DazzaG

Q: 24" iMac Screen Freezes since 10.6.3 update - pls help!

I don't know if this is just coincidence or not, but since updating my iMac to 10.6.3 it keeps on crashing. On 3 separate occasions today, whilst using my Mac the screen has gone completely black with thin white lines down it.....see pic below:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/6SYzhCgVYEU5TBKqRfOQ1Q?feat=directlink

The fans and hard disk are still running but it will not respond to any keyboard or mouse presses - I simply have to turn it off by holding the power button in.
It will then restart as usual.

Anyone got any ideas? Do you think that if I was to re-install Mac OS X from my original install disk it could solve the issue?

Thanks

Darren

24" intel imac 2.8Ghz, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Mar 31, 2010 2:43 PM

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Q: 24" iMac Screen Freezes since 10.6.3 update - pls help!

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  • by Harkaitz,

    Harkaitz Harkaitz Aug 11, 2011 11:04 AM in response to johnckendall
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 11, 2011 11:04 AM in response to johnckendall

    johnckendall wrote:

     

    Morpho,

    This is my config exactly. Where did you get this:

    ATIRadeonX2000 Version: 1.6.26.31 (kext version: 6.2.6)

     

    The one I found is 1.6.6 (6.0.6)

     

    That is the only difference I see...

     

    When I tried replacing that kext, the machine would no longer boot.  But maybe your version will work?

     

    You shound not change the ATIRadeonX2000.kext. Doing that you will get a panic.

  • by kremik,

    kremik kremik Aug 11, 2011 2:32 PM in response to DazzaG
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 11, 2011 2:32 PM in response to DazzaG

    Hello,

    after few weeks running my iMac 7,1 with ATI2400 MacOS 10.7 Lion I can say, that original installation was causing freezes. After I replaced KEXTs from 10.6.2 in Lion I have a freeze free system. Not the best solution, APPLE, but it works. This worked for me in 10.6.6 and 10.6.7 too (only 10.6.8 wasn't possible to fix because my iMac couldn't run a 64bit Snow Leopard).

     

    Kremik

  • by Eclipsethegalaxy,

    Eclipsethegalaxy Eclipsethegalaxy Aug 12, 2011 9:02 AM in response to kremik
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Aug 12, 2011 9:02 AM in response to kremik

    I have been on this thread for quite some time and have been following the work around solutions that some of you have come up with. I had my graphics card replaced by Apple a year ago. I now have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 card on my 24 inch iMac, so I have been unable to find the associated kext files for this card. So I am kind of stuck. I just got off the phone with Apple and they admitted, finally, that Apple does NOT follow these discussion threads and the technician I spoke with was unaware of this problem! I told him my screen fragments and then freezes and he started again about checking my RAM chips, graphics card and all that crap. I told him I have had it checked several times and it passes all hardware tests. I don't know how we are going to get Apples attention on this issue.

  • by FredTheTech,

    FredTheTech FredTheTech Aug 12, 2011 11:57 AM in response to Eclipsethegalaxy
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Aug 12, 2011 11:57 AM in response to Eclipsethegalaxy

    Since the gist of this thread has clearly laid out that by this time all possibility of the issue being hardware related has been laid to rest, it may be that somewhere along the way the video driver may have become corrupted, which is different from the driver being programmed incorrectly.  As such, performing a complete backup of all your files in Time Machine (onto an external hard drive), then TOTALLY wiping your internal hard drive clean, and then doing a clean re-install from your original restore CD's may solve the glitch.  After the re-install is completed, create a generic 'admin' account, re-associate your computer with your Apple ID, then re-install Lion.  After that, run 'software update', restart your computer if it asks, then use some of the things that used to crash your system, such as screen savers, youtube videos, and whatnot.  If the crashes do not reoccur, the problem may have been licked, but before deciding all is well, run Migration Assistant and choose to restore from Time Machine, but only allow it to restore your user account(s) and 'other files', but not applications or settings.  After the migration, log in to your restored account(s) and see if the freeze happens again.  If it doesn't, then problem solved.  If it does, then restart the computer and log in to the generic 'admin' account and re-test.  If it only happens while logged in to your restored account, then the issue may be related to some kind of corruption in the user account which followed the backup and restore process, which may be hard to track down.  At that point, the quickest solution would be to migrate your user data to a fresh account that does not include anything from your user 'Library' folder (hidden in Lion).  Now, if you choose to run migration assistant again to restore your applications, and the issue happens, the issue may have followed a corrupt application.  So, I always recommend that you should in fact just re-install your applications from scratch and skip the headache of possibly having to start over, because, after restoring them from backup it is very difficult to weed out issues that may have piggybacked the process.  A freshly installed copy always has the least risk of having to start my entire above process from square one all over again.  Just remember - Backup FIRST! I'm not responsible for any lost data if that step is skipped!

     

    If the above sounded too confusing, then I suggest bringing the computer in to an Apple Store or AASP and asking for the apple-certified technician to do this for you, since I do not like to see people lose their data due to miscommunication.

  • by TK111,

    TK111 TK111 Aug 12, 2011 12:04 PM in response to FredTheTech
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 12, 2011 12:04 PM in response to FredTheTech

    I think the gist is that the problem is software related, but I have this to report somewhat to the contrary:

     

    iMac8,1, ATI 2600 Pro GPU

     

    New GPU was installed under AppleCare on July 2. Since then have had no freezes. Running Lion w/stock kexts since July 21. No freezes.

     

    So my experience would suggest it was a hardware problem.

  • by Phil Bridges,

    Phil Bridges Phil Bridges Aug 12, 2011 12:07 PM in response to FredTheTech
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 12, 2011 12:07 PM in response to FredTheTech

    I for one have done a complete reformat and  fresh install of the the OS and not loaded any data or programs, and STILL has the freeze problem!   Ditto a number of ther posters on this forum I suspect. The 'gist' of this thread as you put it is I'm sorry to say suggests that Apple have some bad drivers after 10.6.3 and it's affected a number of older iMac users.  I never got as far as restoring any data from a backup....

  • by cam.inc,

    cam.inc cam.inc Aug 12, 2011 12:07 PM in response to FredTheTech
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 12, 2011 12:07 PM in response to FredTheTech

    Well, I have clean-installed Lion on launch day and did not install anything nor did I transfer any data back from my external HDD. After two days I had the same problems again, so for me, I think I can exclude a corruption of drivers.

    By the way, no crashes for a week since the kext-fix.

  • by nekosaur,

    nekosaur nekosaur Aug 12, 2011 12:12 PM in response to FredTheTech
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 12, 2011 12:12 PM in response to FredTheTech

    FredTheTech: Amazing advice, very clear and thought out instructions - so thank you!

     

    Unfortunately this was one of the very first things that was tried WAYYYY back in March of 2010. It did not help. There have been a core group of people in this thread with this issue that have all systematically done this for EVERY 10.6.x / 10.7 update that has come out (10.6.3,.4,.5,.6,.7,.8 and Lion) with no help. I am one of those people.

     

    A complete erase, full reinstall from the 10.6 OS disk followed by an immediate combo update with no personal info will inevitibly still causes freezes after a few hours or days.

     

    I personally believe that it is an incompatibility between certain graphics cards and the OpenGL 3.0 update introduced in 10.6.3. It may just be a badly written driver or (my feeling) is a hardware glitch caused by running the card harder with the advanced processes of OpenGL 3.0.

     

    I also believe that there is no "fix" short of swapping out the motherboard with a new improved version of the card. That's not going to happen on machines that are almost ALL out of warranty, even with AppleCare. 

  • by morpho,

    morpho morpho Aug 12, 2011 12:14 PM in response to FredTheTech
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 12, 2011 12:14 PM in response to FredTheTech

    FredTheTech wrote:

     

    Since the gist of this thread has clearly laid out that by this time all possibility of the issue being hardware related has been laid to rest, it may be that somewhere along the way the video driver may have become corrupted, which is different from the driver being programmed incorrectly.

     

    Stack traces captured with stackshot clearly show that WindowServer locks up inside an IOKit call, all other processes hang waiting for WindowServer and the kernel itself dumps a shitstorm of hexadecimal data in the dmesg ring buffer.

    NO user related setting (or application, for that matter) can interfere with the kernel or WindowServer in this way - unless, of course, WindowServer or the kernel GPU subsystem have serious issues.

     

    As for corruption, all updates are checksummed after being downloaded, so either they are already corrupted before the download (and Apple is doing a really bad QA process) or we're back to square one: software regression.

  • by Eclipsethegalaxy,

    Eclipsethegalaxy Eclipsethegalaxy Aug 12, 2011 1:56 PM in response to morpho
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Aug 12, 2011 1:56 PM in response to morpho

    Thanks again to everyone who is so gratiously and politely adding to the thread for this perplexing problem. Knowing that I'm not alone is somewhat comforting.

  • by Eminemdrdre00,

    Eminemdrdre00 Eminemdrdre00 Aug 12, 2011 4:14 PM in response to TK111
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 12, 2011 4:14 PM in response to TK111

    Hey TK111, any idea how much that would have cost without Apple Care? My Apple Care expires next week, and I have the same iMac as you. I've been suffering with this problem but still haven't contacted Apple, because I thought it was a software issue that they wouldn't be able to fix.

  • by TK111,

    TK111 TK111 Aug 12, 2011 6:19 PM in response to Eminemdrdre00
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 12, 2011 6:19 PM in response to Eminemdrdre00

    Yeah, $179.

  • by k3bs,

    k3bs k3bs Aug 13, 2011 6:32 AM in response to DazzaG
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 13, 2011 6:32 AM in response to DazzaG

    Any chance to patch the installer with the working Kext files?

     

    If i boot the Lion Installer Partition my screen goes crazy. Heavy artifacts after the grey apple icon!! Probably right after the (disfunctional) graphic driver is loaded, so i think i need to make my own package using the working drivers. Any hints highly appreciated.

     

    Booting my Snow Partition is okay, but since the most recent updates i have the GPU freezes again and i do have the 10.6.2 kexts active. They used to work on 10.6.7 before... whatever.. I hate apple right now. You hear that, Apple? I hate you!

     

     

  • by k3bs,

    k3bs k3bs Aug 13, 2011 7:23 AM in response to k3bs
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 13, 2011 7:23 AM in response to k3bs

    giving not up so easily!

     

    I have just patched the installer DMG and added the 10.6.2 kext files for my card into the System package of Lion. Rebooted my Mac, switched to Installer Partition and... it works!! now installing lion with preloaded 10.6.2 drivers!

     

    10minutes to go. will verify and report back later.

  • by k3bs,

    k3bs k3bs Aug 13, 2011 8:39 AM in response to k3bs
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 13, 2011 8:39 AM in response to k3bs

    ok, using this method it was possible to run the installer and having lion deploy the correct drivers. I think this is big news to some, unfortunately to me it had no effect. I think i am one of those were the kext replacement doesn't solve the issue entirely.

     

    Here is a complete How-To, for those that are interested.

     

    - duplicate  "Mac OS X Lion Installation.app" for backup

    - run "Mac OS X Lion Installation.app", choose any free partition

    - let it install boot files and restart back into Snow Leopard.

    - right click > "show package contents" of "Mac OS X Installation.app"

    - go to /SharedSupport and open "InstallESD.dmg"

     

    - start your "Disk Utitilty"

    - select the "Mac OS X Install ESD" and click "Convert" (toolbar)

    - set "Image-Format" to "Read/Write"

    - save under a different name (will take a while)

    - eject the original DMG and mount the DMG you created

     

    - open Terminal: cd "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install ESD"

    - do "ls -la" to reveal "BaseSystem.dmg" (hidden file)

    - copy that file to your Desktop: cp BaseSystem.dmg ~/Desktop

    - followed by a "cd ~/Desktop"

    - now make this file visible with: chattr nohidden BaseSystem.dmg

    - doubleclick and mount the BaseSystem.dmg copy

     

    - convert it to Read/Write aswell and save it under a different name

    - eject it and mount the new converted (now writable) BaseSystem image

    - use the Finder and replace the KEXT files inside as you wish

    - extensions are in "/System/Library/Extensions" as usual

     

    - put it back together, in Disk Utility:

    - When your are done replacing Kexts convert the image again

    - This time you choose "Image-Format: Compressed"

    - Save it somewhere, f.ex: ~/Desktop/BaseSystemModded.dmg

    - When it is done, Terminal: cd "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install ESD"

    - Delete the existing "BaseSystem.dmg" with "rm -rf BaseSystem.dmg"

    - Copy your patched DMG with: cp ~/Desktop/BaseSystemModded.dmg BaseSystem.dmg

    - When it's done we have to compress the read/write InstallESD.dmg

    - Go to disk utility and eject all DMGs but the InstallESD

    - Select it and convert with "Image-Format: Compressed"

    - Save it as InstallESDmodded.dmg (this will take a while, 4GB)

     

    - In Finder: show package contents of the Mac OS X Lion Installation app

    - Go the the SharedSupport folder

    - Move/Rename or Delete the original InstallESD.dmg

    - Copy InstallESDmodded.dmg into SharedSupport and rename it to "InstallESD.dmg"

     

    Done! You now have a modded Lion Installation App that will deploy the correct Kext Files for you System

     

    If i wouldn't have done it like described, all i could expirience from Lion would be this:

    http://cl.ly/0P3r2A1G3A3O0m0a0Q0G

     

    Have a nice day

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