked, so I figured I would give it a try. He mentioned something about it reinstalling drivers I believe. Did not have to reformat or anything, just mounted the file and installed.

You can see the issues I was having above, this was directed to those on 10.6.3 that were having freezing issues. I am not sure if this will do anything with the graphics glitches people were experiencing as I did not have any of those.

The link I provided as you see is an Apple.com link with a download in the upper right corner. Mainly used for developers I believe, but it is available for anyone that needs to download the update.

10.6.4 came out today, so maybe no one will need this. Just trying to offer help that was offered to me and seemed to work.

Quid,

Thanks for the clarification. One other question, did you run TechTool Deluxe before re-installing 10.6.3? If so, were the results different from those after the re-install?

This all might turn out to be a moot issue now that 10.6.4 is out - let's hope so.