System Freezes Randomly after 10.6.3 Update

Hi,

I have seen other people post various other problems they have experienced after 10.6.3. But I want to dedicate this thread specifically to Macs freezing randomly during operation after applying the 10.6.3 update.

It has happened twice in the past 24 hours. While using my iMac, the system becomes unresponsive and exhibits the following symptoms:

1. Though the mouse pointer moves, I cannot click on icons, links, select text or interact with anything using the mouse.
2. The system is also unresponsive to key presses on the keyboard, whether they be individual key presses or pre-defined keyboard shortcuts.
3. The only way to make the system respond is by holding down the power button until the iMac shuts down.

I cannot tell if the problem is related to the specific activity I was performing on the Mac - the freezing may seem random to me but it could be caused by the same event (maybe Flash, Javascript, or some background program)

If you are having the same issue, please post here by copying and pasting the text below and entering your answers:

1. Problem started happening after 10.6.3 update? Yes/No
2. Did you get any errors during 10.6.3 update process? Yes/No
3. Mouse cursor moves? Yes/No
4. Mouse clicking does nothing? Yes/No
5. Keyboard key presses do nothing? Yes/No
6. Only way to re-animate system is by holding down power button? Yes/No
7. Mouse/Keyboard Model?

I'll fill in mine to start:
1. Problem started happening after 10.6.3 update? Yes
2. Did you get any errors during 10.6.3 update process? No
3. Mouse cursor moves? Yes
4. Can you click anything with the mouse? No
5. Does the system respond to keyboard key presses? No
6. Only way to re-animate system is by holding down power button? Yes
7. Mouse/Keyboard Model? Magic Mouse/Apple Aluminum KB w/number pad

iMac 24" (Late 2008), Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Mar 30, 2010 11:06 PM

Reply
682 replies

Jan 16, 2011 10:57 PM in response to Rince83

Hi everyone!
I am under the direction of Krzysiu Turek made yesterday and so far I doing well. I think that it is not so dangerous, if careful, to the proceedings. So far, said after the update has served more than two days, I hope that it will now longer. If a man thus saved me hassle!
Tell after a few days how things are going.

Jan 19, 2011 10:44 AM in response to jzelko

Greetings!

I managed to solve my iMac's freezing problem by installing a small piece of software called *smcFanControl 2.2.2* ( http://www.eidac.de/?p=134). Its purpose is to control the fans of an Intel Mac to make it run cooler.

Before installing smcFanControl I used to get freezes accompanied by a spinning wheel and weird screen patterns on a daily basis.
More than a month later, I'm happy to report that I've been completely freeze-free (and I do a lots of "heavy" graphics, daily).

Here's what I did: after installing smcFanControl, I changed the initial values (fan speeds) in the program's preferences as follows:

ODD 1000 RPM
HDD 1300 RPM
CPU 1500 RPM

And that's it! 🙂

As many of you have pointed out, the freeze problem has something to do with the graphic card, but since there is no way of controlling the GPU fan inside aluminum iMacs, upping the minimum fan speed of all other fans cools the iMac inside, including the problematic GPU.

The only (minor) downside to this is that upping your fans' speeds, makes your iMac a little bit noisier, but that's not worth mentioning considering the alternative. 🙂

I hope this helps.

Feb 15, 2011 7:24 AM in response to kremik

the freeze issue was hitting me hard until i maliciously downgraded the ATI kexts.
it is worthwhile to mention, that the device is not frozen, but the GPU. so if one
enabled remote access via ssh (VNC doesn't work), you can log in, so you can shutdown
the computer properly. (sudo shutdown)

but it's the right time to revert to the old drivers, it's easy like 1-2-3. here's a walkthru for it.
if you're logged in via SSH remotely, just type the following commands.
otherwise open a terminal on your affected iMAC.

!use "kextstat | grep ATI" to check what kind of kexts need to be reverted.

imac% kextstat | grep ATI | grep Controller
75 0 0x14a5000 0x97000 0x96000 com.apple.kext.ATI2400Controller (6.2.6) <74 73 14 13 5 4 3 1>

!note, that it uses the ATI2400Controller kext. If you have a better iMAC, your output may differ. but you just have to remember the number.

insert your 10.6.0 snowleo disk.

imac% sudo sh
imac# cd /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ DVD/System/Library/Extensions

!replace ATIXXXXController with the number you saw when doing kextstat, in my case it was 2400

imac# tar cfp - ATIFramebuffer.kext ATISupport.kext ATIXXXXController.kext | (cd /System/Library/Extensions; tar xpvf -)
imac# cd /
imac# diskutil eject /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ DVD/System/Library/Extensions
imac# shutdown -r now

and enjoy the freeze-free 10.6. lets cross them fingers, so apple rolls out with a big shot in 10.6.7
but honestly, i've been hoping all along since i bumped into the bug with 10.6.3...

Feb 24, 2011 11:35 AM in response to kremik

I have communicated with someone with access to 10.6.7 and confirmed that it does not fix flicker and hangs when using two or more accelerated apps on hardware with nVidia graphics.

How can I get Apple's attention in writing on this? I shouldn't have to go through their telephone support system. This has been broken since at least 10.6.5, maybe before.

Mar 14, 2011 11:06 AM in response to sherifhanna

Hi, All. I've been on this topic for some time and just wanted to mention what has worked (sort of) for me. After venturing into 10.6.3 and 10.6.4 and having five-six freezes per day, I went back to 10.6.2. Even then I suffered an occasional freeze, so after many other things I installed smc Fan Control. What I noticed was that my system started to become unstable when the CPU temperature approached 109°F, and freezes happened when the temp got to around 115°F. After fiddling the fan speed settings it finally occurred to me (yeah, I'm a little slow) that perhaps I hadn't cleaned out the vents recently. After blowing out all the vent openings the temp dropped from an average of 103 to around 83-90, and so long as I keep an eye on the temp readout and quit apps like Google Earth when they start going up everything is Jake!

I've pretty much decided that my Late 2006 (bought in April of 2007) iMac just is not compatible with the way 10.6.3 and later use resources, and my AppleCare ran out a month before the 10.6.3 upgrade, so I'm looking at a new Mac in a month or two.

Mar 18, 2011 1:42 AM in response to sherifhanna

On Feb my MBP got the motherboard replaced after several crashes where it would simply suddenly shutdown (posted several times on a hijacked thread http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964)

After a month I am back to a previous problem: It will hang, steady led, black screen and totally unresponsive. In this case I have to force a power button 10sec shutdown.

There is clearly something wrong (version 10.6.6)

Apr 10, 2011 6:07 AM in response to automaticit

I'm seeing same issue, If VMWare is running when I put my Mac to sleep it is almost a guarantee it will hang when I wake it. If I run VMWare at all & then shut it down, again I've noticed it will hang after sleep. As long as I don't use VMWare I have no issues at all, it is becoming very frustrating. VMWare hasn't updated their software in a very long time, thinking maybe they have no clue it is broken. It seems to have come along with one of the OS X updates, maybe 10.6.4 or 5, got worse with 6. I'm not sure why VMWare hasn't updated their software in forever but it's beginning to get on my nerves as the issue is definitely on their end.

May 2, 2011 5:02 PM in response to swmaster

I have an iMac 7,1 (20", 2.0 Ghz, ATI2400), and have been experiencing many of the problems noted in this thread:

  • Screen turns dark with Mac still running (can be logged into remotely), as though about to go to sleep.
  • Screen turns white with colored vertical pinstripes, computer still running.
  • Screen freezes, but sounds continue to play (frequent when using Parallels).

I tried a few things, which seemed to cause less frequent crashes, but did not get rid of them:

  • Removed iStat Menus from the machine. 😟
  • Removed the Logitech and Kensington trackball drivers.

In the end, I still had freezes. I applied the solution posted (kext downgrade); I hope this solves the freezing problem (won't know for a few days, obviously). Thanks to whoever posted the 10.6.2 kext files; I was a late adapter of Snow Leopard, and have a 10.6.3 install disk as part of the boxed set.

I did notice that in addition to the three listed kexts, my machine also leads ATIRadeonX2000.kext; I did NOT replace this file, nor did I replace the seemingly associated bundles in the /System/Library/Extensions folder (not having a 10.6.2 copy of them). Will try to post an update if it freezes again, or in a week if I can go that long without freezes.

May 15, 2011 6:42 PM in response to sherifhanna

The very same thing has been happening to me for the last six months, but I have been putting up with it. However a few minutes ago there was a variation where I was closing an application (Thunderbird) and the screen froze as it was "peeling back" - see attached pic.


On a few occasions in the past when the lockup occurred the screen was a series of coloured vertical stripes. This was reminiscent of my PC/Windows days when it would represent a graphics memory problem. Probably the majority of the freezes have occurred when I have been doing something that is moderately graphics intensive, but in a few cases I have only been using a word processor.


In response to Sherifhanna's questions:

1. Problem started happening after 10.6.3 update? Yes

2. Did you get any errors during 10.6.3 update process? No

3. Mouse cursor moves? Yes

4. Mouse clicking does nothing? Yes

5. Keyboard key presses do nothing? Yes

6. Only way to re-animate system is by holding down power button? Yes

7. Mouse/Keyboard Model? Magic Mouse and Aluminium Keyboard


User uploaded file

May 16, 2011 7:19 AM in response to sherifhanna

Hi, i'm back to 10.6.2, for the second time now. first got random freeze with white screen or just frozen one after the update to 10.6.3. now, quite one year later i tried the 10.6.7 update with the result of much more freezes. i also made the written graphic extension downgrade - but without any succes. my iMac is the 2008, 2.8ghz intel version with ati 2600…

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System Freezes Randomly after 10.6.3 Update

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