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

For what it's worth (I haven't read every single page of the 100 pages thus far), I have a late 2009 27-inch quad core i5 iMac, 12Gb RAM and ever since I upgraded to Lion I've been seeing random weirdness with graphic freezes. Certain programs exhibit strange behavior, including UI element freezes on scrolling, beachballing on video, and general unresponsiveness until reboot. Specific examples include: Photo Booth freezes and beachballs until I click and drag the main window, at which point the iSight feed resumes. If I let go of the title bar, after a few seconds the video freezes again and the app beachballs. Nearly all Twitter clients, including the official app and Twitterriffic, freeze on scrolling until I click on the title bar, at which point they snap to the current scroll location. Flash and Quicktime also freeze, and switching users causes repeated beachballs on the login screen.

Just adding my voice to the chorus.

Because it's buried deep in the 100+ pages so far, I'm going to just repeat the cure for my problems (freezing when viewing video).

After I changed system preferences / show scroll bars to show automatically, the problems started. When reverting back to show When Scrolling the problems stopped.

It seems an unlikely cause of such problems but it's what caused my freezes. I'm sure I can't be the only person in the world to have this - mine has been absolutely fine ever since.  If you haven't tried it, then give it a try - you never know, it might work!

An update on my issue (mid 2010 iMac 27").

After running it for a week with Rember running in the background, and it being stable, I didn't notice that the cycle was about to run out and reset it.  As soon as the memory test was done, the system kernel panicked, and then I wasn't able to get it to boot again (Kernel panic on start up).

I tried booting off an external drive (both Lion and Snow Leopard), and no joy, so I ended up hauling the thing down to the Apple Store.  They initially tried replacing the hard drive, but when I went to pick it up, it kernel panicked on boot (really, guys? Ever hear of testing?).  They then replaced the Logic Board and Power Supply.  It's now back at home, and has been up and running for a week or so with no issues.

I have a funny feeling that some people's initial impressions that something in Lion may be physically breaking hardware may actually be correct.  I suspect it's something to do with the Voltage Regulation Module, but that's honestly just a guess on my part.

This may not work for everybody, of course, however, I've now not had a freeze or panic for two whole days, something of a record for Lion - I may be speaking too soon, but at least I've had a stable machine since the 18th.

All I've done, following advice on another similar problem, is to delete this file and reboot:

~/Library/Preferences/byhost/com.apple.windowserver.771F2FF6-383F-5141-BDB3-B09D 28D83EF8.plist

My early 2009 24-inch iMac on Lion 10.7.2 has, until now, crashed most days, sometimes several times a day with freezes and kernel panics. I've had the same mix of work, pretty well.

There are also no NVIDIA or kernel messages in the system log - there used to be tons of them.

It's worth a try anyway!

This is more a FYI for everyone, as I was in Chicago on business so I stopped in and asked one of the Genius guys about an issue I had with my iMac. I told him I bought it in June 2011 and he said even though that machine had SL on it, it was a machine that basically was created for Lion. I told him I bought Lion, but I had some quirky issues with it so I went and re-installed SL with my Time Machine backup. He stated what most likely happened to brick my machine was the "firmware" update was most likely done when I upgraded to Lion and when I went back to SL, the logic board had the firmware installed in it, and after that there is no going back. He said it doesn't supprise me that my machine had hardware failures. If I would have known this, and if this is true I would have most likely just got another machine with Lion on it and have been done with it.  So when people are posting that Lion update could be breaking hardware, the guy basically confirmed this in the store. Well pretty flippin stupid for Apple not to tell people this, I am a huge fan and have been for some time but this is a Major Screw up if it is true.

We basically got "punked."

Frankly Apple can get into a boat load of trouble if this is correct, they are selling an OS "Lion" that technically shouldn't be used on older machines. I have 3 computers with Lion, Macbook Pro 2012/Macbook Pro August 2011

and the new Mac Mini, zero issue. I had an older Mac Mini 2010 with SL, and no problems, its when I went from SL to Lion and then back to SL on my iMac, the thing is I asked if this could be done and they said no problem, when clealry it is, they could have saved themselves and me a time of time and money explaining this from the get go. *****, as this is the same c r a p, on why I switched from PC's in 2003. But in retrospect, our Dell POS that my kids use breaks once a month!!!

That still doesn't answer the question for those of us who bought a machine with Lion already on it.  I have a MacBookPro with SL and my new iMac is Lion.  I am NOT upgrading my iMac for sure.

I am using my iMac but making sure not to load ANY new software on it and am still not able to use my internet based phone line without it messing with my video freeze issues.

Dawn

Another day another graphics corruption.

I've read through some of the pages so I appologized if this has already been noted.  I have a 27" imac Mid-2011 model (i5, 8GB RAM, 6970M Radeon, 10.7.2).  I experienced the video lock-up problem in Bootcamp (Win7).  The screen basically shuts down (turns black) but I can still hear my game in background.  Booting up in Safe Mode is the only way I can log back in to retry "Last Known Good Configuration".  After several calls with AppleCare they decided to have me delete Bootcamp altogether. 

I decided to use OS X for the first time on the iMac. I haven't done anything on the OS X side so it was brand new.  Launching iTunes locked it up.  Gray screen with vertical darker gray pinstripes.  Hard reboot.  Called support and went through the typical PRAM reset blah blah blah.  Started to install WoW, crash again.  Installed Razr mouse, crashed again.  Launched Safari, watched youtube videos crashed again.  Basically any video graphics that has to be drawn to the screen will lock it up but it doesn't always happen! 

Finally brought it in to the store and the geniuses ran a gauntlet of tests only to find nothing wrong.  So a week later and I am going to go pick up my iMac in the same condition that I left it with them. I have a feeling it will occur again, then what?

OKAY, I'M PUTTING IN MY TWO-CENTS BECAUSE IT MAY HAVE A BEARING ON THE PROBLEM. I AM HAVING THE VERY SAME PROBLEM: RANDOM FREEZES: COMIING OUT OF SLEEP, WATCHING VIDEOS WHERE FLASH MAY BE INVOLVED. EVERYTHING FREEZES EXCEPT CURSOR AND ONLY WAY TO GET OUT OF IT IS TO SHUT DOWN HARD.

THE DIFFERENCE IS I UPGRADED TO 10.6.8 FROM 10.6.7 -- SO THE PROBLEM MAY NOT BE LIMITED TO 10.7

It says your movie has been removed by the user?

I have had the same exact issues with 10.7.2 on a i7 27 inch iMac. I spent multiple hours with techincal support discussing what the issue could be. Suffice to say, we reached a few key ideas, but nothing can be confirmed with out the acutally engineers taking a look into things. For that to happen, we need to submit this issue and its details to Apple via http://www.apple.com/feedback/. I do not understand why they do not read these threads, but the only sure way to get this issue sloved is to report it via feedback and in numbers so it becomes a high pirority.

I am a business owner and this is causing me money, so the sooner we can get this bug fixed, the better.

I'd be interestinged to know Gandalf what firmware got installed as far as i'm aware, there wasn't any firmware, just software in the lion upgrade.

Agree with sending in feedback in order for apple to fix as it's clearly a lion issue. No issues with SL. I'm very worried to hear there are no fix reports in 10.7.3....

My graphics card fix is needed for a

Graphics  NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 256 MB on an early 2009

In other threads, fixes that seem to work is replacing the SL driver which was stable but choppy in Lion (lag but you get stabilty)

Apple needs driver fixes. Simples

MusioMan: I was told that there was a firmware upgrade from late 2011 iMac etc.. Example from my 2011 June iMac had SL on it, just before Lion came out. When Lion came out I had a free install of the software, I waited a few weeks then installed it and had all sorts of problems and issues. I went back to SL, the guy at the Chicago Apple store Genius bar, said he wasn't supprised as Lion is made to run on the newer hardware as there was a firmware update that was installed on my computer when I updated it to Lion. But when I went back to SL, my problems got worse and I had nothing but hardware issues and freezes etc.. So far very little issues now with new Mac Mini running Lion although I did have some problems with a couple of freezes.  Not sure what the **** is going on at this point, but Apple is going to loose loyal fans if they don't get a grip on this soon. I am still ****** I don't have my iMac i7 Quad Core, but I will wait for awhile before I buy another one, just glad they gave me a in store credit. 

jmarchalonis: I sent feedback a couple of times now.