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

@Roelof2

I have  ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB.

I have installed the Combo Update.

Good to know. Thanks. Installed the Delta update last night. So far so good.

@53dandthird

How many ram do you have? I'm thinking about upgrading from 10.6 to 10.8 but I'm affraid it will use too much ram in system stuff I dont use and vmware fusion will slow down.

Not to butt in, but you might just want to wait a few more weeks for 10.9.

I have 3GB of ram. Other than the bug in the video drivers that persisted from 10.6.3 to 10.8.4, Mountain Lion has performed easily as well as Snow Leopard. (Lion was just brutal.) If 10.8.5 has finally squashed the video bug, I'd definitely recommend it. But, I don't use VMWare Fusion much any more, or any other ram-hungry applications, so I can't say much about how it performs.

As for 10.9, I know it will run on my iMac, but I think I'll stick with 10.8 on this machine unless there's an urgent need to upgrade. Since installing 10.8.5 it's been running like new. I'm reluctant to mess with it.

In my experience, no. Had the same troubles. Replaced with 10.6.2 kext and it was working again. iMac7,1 ATi 2400 with OS X 10.8.5

Yes, same for me. My iMac 7,1 with ATI RadeonHD2400 locked up almost immediately after applying the latest update (from the App Store). I applied the kext fix again and everything is back to "normal" again.

I was on 10.7.5 (with kext fix) and switched to 10.8.5 in the hope that this would finally solve the graphics problem.

Unfortunately this was not the case, I just installed yesterday, and today I already had the frozen screen. Looks like the very same issue.

This is on my iMac 24" 8.1 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB...

My 8.1 has served me well since 2008, but it is becoming more unreliable these days, and even with the kext fix it struggles at times, particularly with Aperture and iPhoto. I'll probobably move onto the new gen of iMac when they announce it in Sep/Oct

This is really disappointing news. I'm doing everything I can to trigger the fail, but no sign of it yet. Those of you who are seeing the freeze, did you do the App Store update or the Combo update? It probably doesn't matter, but you never know. It seems like Combo updaters are having success so far.

As I had to go from 10.7 Lion to 10.8 Mountain Lion, I had to pay and download via the app store. The version downloaded from the store was 10.8.5, so I let that install automatically.

Maybe it's different with a combo update ? But I don't know...

Updated vía AppStore, froze 3 days after the update.

But what's even worse it that applying the 10.6.2 kexts has not worked as well as it has always done before. With 10.8.5, animations are not smooth at all, you can clearly witness "animation steps" while opening a folder or hovering the dock, which means this issue is more critical to me than ever... And that Apple just doesn't care.

Is there any possibility of a class action by the way? Or as it is software-related, we just have the right to complain and contact blogs and websites to tell them this story so that they publish articles with bold headlines so that Apple miraculously reacts?

Same experience here, Mac 8,1, froze three days after updating from AppStore. I'm not experiencing any adverse effects after the kext fix, though.

When Mavericks arrives, I hope some brave souls will try it out and report back.

My old iMac 7,1 froze on the 2nd day after installing 10.8.5. But not, as I expected, from fullscreen Youtube and the like, but while using Gmail and causing overlapping actions (e.g. expanding a message while opening a pull-down menu). Kext fixed it all, as usual.

If Apple hasn't rectified it by 10.8.5 I'm afraid they never will. I think I'll leave the 7,1 on this version of OS X until it dies.

I updated from the Combo this time and ignored the app store. 

My 8,1 with ATI Radeon 2600 HD has been behaving for about a week now.

No Kext updates done yet.

Been driving it pretty hard and no hint of a freeze.

I've found that previous attempts to overwrite App Store update with the combo has been unsuccessful. 

Thats why I did it separately this time.

I'm also running SMC Fan Control but not to hard.  I still can't hear the fans.

Keep the reports coming!

So far I've been 15 days without a freeze on 10.8.4/10.8.5, without the kext fix.  At it's worst, I used the get them about once per day on 10.6.8 if I didn't have the kext fix installed.  (That's a lot less often than many of you, for some odd reason.)

But I'm not yet ready to declare it "fixed" for me...

This on my iMac 8,1 (24" Early 2008 2.8 GHz Core2Duo EMC 2211 with ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro).

Edit: I don't know if it matters, but my 10.8.4 was a fresh install, as I had repartitioned the drive and installed 10.8.4 from a bootable install USB thumb drive.  I then used Migration Assistant to copy over everything from my old system.