GaBeech
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Late 2006 iMac, Lines, Kernel Panic, Freeze, Reboot, Restart, Serial W8 ?

Hello,

Let me start by explaining the method I am initially going to adopt in my search for answers;

•All of the keywords and more that would not fit in the title space, relate to my problem.
•I think the *iMac Serial* holds the key to mine and possibly a lot of other peoples search for answers.
•My second post will explain what I know about the Serial and the information it provides.
•I have a strong feeling that a lot of people who have the same or similar problems to me will have a Serial that begins with at least W8.
•I believe that a lot of affected machines will of been produced between 2006 & 2008, yet not confined to that window in time.
•So, to round up, I am looking for people who have had/are having the same/similar problems to the ones listed below.

•Small graphical glitches; Thin lines in random areas on the desktop, growing in number and intensity over time.
•Graphical glitches on, in and around Finder windows. Again, growing in number and intensity over time.
•Horizontal lines across entire screen. Again, growing in number and intensity over time.
•The odd Software Crash/System Freeze. (Which does not happen very often on the iMac we've grown to love)
•More frequent Software Crashes/System Freeze's. (Maybe it's all that freeware and plugins I've been playing with)
•Kernel Panic's, never had one before... it was a new one on me.
•Frequent Kernel Panics.
•System Freeze, recovering after being put to sleep and then woken.
•System Freeze, unrecoverable. Hard reset required.
•Exactly the same behavior after a full reinstall of OSX.
•Exactly the same behavior after wiping system drive with zero's, then a full reinstall of OSX.
•Exactly the same behavior after wiping system drive with zero's, then a full reinstall with a previous version of OSX.
•System Freeze requiring hard reset on nearly every occasion Time Machine was accessed.
•Shut iMac down completely, never to respond to Power Button being pressed again, even after trying to reset the SMC.


The above is a simplified list of key events on a relatively short journey from Perfect Machine to, 'will not power up'.


If you or anyone you know has gone through anything similar, I would love you to join this topic.

Yours,
GaBeech

iMac (20-inch Late 2006) 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ~ x1600 Graphics, Mac OS X (10.6.3), Serial Number: W87070ACVUV (Check My Biography To See What A Serial Means)

Posted on May 26, 2010 8:36 PM

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GaBeech

Q: Late 2006 iMac, Lines, Kernel Panic, Freeze, Reboot, Restart, Serial W8 ?

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  • Helpful answers

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  • by blooumpy,

    blooumpy blooumpy Aug 3, 2010 1:19 PM in response to maitaimai
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 3, 2010 1:19 PM in response to maitaimai
    After reading your mention of the power supply, I recalled I had a power supply failure on this same machine also early in it's life, it was within the 1st year... one day the machine didn't turn on and an Apple Service Centre did the repair in Vancouver under warranty (replaced the PSU) (there were no Apple Stores here back then). I wonder if ventilation was the cause of it's death.

    Otherwise, the rest of your story is near identical to mine (even including the order of events and timeline), I also lost a HD along the way due to heat (2 actually, the original and the one that replaced it).... I'm also still getting the same artifacts, crashing and locking up.

    Also I've replaced the thermal grease on the cpu and gpu (as reported earlier) and now the temperatures are very low, ~30C at idle and just over 50 under heavy load. But still, the is not stable, and so I've basically turned it in a surfing machine for the kids now because the majority of the time it isn't reliable. We have 6 mac's in the family (including this one) and it's the only that exhibits this problem. (it's also the only late 2006 iMac)

    I'm certain the only fix is to replace the logic board (which I'm happy to do myself even, if Apple would send me a replacement), otherwise I've pretty much written off this machine.


    maitaimai wrote:
    Serial Number: W8704
    Problems:
    - Serious overheating problems, constant extra cooling required
    - lost hard drive for overheating
    - dead pixels
    - horizontal lines and weired artefacts show up even with low temperatures (CPU 40C, GPU 46C, GPU Diode 52C)
    - power supply ventilation was inproper, to much isolation foam taping the ventilation holes of the compartment so power supply reached up to 90C (now it's never higher than 56C

    Detection:
    Power supply problem detected a little bit after one year. First I did some extra cooling afterwards as Apple said it wasn't responsible I opened up the case and detected the desaster
    Strange pixels and artefacts showed up a little bit later, about one and a half year after I bought the late 2006 iMac 24'' in 2007.
    My machine is still alive but it's not really stable. The dead pixels and the artefacts are getting worse. If I stop cooling down the machine stops working: spinning beach ball of death.

    I reported all this here several month ago. The machine is not repairable from what I can tell. Apple has to offer new macs like with the G5 desaster some years ago...

    Constant problems need clear responses! Thousands out here suffered because of Apple supplied errors!

  • by maitaimai,

    maitaimai maitaimai Aug 3, 2010 1:36 PM in response to blooumpy
    Level 1 (11 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 3, 2010 1:36 PM in response to blooumpy
    Logic board replacement won't fix the problem. Many people reported that the replacement of the logic board only postponed the problems, ergo they showed up once again. These machines are garbage. I expect a computer to work fine for five years... You may track my postings here, is it so hard for Apple to acknowledge this problem, seems so. It's not misuse, it's faulty hardware!!!

  • by milankovach,

    milankovach milankovach Aug 4, 2010 5:30 AM in response to R C-R
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 4, 2010 5:30 AM in response to R C-R
    Serial: W8642770VGN
    24" iMac 2.16GHz, GeForce 7300

    Video glitches like horizontal lines of random pixels, random boxes with transparent color... and spinning ball at the end.

    coz of this freezes and video glitches is overheating of GPU. I know because I have another iMac (same specification, I will post serial latter) with SAME problem and I pay 200 euro (in Serbia) in Apple authorized service for replacing GeForce 7600 few months ago. All problems disappears immediately after replacing GPU board.

    but I am sure that all this problems will start again in year or two when GPU overheat again.

    I pay for one iMac GPU replacement, and it would be nice to Apple pay for my another iMac since it is Apple fault coz GPU get overheated and computer get unusable over time.

  • by unlv05,

    unlv05 unlv05 Aug 4, 2010 8:22 AM in response to R C-R
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Aug 4, 2010 8:22 AM in response to R C-R
    Capacity 249.72 GB, 123.46 GB used. And the OS 10.6.4 (combo) download I did yesterday seemed to help a little, but still getting random, ridiculous spinning wheel time.

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R Aug 4, 2010 8:49 AM in response to unlv05
    Level 6 (17,700 points)
    Aug 4, 2010 8:49 AM in response to unlv05
    Have you checked your hard drive for file system errors with Disk Utility's "Verify Disk" step?

  • by unlv05,

    unlv05 unlv05 Aug 4, 2010 9:07 AM in response to R C-R
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Aug 4, 2010 9:07 AM in response to R C-R
    I did that when I installed 10.6.4 last week. I successfully did a repair disk after it wouldn't load 10.6 on the first try.

  • by Richard Lawton,

    Richard Lawton Richard Lawton Aug 4, 2010 9:18 AM in response to blooumpy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 4, 2010 9:18 AM in response to blooumpy
    Thanks for the thoughtful response. Very disappointing.

  • by Richard Lawton,

    Richard Lawton Richard Lawton Aug 4, 2010 9:19 AM in response to R C-R
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 4, 2010 9:19 AM in response to R C-R
    I've done 3 clean reinstalls hoping it was some kinda of driver error.

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R Aug 4, 2010 10:15 AM in response to unlv05
    Level 6 (17,700 points)
    Aug 4, 2010 10:15 AM in response to unlv05
    If you could not install 10.6 on the first try, it may indicate that you have other unresolved problems. Note that your issue is somewhat different from the one being discussed here: you said you never got the line artifacts or kernel panics most are reporting.

    You may find it useful to go through the steps in the troubleshooting guide in the documentation on the Snow Leopard installer disc.

  • by unlv05,

    unlv05 unlv05 Aug 4, 2010 10:22 AM in response to Richard Lawton
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Aug 4, 2010 10:22 AM in response to Richard Lawton
    I thought I would haul it down to the Apple Store just to see what they might say.

  • by elice82@,

    elice82@ elice82@ Aug 4, 2010 2:14 PM in response to R C-R
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Aug 4, 2010 2:14 PM in response to R C-R
    I'm not going to say anything more here it gets censured!

  • by rkaufmann87,

    rkaufmann87 rkaufmann87 Aug 4, 2010 2:17 PM in response to elice82@
    Level 9 (58,956 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Aug 4, 2010 2:17 PM in response to elice82@
    elice82@ wrote:
    I'm not going to say anything more here it gets censured!



    When you violate the Terms of Use that you agreed to you can expect it.

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R Aug 4, 2010 2:24 PM in response to elice82@
    Level 6 (17,700 points)
    Aug 4, 2010 2:24 PM in response to elice82@
    Staying on topic will help avoid that. You may have forgotten that this topic was started to see if there was any reasonable correlation between a certain range of serial numbers & a specific type of failure, not as a public platform for venting. (The ToU forbid that.) Anything that would help show reasonable justification for that assumption is unlikely to be removed. The vents & rants tend to go bye-bye after a while.

  • by odedia,

    odedia odedia Aug 4, 2010 3:50 PM in response to R C-R
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Aug 4, 2010 3:50 PM in response to R C-R
    ANYWAY, but to topic: What are the odds that the new Snow Leopard Graphics Update could potentially address our problems? Seems like 100% hardware problems to me, but who knows. Maybe they'll underclock the GPUs .

    http://www.macrumors.com/2010/08/04/apple-seeds-snow-leopard-graphics-update-to- developers/

  • by maitaimai,

    maitaimai maitaimai Aug 5, 2010 1:54 AM in response to rkaufmann87
    Level 1 (11 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 5, 2010 1:54 AM in response to rkaufmann87
    Nobody violated the terms of use! Our complains are related. We're complaining about the W8 serial production of iMacs!!!! This is directly related to Apple. Complains about Apple who originated our problems and who has to feel responsible for the troubles and problems caused, not only with the machines also with the time, money spent on the problem are out-moderated by so-called innocent volunteers. Once again this forum is for users helping users. We help ourselves with complaining about the W8 series. This is on-topic not off-topic. What happens? Our messages get censored! Over and over again! And finally:

    This question is not answered! Please adhere to this before censorship! There is nothing offensive in this message. It's directly related to the problem: bad hardware delivered by Apple!
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