Q: System Freezes Randomly after 10.6.3 Update
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Jan 16, 2011 10:57 PMby jzelko,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 AMby Pototo,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. -
Jan 25, 2011 2:00 PMby kremik,Seems that there will be Graphics Drivers included in the 10.6.7 update:
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/01/25/apple-seeds-mac-os-x-10-6-7-build-10j846-to- developers/
I hope it will be the final solution for these freezing problems. -
Feb 15, 2011 7:24 AMby swmaster,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 AMby satori3,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 AMby napabill,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 AMby Nestor Urquiza,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) -
Mar 24, 2011 2:11 PMby jzelko,Hi!
I must admit that I had no problems after installation at the direction of Polish friends. Yesterday I installed 10.6.7 and I hope it will be good. I repeated the procedure with kext because after a clean installation, the screen froze again. Tell if it is incurring any problems. Hi everyone! -
Apr 3, 2011 3:27 PMby Jean Robert Bourdage,I just want to add that my problem is solved. It was a major hardware problem, that was spotted by the application SmartReporter.
I had the hard drive replaced (thank god for AppleCare) and everything is fine.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/smartreporter.html -
Apr 10, 2011 6:07 AMby HBarnes,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 PMby geychaner,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.
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May 15, 2011 6:42 PMby Pardalote,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
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May 16, 2011 7:19 AMby peterbehrens,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…
