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

giving not up so easily!

I have just patched the installer DMG and added the 10.6.2 kext files for my card into the System package of Lion. Rebooted my Mac, switched to Installer Partition and... it works!! now installing lion with preloaded 10.6.2 drivers!

10minutes to go. will verify and report back later.

ok, using this method it was possible to run the installer and having lion deploy the correct drivers. I think this is big news to some, unfortunately to me it had no effect. I think i am one of those were the kext replacement doesn't solve the issue entirely.

Here is a complete How-To, for those that are interested.

- duplicate "Mac OS X Lion Installation.app" for backup

- run "Mac OS X Lion Installation.app", choose any free partition

- let it install boot files and restart back into Snow Leopard.

- right click > "show package contents" of "Mac OS X Installation.app"

- go to /SharedSupport and open "InstallESD.dmg"

- start your "Disk Utitilty"

- select the "Mac OS X Install ESD" and click "Convert" (toolbar)

- set "Image-Format" to "Read/Write"

- save under a different name (will take a while)

- eject the original DMG and mount the DMG you created

- open Terminal: cd "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install ESD"

- do "ls -la" to reveal "BaseSystem.dmg" (hidden file)

- copy that file to your Desktop: cp BaseSystem.dmg ~/Desktop

- followed by a "cd ~/Desktop"

- now make this file visible with: chattr nohidden BaseSystem.dmg

- doubleclick and mount the BaseSystem.dmg copy

- convert it to Read/Write aswell and save it under a different name

- eject it and mount the new converted (now writable) BaseSystem image

- use the Finder and replace the KEXT files inside as you wish

- extensions are in "/System/Library/Extensions" as usual

- put it back together, in Disk Utility:

- When your are done replacing Kexts convert the image again

- This time you choose "Image-Format: Compressed"

- Save it somewhere, f.ex: ~/Desktop/BaseSystemModded.dmg

- When it is done, Terminal: cd "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install ESD"

- Delete the existing "BaseSystem.dmg" with "rm -rf BaseSystem.dmg"

- Copy your patched DMG with: cp ~/Desktop/BaseSystemModded.dmg BaseSystem.dmg

- When it's done we have to compress the read/write InstallESD.dmg

- Go to disk utility and eject all DMGs but the InstallESD

- Select it and convert with "Image-Format: Compressed"

- Save it as InstallESDmodded.dmg (this will take a while, 4GB)

- In Finder: show package contents of the Mac OS X Lion Installation app

- Go the the SharedSupport folder

- Move/Rename or Delete the original InstallESD.dmg

- Copy InstallESDmodded.dmg into SharedSupport and rename it to "InstallESD.dmg"

Done! You now have a modded Lion Installation App that will deploy the correct Kext Files for you System

If i wouldn't have done it like described, all i could expirience from Lion would be this:

http://cl.ly/0P3r2A1G3A3O0m0a0Q0G

Have a nice day 🙂

Hey Chris, is everything still running smoothly on your machine?

If so, can you let me know whether you followed the new instructions from swmaster that involve Terminal and are listed here. . .

. . . or did you follow the earlier instructions from KrzysiuTurek, using the same approach we'd been using in Snow Leopard?

Thanks for any help.

Sorry I am just now getting back to you. My machine has been running great since going to Lion with the Kext fixes. I have yet to have a freeze or even a glitch. I used the kext instructions from KrzysiuTurek that I used in Snow Leopard. Some others have tried that approach and couldn't get it to work but I have had no issues!

Everyone, I installed the 10.7.1 update that came out today. Did not help. Hard freeze again.

Made sure to run disk utility and perform a reboot before installing. Install went perfectly fine.

Rebooted the machine as required and had a full screen freeze (no artifacts, mouse still moves) about 20 seconds after the desktop appeared. A new thing happened though - the audio kept playing the keychain/password "unlock" sound about every 5 seconds. Neat feature - I'll be sure to show all of my friends.

Had to hard restart. Figured the sounds my iMac was producing was a just a foreshadowing of the noise that the chains will make in my new mental institution. This is driving me crazy.

So - this is now the TENTH maintenance/OS update that Apple has given us since 10.6.2 and the problem still exists.

Interesting side note:

ATI2400Controller.kext is now 7.4.10 10044

ATIFrameBuffer.kext is now 7.4.10 10044

ATISupport.kext is now 7.4.10 10044

All are dated June 24, 2011

Am I crazy or are these new for 10.7.1?

If they are new then that's cool and all... I love new things....But, they still don't work. Which is kind of a big deal. 😢

Crazy indeed!

As for the sound - i've had a couple of crashes in the 10.6.x's where a jumbled sound (= noise) kept coming out in a circle (i.e like a stuck record). Happened once with Skype and once with the music streaming.

Don't remember now if anyone's already reported this.

HI Everyone,

My first post here but I have been following the thread for sometime now as I too have been having these issues with Snow Leopard - lock ups with/without screen defects. I was hoping it was all over as Lion was working really well with only 1 lock up but in the last couple of days I have been getting loads of lock ups - its so depressing. I did go back to Leopard and ran that for a while and it was faultless. Has anyone had any succees getting apple to listen and help?

This imac is unusable 😠

Keep up the great work with the fixes

imac 20" mid 2007 HD 2400XT 2.0GHz

Hi Everyone,

Becouse many people asking about instruction about kext replacement, I created for you simple "website" with instruction it is inspired by Tazthed, but I added to it some information. As you know my english is not good so if you find some bugs just send me message and I fix it 🙂

Link: http://krzysztof-turek.com/apple/ enjoy 😉

Still freezing with Lion even after the latest revision. 7.0.1 which Apple said addresses some of the issues with lock ups in Safari. Online Apple support doesn't work as the tech help I spoke with is seemingly unaware of the support group thread we have been adding to. I was told Apple does not follow these threads. They are for our benefit only. Even the Apple store that I contacted employs a service technician that was not aware of the kext file work arounds. He said it was above of his level of ability.

Hi Chris and Freezers,

everything's fine. uptime like 15 days.

ok, it was fine until i installed 10.7.0.1 update, which replaced the 10.6.2 ATI kexts, and after 10 minutes of working i fell back to "gpu debug"

reverted to my old saved 10.6.2 kexts, now life is a lot more fun again.

so if you update your mac to the latest Lion, make sure you back up them 10.6.2 kexts, so you can restore them after restart.

KrzysiuTurek: Thank you for this website! I hope that it will help a lot of people in this thread.

Actually you should thank CWGuide (and not me) because he made this tutorial 🙂

I just posted his tutorial again, because some new members didn't know how to replace the kext-files.

I've been running 10.7 on a 24" 8,1 Early 2008 iMac Radeon HD 2600 Pro without any kext updates for three weeks now with no crashes at all. Before freezes about every other day since 10.6.3. Maybe I'm really lucky, but Lion might be an improvement if you have a similar setup. I am experiencing other weird QT playback issues such as dropped frames in and out of Final Cut Pro 6, but at least the system seems stable.

Perhaps you are lucky. I also have an early 2008 iMac with Lion 10.7.1 Apple replaced my Graphics card a year ago to an INVIDIA GeForce card. The kext fix won't work for me as the files in my extensions folder don't match any I saw in the Radeon card fix. I'm still getting freezups, but they seem to be limited to using certain programs. The Safari fix from Apple yesterday seems to have helped, but Google Chrome still hangs up frequently even with their Lion patch. Some but not all screensavers and a couple of Apps also hang up. What I'm thinking is that everyone's system is going to react differently and that there may not be a universal fix that Apple can develop.

Yeah, the GeForce card is for sure a different animal, at least slightly. But if you could go back to the last OS version that didn't give you problems (10.6.2 for most here, it seems) and take the applicable kexts from that version for your machine, and then reinstall Lion and install those applicable kexts by the same method as outlined in this thread, then you should have an equivalent solution that might work. I would think (but don't know for sure) that the kexts for your GPU would show up there. You might be able to install 10.6.2 on a separate hard drive and then use the kexts for your Lion install.

Otherwise, maybe try getting rid of Flash. Google Chorme has its own version of Flash built in. There is an extension called FlashtoHTML5 for Safari that works for most things on YouTube and other places. I tried running without Flash for a while using just that and didn't have too much of a problem. But I've reinstalled it for now and still haven't had any problems since new ATI 2600 (hope hope hope that keeps up).

Wow. I think you may have solved my problem. I have been using Google Chrome since 10.6.2 but have now deleted it and went back to Safari. 4 hours without a freeze. Which is a record for me. Fingers crossed. Thanks TK111.