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

I just updated to Mac OS X 10.6.5 hoping the issue would be fixed...and it's not. I just had my iMac lock up and my screen turn black. Looks like I'm going back down to 10.6.2 again...:(

This is terrible! I can't use Facetime, I can't upgrade to iLife '11, I won't be able to use the Mac App Store. I'm stuck on 10.6.2 because if I go any higher my Mac will randomly freeze with a black screen, or a white screen, or a white screen with lines. It seems to happen when I use Expose or watch a video, so it must be graphics related right?

There's still no fix for this? I've never had a problem with my Mac until 10.6.3. That's why I'm still on 10.6.2. Would calling Apple help?

no it wont help, they'll just give you some stupid excuse that you installed something lately and thats whats causing the problem , look how many of us have this exact same problem ,i am freakin stuck on 10.6.2 aswell, i cant use facetime or upgrade to ilife 11 WHICH I PURCHASED I didnt know it required 10.6.3 or above, thanks god reverting to 10.6.2 fixed the problem though cuz my imac is out of warrenty.

Message was edited by: lamonsasa

I combo-updated to 10.6.5 (from 10.6.2), but personally, I've only had a few minutes of use with it. My wife was using it this morning and said she's seen it black-screen. Playing the optimist, I'll have to see one for myself before claiming 10.6.5 doesn't fix things, but it's not looking good. I've got 10 days left on AppleCare. I was waiting to see if 10.6.5 would fix things before leaning on Apple. Guess I'll be making the call.

What I'm missing the most is using the new MobileMe Calendar, which requires 10.6.4 or higher.

This is an iMac7,1. Solid as a rock under 10.6.2. Combo 10.6.3 or 10.6.4 was no help. (I've already done all the usual troubleshooting steps - see my previous posts.)

I can only add a +1 to this issue. My 8,1 model iMac (24") does various things from beachballing to grey screen, but mostly just screen freezes as explained here: http://sesam.hu/2010/11/04/24-imac-screen-freeze/

Well, with fingers crossed I did a clean install of 10.6.0 and updated with the Combo update to 10.6.5 from. Everything went fine. Amazing difference in graphics performance - the machine is significantly faster in every area of graphics. (This isn't the "Safari feels snappier" effect either, people. It really is better.)

I had high hopes that the freezing was resolved, but no. No go. A freeze just happened on a fresh install of the OS with NOTHING on it. Again.

Sigh - I give up. Really, I do. I'm done fighting this stupid iMac. I will just buy a new one next year. I was planning on it anyways.

It's related to the video card or Time Machine. I know it. After reading thousands of posts from this site and from various blogs everyone seems to be having the exact same issue. Hard freeze at random points, sometimes with graphic glitches on screen, sometimes with a black screen. The mouse and keyboard can still move, but that's it. I don't think it has anything to do with temperature either. The freezes can (and usually do) happen within 1-2 minutes of waking from sleep. The machine just cannot get that hot that quickly. (I recently opened it up and blew it all out BTW - there's not a speck of dust in the thing!)

In the end, 10.6.6 seems to be an rushed release for nothing more than App Store support. 10.6.7 probably won't be even STARTED until after the Holidays. So realistically, we are looking at the very least another 4+ months with this.

I am just guessing that this affects so few people that it has just become a non-issue for the OSX team. It is on the radar, for sure, but I have a feeling that no engineer really honestly wants to deal with it. They are probably looking at hundreds of man hours of research for an issue that doesn't affect that many people AND would be a fix for machines which have (mostly or soon will) fall out of warranty. It's a non-critical issue for them. Priority none. Maybe it's on the books to be addressed for 10.6.9. Who knows.

So - I'm done. I have better things to do with my life.
I will just stay with 10.6.5, never put my machine to sleep and just set it up so that it reboots every night. I might as well pack this machine up til next year. Case closed.

I have begun to experience system freezes myself again on my ATI Radeon 4850 equipped 24" iMac. While it does not happen randomly (thankfully), I can pretty consistently make these freezes occur even when both the graphics card and CPU have been allowed to cool off. All I need to do is use some graphics intensive program (games seem to do the trick especially) and then attempt to switch to another application via the "Dock" and Voila! Instant screen freeze! Restart requires holding in the power button. This pretty much prevents me from running any applications in the background while I'm gaming, preventing me from receiving email or IMs at the same time. Is this an ATI-only problem? I assume as much since their graphics cards seem to plaque all Apple products with bugs and problems.

Did people who got their hardware replaced see the freezes issue get resolved? I got my iMac in August 2008, it was great with Leopard and it was great with Snow Leopard up until 10.6.2. If I upgrade to 10.6.3, 10.6.4, or 10.6.5 my iMac freezes. Sometimes it takes a couple hours, sometimes it takes a couple of days, but it always freezes. On 10.6.2 or lower I've NEVER had a freezes problem.

I'm also affected by this problem.

You'll have to send your problems to the Bug Reporter of Apple:
https://bugreport.apple.com

They've already fixed a bug, I've submitted. Try your luck!

dude, 16 pages of people who have the same problem is NOT A MINOR PROBLEM, this is a HUGE problem and they have to fix it!!!!!! im pretty sure it will be fixed in OSX LION so i guess we'll just have to wait for that and stick with 10.6.2 until then. i doubt they'll fix this issue in snow leopard

I tried to file a bug report but the **** page just gets stuck on the "uploading files ... please wait" page and keeps reloading it endlessly to no avail. I spent about two hours trying to send it.

I've been scratching my head over these problems since 10.6.4

I've seen the window shadows appear blocky and black
I've had screen freezes

I've had ghosts and blocks and problems.


After 10.6.5, it was worse, but during a screen freeze, I noticed that my wacom tablet mouse was making the mouse jump to the same point on the screen with any click...


on a hunch (after already reseting pram and all the other tired responses so many busy bodies suggest around here), I looked at the wacom tablet pref panel...

I updated the wacom drivers...

the problems disappeared.

then, for good measure, I ran Yasu and cleaned everything

no more glitches for my white 2.16 c2d 24" iMac

Hallelujah!

so at least for me, I can't blame Apple -- the problem was the old WACOM driver.

It doesn't follow intuitive causes, but that's what fixed it for me.

On 10.6.5 freeze again. I've never experienced this thing for my Mac life.
I'm going to do a clean install and update a combo 10.6.5.

still getting the freezing issues on mine after updating to 10.6.5. It only seems to happen if I allow the Mac to sleep though, then when it wakes, it works for a few minutes then the screen acts up (either goes patchy and unresponsive, or the whole screen just goes blank and I have to restart it by holding in the power button)

If I just 'sleep' the display itself it works fine.

Anyone know if this is just a 'sleep' related issue? I'd read through this thread to see if there's a common theme, but I just don't have the patience any more! 😉

Well, Combo 10.6.5 didn't help with my random freezes (app doesn't matter, user account doesn't matter, beachball, mouse moves, keybd does nothing, background process still running), or black screens (behaves same as random freezes, just with a black screen - not off).

With 9 days of AppleCare left, I tried some more radical options I was leaving off the table until 10.6.5 came out. Last night I erased hard drive (by making a new single partition), verified the disk, installed 10.6.3 from retail DVD, and migrated stuff (users, network settings, apps, etc) from my last stable-as-a-rock 10.6.2 Time Machine backup, and combo-update to 10.6.5 + all SW updates. I've already experienced one freeze since the erase-install. Same symptoms I described earlier. This time there was a small black rectangle on the screen covering a portion of my usual desktop pic.

Up until this point I have not chimed in, but I too have experienced this on my 24" imac. The screen will freeze with blue, gray, black, and even multi-colors. It will even just lock the mouse when the screen seems to look as expected. There is also screen burn in. The machine seemed rock solid until about 6 months ago. I found this thread about 2 months ago and have been curiously reading the comments since. I appreciate hearing that I am not the only one is this great big world with the same issue(s). I just wish a solution was available.

I took my imac to our local apple store to see if the genius could replicate the problem. NOPE He ran extensive demanding graphics for over an hour. I would guess well over twenty graphics running simultaneously. Thinking back all he had connected to the machine was an external drive. Not sure what this was for. He also looked at the logs and found NOT even ONE crash had occurred. This seemed strange to me.

I think Mert might be onto something. The more general issue seems that the peripherals AND associated drivers could be an issue. It would be curious to see if the users (frustrated as this might be) responding to this topic have investigated this as a possible solution?