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

Sorry

Mountain Lion and a clean install.

Kext fixes not yet applied as seems to be working for now.

Nothing too GPU intensive being run yet, but will throw some video editing at it soon.

Yeah, for me the trigger has been downloading podcasts from iTunes. (See earlier in the thread and in Google about "allow simultaneous downloads.") Not sure how that interacts with the GPU, but the kext rollback fixes it for me.

As well, would posters discussing stability with ML mind clarifying if they're using a 7,1 or an 8,1, etc.? Thanks so much.

Mac 8.1, day 6 and finally it crashes.

Not doing anything particularly intensive.

Screen went all white and had to do a hard reset.

Will now be installing the Kext fixes.

Thanks, George. I think where we are is not surprising: Mountain Lion does not change anything, but it seems from those who have tried the kext fixes that they work in Mountain Lion. Hopefully, we'll be able to continue using Krzysiu's kext fixes until our computers are dropped from eligibility for the OS upgrades.

Yes.

I suppose my concern is when I come to sell this one to replace it, what do I say?

I may not want to wait until the eligibility expires!

I'm still frustrated that Apple don't seem to have any idea about the issue.

The Genius Bar guys look very blank...even when I pointed them to this discusssion.

Here's an update: 24" iMac 8,1 ATI Radeon 2600 Pro GPU

Received a new GPU under warranty about 1.5 years ago. Since then, basically very few freezes, seemingly heat related. Running Mountain Lion now. Works well. Keeping an eye on heat in menu bar with Temperature Monitor Lite.

So this experience shows me that it's not entirely a software related problem. It occurred to me this morning that it might be possible to buy a new 2600 Pro GPU and install it oneself to save some money, if a person wanted to save on costs.

Googling for that GPU I find that there are firmware updates for it, some of them from support.apple.com itself. I never tried those on my iMac, and it might be worth doing that for people with no other solution available and who aren't totally happy with the kext fix (although the kext fixed worked for me to before I got the replacement). Try this:

support.apple.com/kb/DL938

or google: ATI Radeon 2600 Pro iMac update

I don't know anyone who was able to install FW Update 1.0.2. Also the updates list doesn't mention it at all. Strange …

The “ROM Version” (about this mac → more info → Graphics/Display → ROM Version) of my Radeon is the one from FW Update 1.0.1. Thus “Your computer does not need this update.” does not seem right.

Is it possible that the issue was really fixed with FW Update 1.0.2 but nobody was able to install it, because the installer is broken?

One user suggests trying to install the update after “a safe mode boot”. Did anyone try this?

That firmware update was one of the things I tried to do one year ago when I thought it was something with my graphic card, my computer says it doesn't need it.

The update is from 2009, I guess the updates for SL were shipping with that already.

I am running a 7,1. So far the kext. fix is the only solution ( besides buying a new computer ) that I have seen that is effective.

CarlaBlue: Is your “ROM Version” (about this mac → more info → Graphics/Display → ROM Version) that from FW Update 1.0.1 (i.e. 113-B2250L-259 or 113-B2250H-259) or higher? Mine is not higher, thus I suspect the 1.0.2 updater ist broken.

Safe Mode

To let you know the result of my test: The Safe Mode does not change anything about not being able to install FW Update 1.0.2.

However this may be of interest to you: OS X 10.6.8 crashed trying to boot in Safe Mode with the 10.6.2 kernel extensions. In fact it mentions them further down the error message. Thus I had to temporarily re-install the 10.6.8 kernel extensions to be able to start in Safe Mode.

As noted before, the FW Update 1.0.2 installer creates an interesting log entry (see console):

“Package Authoring Warning: Package reference does not include required hash for package id auto.”

But maybe it doesn't mean anything important, I don't know.

Some people have “fixed” the freezing issue by replacing their GPU. I really wonder what their “ROM Version” is. If it is higher than 113-B2250L-259 or 113-B2250H-259, it would be an evidence that a firmware update could be the final solution to this issue.

The ROM version on my replaced 2600 Pro GPU is 113-B2250L-259. I guess firmware updates aren't going to help anyone. I'd try it on my system but it's working and I'm afraid to touch it.

Just for another point of reference, I have:

With:

I upgraded to Mountain Lion and my machine froze after a few minutes worth of use, so definitely no fix in Mountain Lion. I've applied the 10.6.2 kext files and have been running happily ever since:

$ uptime

10:45 up 4 days, 1:38, 4 users, load averages: 1.03 0.89 0.84