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

Many thanks, Chris. I am going to take the plunge.

I see that Apple released an iMac Graphic firmware update for Lion today. Anyone installed this yet? It is unclear to me whether it addresses the freezes in older iMacs, or other Lion/iMac problems, or both. But if I could finally upgrade to Lion and sell my iMac with a clear conscience that would be great.

I tried, but it's not for the iMac 8,1 😐 hopefully we get a fix soon.

nor it is for them imac7,1s...

anyway, 10.6.2 ati drivers rock on lion (10.7.1)

had to switch to chrome though as safari's web cache process eated up all my 4Gig ram.

but that's some other story.

Also solid as a rock on 10.7.1 with the 10.6.2 drivers - been working for days and days now with no issues - thank you!

Unfortunately that firmware update is for 12,1 iMacs.

Still freezing here on 10.7.1 😟

Same here... Still crashing..

9,1 with

NVIDIA GeForce GT 130

Any genius kext fixes out there?

2008 24" iMac/Lion 10.7.1 NVIDIA GeForce GT 130. My crashing only occurs with anything using FLASH.

Google Chrome, Skype etc. Safari has an extension available which blocks web Flash content. Perhaps you can try some of these things. The Safari crashing ended with the last Lion update.

I'm just joining in here, but I've been suffering the freezing issue on my 8.1 2008 iMac ever since 10.6.3.

Running 4GB memory, my processor is the 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, and most importantly of all the graphics card is the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro.

I'm running on 10.6.8 version right now, and in no rush to go to Lion yet (unless the latest software update fixes my issues on my older iMac)

I back up using Time machine every hour.

Question is, can I use the same files posted on this original post (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2384136?threadID=2384136&start=405&tstart=0) on my iMac.

I'm currently gettting really annoyed with my iMac and starting to doubt the hardware, I even steer away from running Aperture, even iCal at times due to concern that it will freeze. I'm eager to go ahead and try this fix, but I'm no expert so as simple as possible works best for me.

I've been running smcfancontrol but it really does little, apart from showing me live what the temp is and for me to watch how quickly it rises up...

Many thanks...

The answer is in this thread, but it's pretty long, so:

You can use that fix on 10.6.8 if you set your iMac to run in 64 bit OS. The instructions are in this thread. Otherwise people report kernel panics using the fix in 10.6.8 with OS set to run in 32 bit.

Otherwise, people report that the fix also works on Lion, which runs 64 bit by default.

Thanks,

I'm already running in 64 bit, so I'll give it a try tmrw evening...Fingers crossed...

Hi. I did the 10.6.2 KEXT replacement in 10.7. If I update to 10.7.1 will I need to do the KEXT fix again?

Thanks

@darrynfromregina:Yes you have to do it again.

I removed Google Chrome from my mac a few days ago and the ammount of frezes have significantly decreased. I've only got frezes on the Deviantart site (for some odd reason)

Anyone with Google chrome on their machine should try uninstalling it for a bit to see if they notice a difference.

Also in other news my pc has started having random freezes now 😐

Do you folks think I have the same problem as most of you? At seemingly-random times, the screen freezes. The screen goes black, or gray, or striped, or remains "frozen" on whatever happened to be on-screen. No mouse or keyboard input has any effect. Perhaps differently than others' reports, the mouse arrow doesn't move and I'm unable to SSH into the machine from another.

I have:

iMac 8,1 (24" Alu iMac, "Early 2008)

2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo processor

ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro

Mac OS X 10.6.8

Apple Hardware Test (extended) shows no hardware problems

Unlike most (all?) of you, I never noticed the problem on 10.6.3 through 10.6.8 until I left the iMac disconnected from power for a week while I went on vacation. When I came back, the problem started, and occurs once or twice a day. (One other thing I did just before leaving on vacation was to install, use, and uninstall the current Parallels demo, but I doubt that has much to do with it.) My temperatures for CPU temp diode and graph. temp. diode seem to stay in the 40's and 50's (Celsius), so I don't think that's the problem.

I've read the entire thread (I think), and am considering the ATI kext solution, but read that I would have to run the kernel in 64-bit mode. I don't want to go to Lion yet, and I'm hesitant to make these "big" changes in my system, which has run practically flawlessly since 2008.

Does it sound like I've got the same problem?

Are there any other steps I should take before I try the kext solution?

Regards,

Brian33.