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For the last couple of weeks my iMac has been freezing and requires a hard reset to fix. On at least one occasion the screen flashed before it froze.
Need a good bit more info to begin to guess what's going on. How much RAM, what OS version, which video card, how full is hard drive, do you have extended AppleCare, what were you doing when it froze, any new software or updates installed around that time?
Hi,
I have 4Gb of Ram Available and there is usually around 2.7GB free
In terms of disk space I have 640GB of which 304GB is available.
OS version is 10.7.2
No software updates happening and none since 18 Dec when an iTunes update was applied
Graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 256 MB
I do not have extended AppleCare at present.
Other info
I have bluetooth Keyboard / touchpad and mouse.
I ran a memory check using a utility called MEMTEST earlier today a couple of times and it came up clean.
It has frozen twice today - on the first occasion I was browsing the web using Safari and at the same time in the background was importing a CD into ITunes.
The second time the screensaver was on and the monitor had gone to sleep. I used the touchpad to waken the monitor and the screen saver was just frozen on the screen - again a hard reboot required.
Up until 2 weeks ago I had not experienced a single crash or freeze on the iMac.
Chris
Is the 4 GB the original RAM, and are keyboard, touchpad and mouse all Apple? And by freeze you mean nothing would respond but not a kernel panic? You could also try Repair Permissions and Verify Disk in Disk Utility, as well as running AHT (Apple Hardware Test) on your original disks.
Hi , yes all original RAM and Apple keyboards and mouse.
I'll try the disk verify thanks. In terms of Kernal panic..not sure how I tell that but I did look in the console and there are some logs in there that seem to indicate a panic dump took place...??
If this is a kernal panic - then its happened twice today corresponding with the two freezes i have seen today
Interval Since Last Panic Report: -1 sec
Panics Since Last Report: 1
Anonymous UUID: E1921868-BEF8-4A93-8D6A-0A138B2ADBBD
Mon Jan 2 15:12:05 2012
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff7f8090704f): NVRM[0/2:0:0]: Read Error 0x00000100: CFG 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0x065510de, BAR0 0xd2000000 0xffffff80812cf000 0x096a80a1, D0, P3/4
Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff807fb82e90 : 0xffffff8000220702
0xffffff807fb82f10 : 0xffffff7f8090704f
0xffffff807fb82fa0 : 0xffffff7f809f713c
0xffffff807fb82ff0 : 0xffffff7f809f71fc
0xffffff807fb83050 : 0xffffff7f80c99c82
0xffffff807fb83170 : 0xffffff7f80a16259
0xffffff807fb831a0 : 0xffffff7f8091098a
0xffffff807fb83250 : 0xffffff7f8090c28c
0xffffff807fb83440 : 0xffffff7f8090d55f
0xffffff807fb83500 : 0xffffff7f8176c32a
0xffffff807fb83610 : 0xffffff7f8176c857
0xffffff807fb83630 : 0xffffff7f8173248c
0xffffff807fb83640 : 0xffffff7f8176be5b
0xffffff807fb83650 : 0xffffff7f81731abe
0xffffff807fb83660 : 0xffffff7f8176c836
0xffffff807fb83680 : 0xffffff7f81736214
0xffffff807fb836c0 : 0xffffff7f81733023
0xffffff807fb836f0 : 0xffffff7f8179bc46
0xffffff807fb83770 : 0xffffff7f81786453
0xffffff807fb837d0 : 0xffffff7f8178684e
0xffffff807fb83820 : 0xffffff7f81786ac3
0xffffff807fb838b0 : 0xffffff7f81787817
0xffffff807fb838e0 : 0xffffff7f8173f0a4
0xffffff807fb83aa0 : 0xffffff7f81787f70
0xffffff807fb83b60 : 0xffffff7f8173c10d
0xffffff807fb83bc0 : 0xffffff80006523be
0xffffff807fb83be0 : 0xffffff8000652c9a
0xffffff807fb83c40 : 0xffffff800065343b
0xffffff807fb83d80 : 0xffffff80002a3898
0xffffff807fb83e80 : 0xffffff8000223006
0xffffff807fb83eb0 : 0xffffff8000214829
0xffffff807fb83f10 : 0xffffff800021bb58
0xffffff807fb83f70 : 0xffffff80002ae8a0
0xffffff807fb83fb0 : 0xffffff80002d8383
Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
com.apple.NVDAResman(7.1.2)[3B24E838-5E73-362B-97FA-239F5AEE7D81]@0xffffff7f808 a6000->0xffffff7f80b7ffff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.6.7)[6D54F06A-46B7-37FC-AF22-DE68DC18A1A3]@0xffff ff7f80822000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.3.2)[6517D9A6-58F5-3CFC-B021-C882306150D5]@0xff ffff7f80894000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.3.2)[55FF26D3-292D-3B4B-8AB7-1D25C8B4313B]@0 xffffff7f8085c000
com.apple.nvidia.nv50hal(7.1.2)[2E84958C-1EEC-316B-9F7A-68C368F83476]@0xffffff7 f80b80000->0xffffff7f80ea1fff
dependency: com.apple.NVDAResman(7.1.2)[3B24E838-5E73-362B-97FA-239F5AEE7D81]@0xffffff7f808 a6000
com.apple.GeForce(7.1.2)[61E6C721-447E-39D3-BAB8-2A661467B517]@0xffffff7f817310 00->0xffffff7f817f0fff
dependency: com.apple.NVDAResman(7.1.2)[3B24E838-5E73-362B-97FA-239F5AEE7D81]@0xffffff7f808 a6000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.3.2)[6517D9A6-5
System Profile:
Model: iMac9,1, BootROM IM91.008D.B08, 2 processors, Intel Core 2 Duo, 3.06 GHz, 4 GB, SMC 1.45f0
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 120, NVIDIA GeForce GT 120, PCIe, 256 MB
Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x802C, 0x31364A53463235363634485A2D3147314431
Memory Module: BANK 1/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x802C, 0x31364A53463235363634485A2D3147314431
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x8E), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.100.98.75.18)
Bluetooth: Version 4.0.1f4, 2 service, 18 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: AirPort, AirPort, en1
Serial ATA Device: Hitachi HDT721064SLA360, 640.14 GB
Serial ATA Device: HL-DT-ST DVDRW GA11N
USB Device: Built-in iSight, apple_vendor_id, 0x8502, 0x24400000 / 2
USB Device: iP4300, 0x04a9 (Canon Inc.), 0x10b6, 0x26400000 / 2
USB Device: IR Receiver, apple_vendor_id, 0x8242, 0x04500000 / 2
USB Device: BRCM2046 Hub, 0x0a5c (Broadcom Corp.), 0x4500, 0x06100000 / 2
USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller, apple_vendor_id, 0x8215, 0x06110000 / 5
I'm certainly not qualified but wonder if it's related to your Nvidia card. Did you have a chance to run AHT? And I imagine you might have some disk corruption after the panics so be sure to verify/repair disk in Disk Utilities.
Do you have any other USB devices in use?
I wondered the same given the info in the dump and that would fit with the screen flashing once before it froze.. Disk a disk verify - all OK. I have a challenge doing an AHT...you need to hold down D when rebooting right ? Bluetooth keyboard does not get recognised until its booted up so you miss the chance. Need to find where I put my normal keyboard before I can do it...
This article http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3273 says you have a very narrow window of opportunity during startup but it should work with a wireless keyboard.
I have the same card and same problems - lots of freezes on a system that ran SL fine for over a year 24/7!
Soon as i did the lion upgrade, clean install...issues..
I've narrowed it down to lion's buggy Nvidia driver. God knows i've sent a million of those panic reports in after a forced restart.
Here's a long thread - this page has my kernal panic info too
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3199218?start=270&tstart=0
This thread has a repot in it too https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3560388
Let's wait for 10.7.3. If that doesn't work, downgrade to SL and which has zero issues. Failing that, buy a windows machine! 😮
EDIT. I noticed you have a blutooth mouse/keyboard which i have too. I'm not sure if that could be related as I changed my keyboard soon as the issue happened... Very simlar situation to yours. My system was fine for a couple of weeks before the crashes. IT is lion...games run fine, but anything lion related (safari, itunes...) crashes with the crash log pointing at the graphics card.
I think you meant to reply to the OP, not me. Hopefully he will see it.
I have the same problems with my iMac 24" Early 2009 with the Nvidia GeForce GT 120 256MB MXM graphics card. I've done the usual and finally decided that it's a faulty card that only a replacement will fix. Oddly, when I'm home it's more stable when connected via a Displayport DVI adapter to DVI cable to a 24" Dell display. When standalone (like when travelling with my iMac for long stints out of town) it's unusable. It won't run for longer than 30 minutes then I get screen artifacts and freezes and then have to fsck to repair the drive before running it again.
However, I believe that I found the solution. I installed a program which I downloaded after installing XCode called Quartz Debug which has apparently allowed me to disable Quartz Extreme, 2D Acceleration and Quartz GL. I'm not sure which one of these changes has allowed my shaky iMac to run stably now for three hours, including a half hour running a flash game and to play about the same amount of the iTunes download of the movie Avatar, so I'm relatively confident that what I did is working. Both Flash and Quicktime seem to work fine although there does seem to be a bit of screen redraw lag when moving objects on the screen or opening new windows. Other features seem to work fine such as Dock magnification and the Scale and Genie effects.
To disable Quartz Extreme:
Install XCode and then under the XCode menu (the one to the left of "File") click on Open Developer Tool/More Developer Tools...
That will take you to this web page:
https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action?name=for%20Xcode%20-
(I don't know if just downloading QD will work without installing XCode, it might)
Select and dowload the package of Applications/Tools called:
Graphics Tools for XCode
Drag the Quartz Debug program to your Applications or Utilities folder. StartQuartz Debug. If you don't get the default tools window open when you start it, look under:
Window/Quartz Debug Settings
. . . and a window will open. You can also hit command-1.
In that menu I made these changes:
I am not confident that the settings will persist if I close the program. One website suggested that by forcing quit they will persist, but I'm just not sure. I'll experiment with this later and post again if no one else does. So for now I'm leaving it running and with these settings and no other changes.
I also applied the following changes in Terminal although I'm not sure that it did anything:
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20120211025246804
So far it's working. I'll follow-up as I have time and once I'm back home.
JoeL
Atlanta, GA
BTW, I was able to remove XCode with Quartz Debug still installed and it continued to work. I now have it on autoload at boot and then set the settings indicated above manually which is quick. I've managed to pare it down to just disabling Quartz Extreme now that I'm home and connected to my external display and have had good luck so far with stability without much of a noticeable hit in graphics performance. Movies play fine, windows open and close smoothly and Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver all work as one would expect.
What this means is that I'm working with a crippled graphics card on this iMac and it's been this way for over a year. It is clear to me from the complaints and descriptions readily available all over the webs and in Apple Support Discussions that this group of iMac models' graphics cards are defective!
I know that in the past other models with such widespread and obvious defects have been part of a recall. I'm disappointed that Apple is failing to support this model when the defect is so obvious. One of the schools that I serve had a logic board replaced on an iMac G5 20" 1.8GHz three years after it was purchased and that was no longer under warrantty. They were released in May of 2005 and Apple continued repairing these iMacs until December 2008.
We're about at the same point with this model. At one time, citing the dependability of Apple products I never bought the Applecare, now, with so many issues popping up on so many models, I think you have to figure the cost of Applecare into a new Mac. Apple's quality control has apparently gotten much, much worse in recent years.
JoeL
Atlanta, GA
Joeldm, I've tried what you comment but as soon as I check Disable 2D Acceleration the system crashes. BTW, unchecking Enable Quartz Extreme seems to work so far, although it is a little bit annoying for me whenever a move between spaces and other animations (like the dock ones), which seem to be not as fluent as they are when that option is checked.
Thank you for your comment and I hope it works for me.
As old as your iMac is, have you cleaned out the dust? Dust buildup can lead to over heating issues. Remove any and all things plugged into it including the power cord, Remove the RAM access grille. Vacuum all openings starting with the RAM access area (air intake). Vacuum all ports and plugs, DVD slot and the opening across the top of the rear of the body. Blow compressed air through all your openings and vacuum again to remove any dust you loosend. Reinstall the RAM grille. Plug in the keyboard and mouse if not blue tooth. Insert power cord...
You are now in a perfect position to do a
SMC RESET
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
RRFS, I've proceed as you suggest, cleaning out the dust of my iMac (I don't think it had much anyway...it's from early 2009 and it has been in rooms with very little exposition to dust since then). But the problem is still there, I've had a crash several hours after the cleaning. I tried with Joeldm suggestion too, unchecking Enable Quartz Extreme, but I had a new crash after two weeks working fine.
So I don't have any more ideas (I've tried many other commented in other threads)...I will have to take it to an Apple Store and most probably they will replace the graphic card installed (Nvidia GT120), as other users have commented in other threads. But with apparently so much people having similar issues with this NVIDIA card (or GT130 one), I think Apple should investigate if this is a common defect on those cards and include them in a Replacement Program if that is the case. It wouldn't be the first time for a NVIDIA card, considering issues with GeForce 8600M GT in MacBook Pros...
iMac 27 Inch Early 2009 freezes periodically
