eMac freezes randomly, open window turns into broken up jibber

2/3 Successful! Apple covers the approx. $600 (Canadian) logic board, while i cover the approx. $300 labour, just like some others in this thread.
Further to my 'freeze up' posts of 22 Jan 06, the apple reseller diagnosed the problem as a faulty logic board.
I called Apple Care here in Canada to report the problem, drew their attendtion to this thread, and they decided to consider the issue. Next day they called to report that they would provide the new logic board at their expense, but i would have to cover the labour cost.

Serial # G8427215QQH ordered from California on 29 June 2004 and shipped about a week late due to availability problems.

Some Tips to consider for this problem even if help refused by Apple :

1)Definitely call Apple to report the problem.
2)Check your purchase method, as my gold card extends the warranty by one year, and they indicate they are going to cover the cost of the repair not covered by Apple.
3)Continue to moniter the gathering force in this thread, and "use the force, Luke" to ask for a further consideration as more Emac's prematurely fail.
3)Check your state/country consumer law (Google 'consumer law for computers' for starters) as there are responsiblities beyond warranties that companies carry.

Having the same issue. And yes, I've trawled the web looking for solutions and ran all of the tests/workarounds/re-installs/boot of a firewire drive with a copy of the OS sitting on it....still the same problem and getting steadily worse.

Started getting 'freezes' when using a magnified dock, became more and more frequent and now experiencing screen glitches and 'jibber'. All needing a hard reset/power button reset to clear.

Called Apple Technical support. Was told that my machine was out of warranty and I would have to pay £35 to get an out of warranty technical support assistance. However the gentleman in the Indian Call Centre did offer to send me some email support with 'articles' I may find of interest. These did not turn up.

I purchased my eMac from the Apple online UK store August 2004. I fully intend to call and insist I speak to someone who can explain the MANY examples of this error with in & out of warranty machines that customers worldwide are experiencing, to see where I stand!

Anybody got advice about how to approach this with Apple Tech support? I'm happy with stating my case but if any other customers out there have done what I'm about to do and been succesful...tips would be good.



eMac Mac OS X (10.4.5) 1Gig RAM, 80Gig HD

You can add YM444E3ZQQJ to the list.

Sorry, forgot to add my Serial to the growing list. Better do it quick before my eMac freezes on me again.

VM4342UFQQH

Great Reads On Related Topic!!

Travis
Registered: May 30, 2004
eMac crashing
Posted: Mar 10, 2006 8:57 PM

G'day,

My 512/149Gb 1.25Ghz eMac purchased Aug-04 has recently started to crash badly (ie up to 3 times in 1 day), where by the entire system freezes up.

The only semi-common association with when the system is crashing is the use of Office X (v10.0.0), though it has happened when those apps (Word, Excel & PP) weren't running.

Other symptoms have been - trying to open Date/Time and it instead opens a folder... No responce when trying to open the System Prefs from the Apple menu...

Over the 18months since buying the computer I've gradually upgraded from 10.3.4. to 10.3.9 as the updates have come along. I've tried re-installing the 10.3.9 upgrade, but have continued to have problems. I've run programs like Janitor, Cocktail, Rember, but no luck.

What should I try next? Could this be more than software problems?

cheers

Travis
eMac Mac OS X (10.3.9)


Charles Dyer
From: Palm Beach County, Florida
Registered: Aug 19, 2001
Re: eMac crashing
Posted: Mar 11, 2006 7:19 AM

you may have the freeze problem. See the various 'eMac freezing' threads.

If you have the freeze problem, kiss your eMac goodbye, it's dead. Apple declines to do anything about it. It'll cost about US$700-800 to fix it.

eMac 1.25GHz 2GB, iMacG5, assorted Windows boxes Mac OS X (10.4.5) semi-dead eMac due to blown caps on logic board

JMVP


Posts: 1,169
From: The Uncharted Territories
Registered: Sep 13, 2002
Re: eMac crashing
Posted: Mar 11, 2006 11:44 AM in response to: Charles Dyer

Actually, if the problem with this mid-2004 eMac is due to the bad capacitor problem that's been cropping up (see eMac freezes randomly, open window turns into broken up jibber), then you can contact AppleCare and/or Apple Customer Relations, or just directly contact an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AARP). An AARP can open the eMac and directly check for tell-tale bulging / leaking capacitors.

When you call AppleCare, if you're outside the initial 90-day free phone support (three years if you purchased the extended AppleCare warrenty), you'll be asked to provide a credit card number; the charge to that card is supposed to be waived if the problem turns out to be a hardware issue covered under warrenty. (If your warrenty has run out you can ask at the end of the call to have the charge waived anyway.) You'll need to describe the problem, plus the steps you've taken to try to troubleshoot the issue, mostly because the first-tier support people have to run through a script before you can ask to be escalated to a supervisor who can authorize out-of-warrenty service.

When you reach a supervisor, you want to describe the symptoms, the date your eMac was purchased, and mention the referenced Apple Discussions thread. Ask to have an AARP authorized to inspect the eMac and ask that if the capacitor problem is detected taht the logic board replacement be provided by Apple. You may be asked to pay for the AARP labor with the logic board replaced free; you may get the whole repair done free; you may get nothing --- it seems to depend n part on how persuavive you are talking to the AppleCare supervisor. If you're turned down by AppleCare, some have reported success going to Apple Customer Relations. As with any transaction, being firm but polite is key (way too many posters have written to denounce the service they recieved, when their own account of the interaction makes you wonder no one's figured a way to reach through the phone lines to strangle them for rudeness).

Before you do anything else, check there isn't a problem with the hard drive or the OS or with OS kernel extensions. Does the computer behave if you Start Up in Safe Mode? What's reported by Disk Utility> Repair Disk when you run it from the OS X Install disc's Installer menu, as described in Using Disk Utility and fsck? What's reported by Apple Hardware Test? Also go through the "applications quit unexpectedly" and related sections of Dr. Smoke's The X Lab: The X-FAQs.

You want to rule out any other explanations of your problems before concluding it's the bad capacitor freezing issue. Good luck.

eMac 700MHz Mac OS X (10.2.x) 640Mb RAM ABS Snow LaCie D2 HD; Quicksilver G4 10.4.5 768 MB RAM LaCie D2 DVD-RW


cosmichobo
Registered: May 30, 2004
Re: eMac crashing
Posted: Mar 12, 2006 6:35 AM in response to: JMVP

Ironically enough I was just in here typing a reply, when the machine crashed on me again...

I've done a fresh instal of OS 10.3.4 from the original restore dvd. Then upgraded to 10.3.9 with the 117Mb file from Apple. Ran the hardware test off the restore dvd. No errors found.

Disk Utility seems to find the odd permission (?) problem to repair, but nothing worse.

Maybe 1/2 the times it crashes is after trying to change to another app, or using Expose...

Will the Apple Aust people know about this leaky capacitor?

cheers

Travis
eMac Mac OS X (10.3.9)

cosmichobo
Registered: May 30, 2004
Re: eMac crashing
Posted: Mar 12, 2006 6:51 AM in response to: cosmichobo

PS Another intermittant problem - sound sometimes disappears... ie wont even make a system-beep, but when restart does make the startup chime...

Have booted in safe mode now to see if it still crashes...

eMac Mac OS X (10.3.9)


Charles Dyer
From: Palm Beach County, Florida
Registered: Aug 19, 2001
Re: eMac crashing
Posted: Mar 12, 2006 8:12 AM in response to: cosmichob

The hardware test disc won't find any problems, because there are no problems right up until the machine freezes. At which point there's a problem but the test disc still can't show it, 'cause everything's frozen.

How the Apple Store guys determined that I probably had the freeze problem was to simply start running a DVD and then to start skipping around in the movie. That gives the video system a workout. If you have the freeze problem, your machine freezes within 10 minutes, usually less. It may or may not develop screen artifacts before freezing.

Having determined that there was a real problem, they took my eMac into the back room and told me to call in about it later. When I called in, they said that I needed a new motherboard. They didn't say why, but I had a pretty good idea. They said that the new motherboard would cost $580, plus $140 to install, and no they couldn't just sell me the motherboard and let me install it. They recommended against actually getting the new motherboard. (This leads me to suspect that someone at Apple may have their doubts about at least some of the eMac motherboards in stock.)

When I got it home I took it apart... two dead caps, one not quite dead cap.

I got an iMac G5. Cheap. I'd been planning on getting a MacBook Pro, but that's not going to happen until December at the earliest now. Probably more like next year some time. The iMac cost half what the MBP cost. You do the math as to how much money Apple lost because of this.

eMac 1.25GHz 2GB, iMacG5, assorted Windows boxes Mac OS X (10.4.5) semi-dead eMac due to blown caps on logic board

*********

Time to circle the wagons and beef off on Apple's emac snub!
Alex The Screwed



iMac 700 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Should we start a list of people experiencing this problem?

My serial # is YM43000xxxx

Purchased in about July04.

About a month+ ago it started getting vertical lines on the display, and then in the past 2-3 weeks has been hanging, sometimes with the image completely breaking up but more often just freezing up.

Hope Apple comes to the party... Will have no other option than to start using my Pismo as my main computer otherwise - can't afford to repair, can't afford a new machine.

Update, spoken to Apple Customer Relations and they have put me through to Technical Support.

Basically told them about this thread, about my clean installs, Hardware Tests showing no errors, running OS X 10.4.5 off a firewire drive, following the steps detailed by other posters... And still having the same issues.

Sent off my system profiler contents to them at their request and was advised the Hardware/Engineering department would be contacted and I can expect a call back within a few days.

Tech Support guy did say that 'HE WAS NOT AWARE OF ANY SUCH PROBLEMS' so I gave him the details of this thread...lets see what comes of it...fingers crossed!

[snip]

Tech Support guy did say that 'HE WAS NOT AWARE OF
ANY SUCH PROBLEMS'

Heh. They know. Trust me. They know. Y'all might want to have a look at this:

<http://news.com.com/PCs plagued+by+badcapacitors/2100-1041 3-5942647.html?tag=st.rc.targmb>

This is from November last year...

Very interesting. Lets hope the recall on the G5 iMac has set a precedent and anyone with an out of Warranty eMac displaying these symptoms can expect a similar outcome..

Anyway, thought I would post the error message in the system.log that I googled and ended up after plenty of other links landing on this forum....

Mar 8 23:33:40 POSBAN kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log End **
Mar 8 23:33:40 POSBAN kernel[0]: ATIRadeon::submit_buffer: Overflowed block waiting for FIFO space. Have 3, need 6. RBBM_STATUS 0x81c1c100. VAP CNTLSTATUS 0x00000002
Mar 8 23:33:51 POSBAN kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log Start **

I am joining the ranks of those with this problem. I've ruled out RAM, software, hardrive, and power supply. Tech support is feigning ignorance at every turn, but are friendly enough if not helpful. Hopefully people like the guy who's school had NINE emacs face this fate will gird Apple to face the music and do the right thing. I'm a loyal Mac user and I hope Apple will act to keep me as such. The business model of selling machines that last 1.5 years in hopes of increased sales will only take a company so far.

As a long time Windows user that "made the switch" when I bought this eMac in September 2004, I am finding it very difficult to consider another Apple product. I was considering an upgrade to the iMac in the next year, but now that I am experiencing serious problems with my eMac (exactly as described in this thread) I am more than a little hesitant to shovel more cash at Apple.

...back to the old Dell for now 😟

this reply may seem a little late, but I've been away for a while. I returned to this freezing problem that this discussion group seems to have in common.
YES, one and a half years is NOT a reasonable amount of time to have on a computer before a problem as drastic as a logic board failure. Come on. If this was a car company they would issue a recall and try to rectify the problem. STEP UP TO THE PLATE APPLE.

Another UK mac freezing here and sometimes jibber too. Also out of warrantee - has been happening for just over a week now. I wanted to add my voice to the many.

Seems annoying if logicboard has to be replaced - will this work? Doesn't it cost as much as the computer itself? humph!

I'm wondering if the ATI fix would work - does disabling these extensions affect the actions of any software or is it just to make the operating system graphics wizzy - i have noticed the crash often occurs if the windows are doing some kind of animated movement.

Here are my specs;

Machine Model: eMac
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (1.1)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.25 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 768 MB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.8.2f1
Serial Number: VM4402V7QQJ

It may help slow the decline down, but if the caps are leaking, best I could imagine it would only be a matter of time before the problem balloons.

How are we best to go about contacting Apple though?

Called and that didn't work...

No real email address available...

Yes, there's papermail but **** aren't we in the computer age, trying to contact a computer company?