SL visual fireworks followed by freeze

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Level 1

25 points

SL visual fireworks followed by freeze

I have just acquired a late 2006 24" iMac with 1GB of RAM. It came with Leopard installed, disks for Leopard and Snow Leopard, and iLife '09. The hard disk was full, as in, zero K free. I threw away a lot of stuff, ordered 3GB of RAM from OWC, and installed Snow Leopard. I then noticed several one-pixel high horizontal lines on the display, and the Mac would freeze up on occasion, but I thought it just needed RAM. I opened iPhoto and played with Faces for quite a while. The next day, I opened a different iPhoto library (my libraries are on an external firewire hard drive) and the Faces scan made the computer freeze. I closed iPhoto, and bits of windows started missing, or repeating themselves as I dragged the mouse. Sometimes there would be "holes" in windows showing my desktop image underneath, or lines of bright pixels would appear. I still thought it was the lack of RAM. Repairing the disk with Disk Utility didn't make any appreciable difference.

Today the RAM arrived and I installed it. The Mac sees it, but the problem has not gone away, it has in fact gotten worse. Every time I go to Disk Utility (starting up from the SL disk), it shows problem, I let it do the repair, it comes up successful, I restart, and it happens all over again. When I do a Safe Boot, everything is perfect. Should I reinstall SL? iPhoto? Downgrade back to Leopard? Is my hard disk bad?

I have DiskWarrior 4.1.1, but I'm afraid to try; not sure if it's compatible with SL.

Ideas, anyone?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 24" Intel

Posted on Jun 16, 2012 9:51 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

softwater

Level 5

5,556 points

Jun 17, 2012 4:31 AM in response to Muriel Areno

The fact that the Safe boot shows there are no problems indicates that the issue lies in your user account, not with your hardware.

The first thing I'd do is remove EVERYTHING from here:

 > System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items

Select all in the list, and hit the minus '-' button at the bottom of the window.

Restart the mac normally and see if the problem is resolved.

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Answer 2

Muriel Areno Author

Level 1

25 points

Jun 17, 2012 8:15 AM in response to softwater

I had done that yesterday before the last round of DU repairs. The Mac looks happy this morning, but then I haven't opened anything...

I have to mention though that I had changed the user name and home folder name according to instructions found on these boards. I wasn't crazy about trying that but thought it would be easier than creating a new user and moving everything over. Hmm, I realize now that maybe not... 😕

Thanks you for your help, now I have some idea of where the problem lies. I'll be back if the problem returns.

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Answer 3

Muriel Areno Author

Level 1

25 points

Jun 17, 2012 11:57 AM in response to softwater

I have found and removed an old network setting, files in odd places as well as 2 copies of Safari, restarted and did some work in iPhoto since that's where the real freak-out started. It is scanning for Faces, slowly but surely. However, I still see some 1-pixel high multicolored horizontal lines that come and go. When the Faces scan is done, I'll see if it needs another DU repasir.

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