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

Hi jaycee1980, here comes the data of my affected imac8,1 with ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro:

Revision ID: 0x0000

ROM Revision: 113-B2250L-259

Just to add my 2 cents as an Apple tech,  If a machine were to come into my office with these issues, First thing I would suspect is a bad GPU.

Obviously I would test the unit with diagnostics and see if it faulted of one of my OSs, but my gut instinct would say that many here have one of 3 things wrong with their systems: faulty GPU, faulty logic board or faulty RAM.  Best thing to do is to get the machine serviced.

To those who have had service only to have the problem return: believe me, it frustrates techs as much as it frustrates customers to see a machine that was fixed come back a few days later with the same issue

combrains, the frustrating thing is, my affected iMac (with Radeon 2400) has no GPU issue in 10.6.3 or in Windows 7 - I have thrashed it with several GPU "torture" tools under Windows, checked VRAM, and everything is fine, no graphics corruption, no freezes. The GPU is definitely working hard as the fans spin up and the machine gets a lot warmer than normal.

Also, if the GPU was faulty, the issue would not go away when you revert to the earlier kext's. It is quite clearly a driver issue perhaps caused by some hardware/firmware errata, but it IS fixable. Apple are simply not interested and want people to buy new hardware, which is unacceptable.

My affected GPU is: Vendor: 1002, Device 94C8, Revision 0

ROM revision   113-B22503-X26C

Hi Jaycee

Have been getting the freezes since 10.6.3. Now I have 10.7.1 - same problems, solved with the Kext fixes.

Here's my computer specs:

iMac 7.1

Graphics card: ATI 2400

Revision ID:    0x0000

ROM Revision: 113-B2250A-207

I was getting the freezes every day (at cool CPU temps).  Now "resolved" by running OS X 10.6.8 in 64-bit mode with the 10.6.2 Kext fixes.

My affected machine (same as Tardigrada):

iMac 8,1

Graphics card:    ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro

Revision ID:        0x0000

ROM Revision:   113-B2250L-259

Here is the info for my affected iMac 7.1:

ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT:

Chipset Model:    ATI,RadeonHD2400

Revision ID:    0x0000

ROM Revision:    113-B2250A-207

Working fine with Lion 10.7.2 and kext 10.6.2.

Mine is iMac 8,1

  Boot ROM Version:          IM81.00C1.B00

  SMC Version (system):          1.29f1

  Chipset Model:          ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro

  Type:          GPU

  Bus:          PCIe

  PCIe Lane Width:          x16

  VRAM (Total):          256 MB

  Vendor:          ATI (0x1002)

  Device ID:          0x9583

  Revision ID:          0x0000

  ROM Revision:          113-B2250L-259

  EFI Driver Version:          01.00.259

  System Version:          Mac OS X 10.7.2 (11C74)

  Kernel Version:          Darwin 11.2.0

ATI extensions all 7.2.9

8d and 18h now. But very disappointed to hear that no one else seems to have shared this unexpected

stability without the 10.6.2 kexts or bumped up fans.

Thank You! This worked for me :-)

Has anyone checked out this article?

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1293

The update can be found here: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL71

I would recommend reverting to the original kexts for your OS after running the update.  I can see a couple of you who have posted you profiles here have not yet run this update - hopefully this should fix for most of you

HTH

This update is for iMac 8,1 only, and it looks like all of those reported here are up-to-date.

I tried the newer 1.0.2 variant, but it says my iMac doesn't need it …

BTW: Is it possible to downgrade the firmware? Who knows, maybe the problem is a firmware regression.

Tardigrada wrote:

 

I tried the newer 1.0.2 variant, but it says my iMac doesn't need it …

Somewhat interesting, the log entry says:

Installer[49873]    Package Authoring Warning: Package reference does not include required hash for package id auto.

Is that update broken?

Thanks, combrains for the idea.  According to my ROM Revision, I've already got it applied to my iMac 8,1 -- which makes sense because I've always installed whatever Software Update served up to me.  I also remember another graphics update becoming available and being disappointed that it wasn't offered to my iMac... it must have been the 1.0.2 variant, as I specifically remember it as being "advertised" as applying to only some iMac 8,1 systems.

Hi Jaycee,

I have a ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro with the following:

Revision ID:          0x0000

ROM Revision:          113-B2250L-259

EFI Driver Version:          01.00.259

I've contacted Applecare again (twice) and I'm still waiting to hear back from them after the support specialist said he would check with his "engineers" after I sent videos of my frozen iMac and a description of the kext fix. That was almost 3 weeks ago now.

Still waiting...

I'm still confused as to why the freezing screen occurs with other graphics cards as well as the Radeons. I have a NVIDIA GeForce Gt130 card, which was replaced a l

ittle over a year ago. The freezing increased with every update. By the time I got to Lion 10.7.2 the lock ups were at a frequency of several times an hour. It would consistently freeze waking up from sleep mode. I noticed how incredibly hot my computer was one day and downloaded 'FANCONTROL' for Mac for free. I increased fan speed marginally. My now cooler CPU NEVER freezes. Even when I tax it to the max. I have done nothing else to my Kext files. I have spoken with a number of Apple service technicians and all seem unaware of the issues we are discussing. None have read these feeds.

As the Radeon related freezes discussed here are

• independent of the sleep mode,
• independent of CPU/GPU temperature,
• independent of playing video, flash, whatever,
• but dependent one the kext versions,

I would say that the GeForce issue really is a different one. I understand that one doesn't want to suffer all alone, but why don't you just open a new thread for the GeForce issue? Please don't understand me wrong, but for the Radeon people (which are beyond e.g. cooling their CPU/GPU) this is just extra noise to be filtered out …