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

Hi Kevin,

The Genius was probably booting your machine from that external drive, which has his account & tools on it.

My problem is not peripheral related as my freezes occur with nothing but an Apple wired keyboard and mouse attached (wired or wireless). My freezes also occur in very undemanding graphical usage (e.g. scrolling a page of google results in Safari - just text). Also, in my case, when the freeze occurs, the mouse pointer is always movable, but clicking has no affect, and, if I ssh in from another macchine, most of the background processes on the Mac are still running along as normal.

The crashes have nothing to do with GPU intensive applications, they happen during the most mundane tasks. If you want to find reports of your crashes in the logs, start the Console app from Spotlight, locate your kernel.log and look for lines like:

Nov 11 16:22:48 Yvaine kernel[0]: ** Device in slot: SLOT--1 **
Nov 11 16:22:48 Yvaine kernel[0]: ** GPU Debug Info Start **
Nov 11 16:22:48 Yvaine kernel[0]: 0x00009583
...

There are complete GPU dumps in there.

Hi SaSam,

Agreed. As I mentioned in my post: "My freezes also occur in very un- demanding graphical usage".

And yes, I get the same GPU Debug dumps in the log file.

Anyone know if the GPU Debug dumps means there is a hardware issue? (GPU? main logic board?)
Has anyone shown those GPU Debug dumps to AppleCare or Geniuses? Does it result in hardware being replaced?

I am having the same problem, but I am using Tiger. (yes, tiger). I have done the following:
--Reset PRAM and NVRAM
--Verified the disk
--verified permissions
--Checksumming
--quick hardware check (had to use a new installation disk to get this to work) --no problems found
--extended hardware check--no problems found
It occurs at random--the screen freezes but the hard disk is fine--I can login to that machine remotely. I have to physically turn it off & reboot, and then I get these weird horizontal lines like something isn't refreshing.

Disappointing that there was no fix supplied for our issue on this latest OS-X, fat chance that we will see any future update to resolve this issue.

Since 10.6.3 I now have a unstable computer that can crash at any moment, previous to that the iMac was a dream to use.
As others have reported I see the freezing happen during the least demanding processing such as just clicking on my Firefox browser. And as one other person reported I also got some screenburn on my display.

I also have an 24" iMac.

Since i upgraded to 10.6.3, 10.6.4 and 10.6.5 my iMac screen freezes! I can now only use 10.6.2 which means that i can't install iLife '11 !

I think that it is ridiculous that Apple don't fix it instead of releasing other irrelevant updates!

I think Apple needs to diagnose the problem, so it's very important that you send your bug reports to the Apple Bug Reporter:
https://bugreport.apple.com

I've received a mail by a dude from Apple:
+Engineering needs a full System Profiler Report to investigate this issue.+

+To obtain a full System Profiler Report, select "About This Mac" from the Apple Menu and click the "More Info" button. This automatically launches the System Profiler application. Once the System Profiler application has been launched please follow the steps below:+

+1. Select "View > Full Profile" from the File menu (cmd-3)+
+2. Select "Save" from the File menu (cmd-s)+
+3. Keep the format as 'System Profile'+
+4. Click the "Save" button+

+A System Profiler Report can also be obtained via Terminal using the following command:+

+/usr/sbin/system_profiler -detailLevel full -xml >mymachine.spx+

+This command will create a full System Profiler Report, named "mymachine.spx", which will open in System Profiler on another machine.+

+Please attach the file to your bug report.+

We have to help Apple, to solve the problem.

…and if you have any crashes actually recorded in Console/kernel logs, then save and append them too. The issue it sometimes logs is something like this:
Thu 14 Oct 10 19:53:35 pm kernel ** Device in slot: SLOT--1 **
Thu 14 Oct 10 19:53:35 pm kernel ** GPU Debug Info Start **
Thu 14 Oct 10 19:53:35 pm kernel 0x00009583
Thu 14 Oct 10 19:53:35 pm kernel 0x000000d6
Thu 14 Oct 10 19:53:35 pm kernel 0x00000001……
……??
(Utilities/ Console/ kernel log - save as..., then attach with the system profile and lets all cross our collective fingers...)

The bug reporter does not work for me. It keeps refreshing the page saying "uploading file...please wait" endlessly. I honestly tried.

SeSam wrote:
The bug reporter does not work for me. It keeps refreshing the page saying "uploading file...please wait" endlessly. I honestly tried.

Even if it should work in Safari, you can still try another browser (Opera, Firefox, Chrome)...

Danielo wrote:
Even if it should work in Safari, you can still try another browser (Opera, Firefox, Chrome)...

Which I did...

That's strange.

Are you using a proxy? What ISP do you have?

I wrote a report to Apple using the link provided here and it worked.

I strongly urged anyone having this problem to write to Apple about the problem. Only then can we hope to get a fix. The more the impatience grows and gets itself heard, the more pressure Apple will feel and will, hopefully, find a solution and push it in a next update.

It is properly unacceptable that a two year, almost top-of-the-line machine cannot be updated.

I'm bumping this thread to join the list of people who have had freezes and more on the Imac.

I bought my 24" 2.8GHz Alu 10.6.4 Imac second hand 14 days ago. After using it for a few days, it froze while idling on a webpage in Safari. The screen went (almost) black, and no responce from keyboard or mouse. Had to shut down holding start button for 5 sec. Started up ok after that.

Done SMC and PRAM, but issue reacurring. I have since had freezes with either white screen or just with the webpage freezing. Hard shutdown every time.

After I tried to restart today after a freeze (this time with safari on apple webpage) it tried to boot up again, showed the apple and the 'clock' but then stalled on blue screen. So now I can't startup at all.

The seller couldn't find the original OSX CD's so I ordered 10.6.0 (because of reports of faults ocuuring after 10.6.2) online and I am thinking of trying a boot from disk when I get them.

There is still warranty on the mac til jan 23rd 2011.

Shal I try to boot from disk, or should I turn it to the apple store?

Thanks

-Lars

The funny thing is that Apple has just released an update to Safari 5.0.3 and we can't install it on Snow Leopard 10.6.3! It has to be on 10.6.4 which makes our iMac crash/freeze!

So now it is iLife '11 and Safari 5.0.3 that we can't install......!