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

what is the reset SMC trick?

how to erase and install back snow? leopard?

thanks

Don't bother, those aren't solutions. Have to wait until Apple realizes there's an issue with their software updates.

We have to wait until Apple realizes? 10.6.3 is from March 2010, i.e. approx. 700 days of freezes for those who are just waiting. This is a never ending winter. Our machines are just outdated, not worth any care or updates. That's it. No place for the old.

I changed my RAM too thinking that was it, but my iMac still freezes, hangs and crashes at random intervals 😟

Two recognised Apple repair shops have looked at it for lengthy periods of time but couldn't get it to fail.. within hours of me getting it home (from both repair shops) it either hung at startup (black screen) or crashed as it was booting up..

Given up on Apple ever repairing this to be honest - shame that they've dented the faith of so many loyal customers though..

Well, I said I'd be back in a week with how 10.7.3 worked out.

Does this tell you anything?

Yup, that's the screen I get, looks good! I think I'm going to make it my display picture hahaha.

I guess this is one of the biggest issues with owning an Apple. The amount of time it takes them to address an issue that may or may not be theirs?

But they have so much **** money, why don't they just take back one of our iMacs and find the issue if they're having so much trouble...

Probably a waste of time, but has anyone tried the 10.8 Mountain Lion preview to see how that works out?

As we speak, I'm running a clean install of 10.6.8 on a separate partition on my freezing iMac. No other software will be installed. I will try to use it often enough to make it freeze in order to send the information to Apple.

And, if the probem persists, ¿Does the 10.6.2 kexts still work on Mountain Lion?

I've completely given up and switched to Windows 7 64bit on my iMac. Strangely enough, the default bootcamp graphics drivers were a bit of a disaster and kept crashing in the exact same manner as Mac OS (Black screen, BSOD, or just frozen) - But unlike Mac OS, Windows 7 has the ability to restart the graphics driver without restarting the machine...

But I ran a little experiment and updated to ATI's latest catalyst (graphics) drivers and it's strangely cured all my stability problems under Windows. This adds even more weight that the drivers that ATI supplied to Apple are just crappy, and ATI nor Apple have actually done anything about it.

And yet even more bizarrely ATI seem to have fixed their drivers to run Windows 7 even with full aero without a single problem. My iMac has been running Windows 7 for four nonstop days without any issues.

I've been a devout Apple user for about 5 years, but now I'm Windows 7 on all my macs.

Hi, I can appreciate your grief. I don't know if you've read back through this thread, but the problem is with the ATI drivers that have shipped for these iMacs since 10.6.3. Apple has never fixed the bug in those drivers. (Shame on you Apple!) But!!! There is a solution, and that is to put the 10.6.2 ATI drivers back on the machine after you've upgraded it. I did that and I'm currently running 10.7.2 and it's been rock solid with those old 10.6.2 ATI drivers. Here's a link to the process. Good luck with that, if you choose to try going back to Mac OS. I love Lion. Looking forward to seeing if the 10.6.2 drivers will work with Mountain Lion. Here's the original post of the solution to this. (Don't know how to link to it, so I copied it whole.)

I think I'm solved the problem. By the 'solved' i mean the main reason, not the temporary solution. First I would like to give you some information that may be helpful:

1. My iMac is: iMac8,1 with gpu ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro;
2. You must have to installed mac osx 10.6.2 update (not newer) ;
3. This is very risky solution, so please create backup;

As you now the problem it's only caused by the software - probably the gpu driver. In osx the gpu drivers is in kext files, placed in /System/Library/Extensions. Here is steps that I made to restore old drivers from 10.6.2 to 10.6.6:

1. On the 10.6.2. system make backup of /System/Library/Extensions (pendrive or external drive is the best place);
2. Download the "Kext Helper Tool" from http://cheetha.net/
3. Run the 10.6.6 update;
4. After reboot run the "kext helper tool".
5. Drag and drop to the Helper those files:

ATI2600Controller.kext
ATIFramebuffer.kext
ATISupport.kext

6. Type password and click Easy Install.
7. Reboot.

By doing this we insert to the system the driver in the older (good) version 1.6.6 - the newest version is 1.6.26.
Several explanations to the Nvidia GPU users: in my system there are no kext files named nvidia or similar, so i can't tell you wich you must restore.
When apple give us the the 10.6.7 update probably you must have to restore old drivers again.

My system is worked fine from three days, without smc fan control and similiar tools. The "only" risk is that your system will not boot up.

Sorry for my English, i write to you with google translate 🙂
Regards from Poland

I have been following this discussion for many months. I just want to add again that this same problem is occuring with NVIDIA GE Force GT130 cards as well so it's not limited to ATI drivers.

That's true. I just updated my system to 10.7.3. It says it fixes some old ATI issues. I'll run without puting in the 10.6.2 ATI drivers to see if they FINALLY, fixed this issue.

Ken, I'd be very interested in how you make out. I've been hanging in there with Snow Leopard and the 10.6.2 fix, hoping Apple would fix this and then upgrade. I doubt they have. I looked at specs for the 10.7.3 update and didn't see any reference to ADI issues. Thanks for the info.

Well, the upgrade to 10.7.3 lasted just 24 hours before the screen froze again. I've re-installed the ATI kexts and things seem to be running fine again. Bottom line, the ATI driver issues which the 10.7.3 update addresses are NOT the one's described at painful length in this discussion thread.

I'll post in about a week to let you know how things are going with 10.7.3 running on the old 10.6.2 ATI kexts.