Q: OSX Lion + 2011 iMac 27'' + Video = Freeze

Mark,

I had nothing but "Great" luck with Apple over the years, but this specific machine to me is a Lemon.  Hopefully we will see how there Apple Care program takes care of there customers. This is the last straw for me as this unit been taken in 3 times, hard drive replaced memory replaced and at least 100 hours of tech support and countless months of this computer freezing up and just not working right.  I was filling some thing out online and sure enough computer froze up and Safari quit. No 3rd party software installed, just basically what you get when you buy it and take it out of the box, so now I know it has nothing to do with 3rd party software. I have a Macbook Pro and my machine works great with Lion and zero issue, frankly I think there was a bad batch of iMac and I have one of them. Just curious what is your configuration for your iMac and when did you buy it?

Best of Luck as I need some as well.

Putting my IMac to sleep does not work.  It still won't reopen afterwards.  I have to turn it off with the back switch and reboot in order to use my computer.

Well this unit is going back, I am lucky to even type this sentence without it freezing....  Unit locked up 5 times, I have zero 3rd party software installed. Spinning Rainbow Cog wheel, freezes up and I can't shut down or do a force quit, so I have to use the power button, then when I re-power up I get the lovely dreaded Folder with the ? mark. I have done everything they have said to do and then some, and this machine just will not work right.

My mac is a early 2009 24" 3.06 intel core 2 duo, 4gb ram and a nvidia geforce gt 130 card....

but having read thro' a lot of posts both on here and other sites no one machine/time seems the problem... Lion  looks like it effects the graphic card memory...

but again I must also say our mac book pro with Lion works spot on!

I wonder if its only machines that were never built with Lion as the first choice OS.. in my view its a tiny bit of code that does not clear the temp memory of the graphics card... ( guess work, guess work... thats the problem with no offical word from the boys/girls of apple)

... ?

Studio K: That doesn't sit well with me, ironically I upgraded to Lion on my i7 iMac and everything has gone to h e l l ! The machine was working fine, then when Lion came out I upgrade the software, and it worked poorly so I swithced back to Snow Lepoard but I am still having an issue with screen freeze and then having to reboot the screen by powering the computer off. I have done a dozen or so clean installs with zero 3rd party software installed and the unit still freezes up and quits working. They are thinking of replacing my computer, but I don't want Lion, LOL... I have another tech service call scheduled for Monday, computer has already been taken in to the local Mac store, replaced SSD drive and replaced memory. At this point I am tempted to take a credit and go back to a MacPro, which I never had any issues with.  First major issue for me being a Mac fan since 2003,  I am tempted just going with a Mac Mini loaded with the i7 Chip.  Suggestions welcomed as I don't have anymore time to deal with this crap!!

Gandalf,

Snow Leopard is also problematic.  I believe the bug was introduced when Apple delivered one of the later SL OS updates.  I began freezing after installing OS X 10.6.6 or thereabouts.

I use an older iMac (2008), so I have the ability to re-install Leopard.  Your machine is obviously much newer leaving you with no such option.

Mac Mini and MacBook don't seem to be as badly affected by all these OS problems.  It seems logical to return the iMac and purchase a mini or a laptop instead.

Studio K: Since my last post I have had my iMac freeze up 3 times then crash. Everytime it does this, I have to press the power button to power down as the Force Quit doesn't work. I think your on the right track 10.6.6 seems like the main culprit, since that update this machine has gone to ****. The problem is it is, drastically affecting the hardware to the point of cause it to fail, my SSD drive went down, memory and now it is happing all over again. They suggested a logics board replacement and I said, no I want an exchange or store credit so I can buy some thing more reliable and to me Mac's and iMac have always been this way. At this point I regret upgrading and I am looking for better options. Thanks for the info!

I'm running a 24-inch Mid 2007 iMac, 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB, on Lion 10.7.2 (11C74).

I believe this may be something due to a recent update.

I did not have these problems when I first started using Lion.  Only in the last couple of weeks have I noticed this issue and it's getting worse.

I decided that the best course of action would be to create a partition and reinstall a clean copy of SL so that I could watch movies there, but do my regular business in Lion.

Well, I started watching a movie from iTunes and I was shocked when it started skipping.  However, it did seem to correct itself and did not freeze up my entire system.  After a few minutes the problem went away, but it does seem that whatever caused this affects SL too.

I've noticed this problem not only with video (Youtube, iTunes, DVD, etc.) but that the skipping would also happen if I got pop-up notifications on Yahoo Messenger or Adium.  I disabled notifications and Growl so that I'd stop getting them and it helped.  Would these popup notices be connected to the video problem in some way? 

Apple really needs to fix this because it is absolutely unacceptable.  The problem clearly isn't hardware related and the Applecare on my iMac has expired anyway.

Well my last reply got erased. joeygillis, I agree there is some thing going majorly with the software to the point where my machine just won't function properly, no idea what the issue is, and Apple Tech have no clue. Bringing back in for 3rd repair , and after this I am done, I have Apple Care, fix the **** thing or simply erase it, I don't have time for the sang and dance routine anymore!

To all,

You might want to check in your system profiler as under Sync Services I am getting a ton of crash reports showing what is causing it. This is occurring after a fresh install of SL, and it clearly shows there is some issues with the software not communicating correctly.

Example of some of the syncservices log reports are:

Throttling respawning, System/Library/CoreServices cannot execute binary file etc..

There must be hundreds of errors in the system logs just for yesterday and this morning which I think

are causing a lot of these problems.

Is it possible this is actually an iTunes issue?  After my fresh install of SL I had to update iTunes and experienced the skipping.

Right now I have a ton of downloads going on and every time I open iTunes it FREAKS out.  Stopping the downloads (if I can) seems to help the problem.

Also, since I didn't experience this when I first installed Lion, and I NEVER experienced this on SL before recently, I'm inclined to think that there might be something going on besides a Lion OS Update bug.  My iTunes freaks out, and this problem seems to correlate with video, which I'm sure ties into iTunes somehow.  So could it be a bug in the latest iTunes update?

Well in my Case my iMac is the issue.....

Basically this is what has done with my computer.

SSD Drive Failed: $907.95 to replace it the first time.

New Memory:  16gigs

Logic Board: 737.50

SSD Drive:   907.95

Cable SSD       6.82

Heat Sensory     ?

Hardware Labor: 39.00

Roughly $2700.00 to fix this thing? ***? It would have been easier to replace this unit and take this one back

and put it up on there reburbished board without any hassles to me bringing the fricking thing in 3 times and be without a computer for 3 weeks. I mean come on Apple go back to you customer service where you actually make people happy to own one of your products.  Thank God for Apple Care, but then again make peoples life less problematic, you know this frickin thing is defective yet you keep on sending it back. LOL

Gandalf,

How long ago did you buy your iMac?  Prior to replacing hardware, how often were you forced to turn the machine off as a result of a frozen user interface and unresponsive keyboard & mouse?

Another person on this thread estimated they forcefully powered their iMac down about 30 times before the HD failed.  I am wondering if punishing the hardware with forced shutdowns may have played a role in your iMac's hardware problems.

Studio K:

Great questions, as I had to power the unit down quite a few times manual to get the machine to repond. I do

feel it could have played a role in the hardware failing. I bought mine in June of 2011, and I am to the point if this

doesn't fix it, they better replace it. I am just glad I have a Trusty Mac Mini to use. I am thinking about going back to a MacPro again after all of this crap. The all in one machines are very nice and the new units are super fast, but the failure rates lately seem that they are loosing there QC, which has been the best in the market in the past.

If Mr. Jobs were still in charge, these problems would likely have been resolved by now---if they were even allowed to happen in the first place.

I'm surprised at how quickly quality has declined since Steve's "departure".