iMac Freezing

Do you see this? http://vimeo.com/1384721

In my case, it was the Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT graphics card. The card was failing. I took it in and AppleCare just paid for itself. The price would have been $369 and change for the parts and labor. So if this is happening to you, you probably need a new graphics card.

Read This! Gadget survey finds many bugs can't be fixed
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/bbdp/gadget-survey-finds-many-bugs-cant-be /250002

Ask Avery Griffin, who switched to an Apple Inc. computer a few years ago for its audio recording software. The 24-year-old musician said his new machine wouldn't stop freezing up and crashing. But he said all he heard from Apple was, "At least it's not a PC."
The PC he uses now works just fine, he said.

Just an update on my comments made a few months ago (summer time). This is definitely a heat related issue!!! I have not seen any freezing or weird graphics since the weather started to cool down, and while still having my fans running at about 1500 rpms. Apple, PLEASE resolve this for your loyal customers!!

Same problem, don't know for how long now..but sometimes Imac freezes and other times shows horizontal line(s).
Seems to be very warm (screen)
This should be answered by Apple now !

I'm completely floored after finding this post and some others on the same issue. Add me to the list! I just can't believe this is still going on without any response from Apple!

Here's a post I found with my same graphic issue:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1468905&tstart=0

My imac was purchased one year and two weeks ago. I began having the same problems (horizontal lines and freezing) a few days ago. I contacted Apple yesterday to see if they would be kind enough to set me up on Applecare since my warranty only expired 14 days ago. They said nope. I expressed how I've practically sold several macbook pros and imacs to friends and family, not to mention ipods and iphones and all my itune purchases. But, they said there was nothing they could do.

I will say they give me a complimentary phone call for support. After him running through the usual basic stuff (repair disk, resetting smc, pram, etc), I had to get off the phone.

This experience has shattered any confidence I had in Apple being so great.

I'm so angry. $2300 spent for 1 year!!! How could I ever recommend Apple under these conditions?? As someone else mentioned, I might as well buy two Dells/Windows for that!

I haven't brought mine to apple yet to see what it would cost to replace the board/card, but for right now, it seems as though smcfancontrol is a temporary fix. So far, all day no horizontal lines or lock ups. I modified my fans to the following due to another user having success with them:

ODD - 1055rpm
HDD - 2150rpm
CPU - 1909rpm

I'll post again when I get a quote from apple to see how much it will cost me to replace board/card

I have also been having a problem with my graphics and the computer freezing I dumped all excess into an external hard drive and I am still having this problem. I have been informed that it seems to be a graphics card problem that can be fixed but it is expensive. It seems a flawed graphics card was installed by Mac in some not all of the IMacs but it doesnt seem that Mac will replace and some places are up to $1,000. to replace. Anyone else come up with this conclusion?

What's the latest on this? I've been having freezes on my late 2006 20" iMac (with ATI graphics) since approximately 1st or maybe early 2nd quarter 2008. It was limited to World of Warcraft at the time (or so I thought -- I was doing little else) who recently did a patch -- one that I think changed some of the ways they did graphics. Blizzard suggested I update firmware, graphics driver, etc. and I did. No luck. Fussing around here and there with this intermittent problem got me to July or August 2008 and I started looking for more answers. Try SMC fan control they said. Night and day. I even did tests back and forth. That worked pretty well (but not perfectly). The frequency was greatly reduced.

Now it's Winter 2009 and the lockups are occuring despite the fact that my room isn't Summer hot anymore. Plus they happen when I'm not playing WoW (I play less now thank God!). I need to do some more testing, but I suspect SMC fan control isn't working very well at countering this anymore.

So my conclusions:

1. The fact that SMC fan control worked means at least one problem is heat related
2. It isn't just an NVIDIA graphics card problem. I have ATI
3. Software updates didn't fix it.
4. It is getting worse over time.

Do I assume correctly the graphics card and the motherboard (logic board?) are inseperably connected?
Is anyone getting free repairs out of Apple for out-of-warranty work related to this issue?
And here's my BIGGIE:

WHAT IS THE LIKELIHOOD A NEW LOGIC BOARD WILL FIX THE PROBLEM PERMANENTLY?

Or will I just end up with another bum computer 1-2 years down the road?

And finally, are the new iMacs doing the same thing? (I hope not) I've had so many problems with purchased and home built Winders 'puters over the years that I'll try another Mac before I figure there is no benefit one way or the other. (well, Apple's software is easier to use and more seamless).

I have an early 2008 24" iMac, purchased in May 2008. Been having the same freezing problem as you all have mentioned here. In December, I took the machine to the Genius Bar and they replaced my logic board. Unfortunately, the problem still persisted after it was "repaired". Took it back to the Genius Bar yesterday. They said they wanted to try to replace the logic board (again), power supply, airport card and a list of other things. Luckily one Genius said that she'll talk to her supervisor and see if there is something more they can do for me. Ten minutes later, I walked out of the store with a brand new 24" iMac. I guess I'm trying to say that don't lose faith in Apple. These are still great computers and they still have great customer service. I also want to mention that my PB's logic board was replaced for free even though it was out of warranty.

Yep same frustrating problem here.

I bought my 24" imac (NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS) in august of 2008. After much time spent on the phone with applecare last year, telling me it was a software problem, having the ram replaced, the whole iMac replaced (I'm not done yet), and a bunch of components including the logicboard replaced on the replaced iMac, I thought I was finally in the clear.

I'm not... yet. The frequency of the crashes/freezes and annoying skipping noises has gone down, but has not been eliminated completely. From what I've read it seems to be a problem with the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS cards. So who knows, but I was thinking to just tell them to swap it out for an ATI.

All I want is a working iMac please.

I have exactly the same problem, and it is getting really **** annoying.
Going to the Apple store next weekend, see if i can talk a repair out of them.

This machine is only 2 years old, and even without warranty it should still work.
Apple really let me down with this.

Can anyone one give me a good fan control setting for my 2.16 GHz (white) imac24. I am experiencing the same problem but not too much maybe 10 times a day (horizantal lines) and freezing every 2 weeks or so.

I have the 2.16 too with all the symptoms. Unfortunately the army of evidence on the support forums

is hard to deny now apple. Triangle shaped graphics distortions on the screen, vertical lines, screen

freezes. By the way, apple all the same issue!


I used smc fan-control , quite successfully for almost 7 months, to keep my mac running.

However the freezes began intensifying. I fear because mac osx relies on the graphics card

heavily for everything you see on the screen etc.


The only solution that has now worked for me, has been to installed Windows 7 and deleted Mac

OSX totally.

Im now a PC! But wish apple would just offer repairs, that we so deserve.

I have a new imac too, we are the loyal core of customers that keep buying, despite this massive let
down LOL

I'll add on here.
Bought a 20" Intel iMac in Sept. '06 w/2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI x1600. Running Tiger 10.4.11
Problems started in Nov. '07 with screen tearing & hard crashes. Resolved temporarily by increasing fan speed w/SMC Fan Control.

Fan speed/temp is irrelevant now as frequent hard crashes have returned with horizontal hairlines, strange graphics artifacts & black-screen crashes.

Hardware test shows no problems; RAM test done with Remember shows no problems; I've tossed cache folders, reset pram & finally did an erase/re-install of the OS. Crashes, etc. persist.

An Apple-authorized repair center diagnosed the problem as a graphics card failure -- which, of course, means replacing the logic board.

Apple support via phone agreed that it sounds like a graphics card or logic board failure, but told me this is not a "known problem."

This morning when I tried to use my iMac it was frozen on the screen saver. It would freezes more and more every day. Mostly while playing World of Warcraft. I've read in the forums here and other places on the web about hardware issues with the ATI graphics card that is installed in my iMac. I've also read that Apple put out a firmware update for something like this and that I should've seen it in Software Update if my computer needed it. I'm going to try to download it manually anyway (they say that I'll just get an error message if I already have it installed or I don't need it) to see what happens. It's very frustrating and makes me regret buying it in the first place. I'm going to try running the fan control app from macupdate.com, but I'd much rather have a permanent solution than some quick fix.