I suspect that I have a hardware problem on my IMac early 2009. Is there a way to run a hardware diagnostic on it that is build in, or maybe a ISO that one could download.
An iMac from 2009 should have come with 2 grey installation disks/ DVDs.
One of the disks is the hardware diagnostic disk.
What do you think is wrong with your mac.
If you do not have the Apple Hardware Test disk as described above you can perhaps get
it from this website, you must download the exact one for your mac, iMac 9.1
https://github.com/upekkha/AppleHardwareTest
Just so you know a mac of your age never came with the Apple Hardware Test built in so booting
while pressing the D key will not work.
Well I downloaded the hardware test, and it did not find any errors.
I suspect a graphichardware problem, as I have issues with screen flickering and then stalls the computer. This flickering with the screen only presents itself when using Firefox. If the screen flickers, and I close firefox with cmd+q the flickerings stops. And I can continue using my computer. But for the most past, the screen flickers once, and computer stalls. And I have to reboot with powerbutton. Maybe it can also be that my copy of firefox is infected with bad code, that is causing the problem. The hunt goes on. And thank you for your support.
Not sure how a graphics problem can only be down to Firefox.
If you had a graphics card problem it would affect your view of everything on your mac.
Get full uninstall instructions from Mozilla the developers of Firefox.
Restart your mac, download a fresh copy of Firefox, try again.
Diagnostics typically won’t find transient faults.
Check with the Firefox support folks. They might have suggestions for further testing. It’s certainly possible Firefox is exercising something unusual, or is exposing a hardware or software bug, or contains a bug. It’s also possible that Firefox is tripping over a hardware flaw here. Which is what I’d suspect, on little evidence. (Finding and testing on another 2009-era iMac with the same graphics and same macOS would be one obvious way to differentiate the potential triggers.)
Which also all leaves you to decide your plans for this iMac. Maybe Firefox is bad. Maybe the hardware here is failing.
Have backups.
As it for the most part happens on social media sites, my theory is that scripts in running on sites that impacts my graphic card in some way. The process for a clean installation, I tried that first just to be sure that what no the issue. And I have filed a support case with Mozilla a while back, no response yet. They have categorized it as an unknow issue though. The hardware acceleration option I have not tried yet though. So lets see if that will solve the problem. Thanks for support.
Problem solved. It is GPU hardware acceleration features in Firefox that causes that issue. Disabled, and Firefox works like a charm. The software is making the windowserver in osx go beserk which messes up the screen. The entire screen not only the firefox window. In some cases also halts systems and automatically reboots. Thanks for support.
Firefox is no longer supported on older versions of macOS like 10.11 or earlier. Try disabling "GPU Hardware Acceleration" in the Firefox preferences.
Thanks for following up with the results. I'm glad we were able to help solve your problem.
Hardware diagnostics IMac 24" early 2009.
