macOS Sierra freeze on iMac late 2009 using Safari

I seem to have this problem no matter what browser I use.

My Imac 27" 2009 has crashed in Safari and in Chrome, though less so in Chrome, takes a long time to reboot. I do hope they come up with a fix ASAP. I see someone saying they have downloaded 10.12.2 Sierra but I presume it is a test version as it does not seem to be available yet

If you look at what Sierra was supposed to do, "Improved security and stability" were included. At least for a number of us, that's a big FAIL.

Same problem here, just updated to MacOS Sierra on late 2009 27in iMac and after several hours of use it freezes. Clock stops, mouse move but can't do anything else. Hard disk has activity, left an entire night to see if next day will unfreeze but it didn't happened. Something has to be improve in a future release.

Hi everyone. A couple of weeks ago I reported the same problem as everyone else: iMac freezing using Safari, no way around but hard reboot. Installed Chrome and it worked fine until yesterday. I've had the same freeze without Safari open twice now. Other programs in use were Powerpoint, Excel, Mail, Calender, Notes, Messages.

Any news from Apple?

Same problem here. My loyal Sierra iMac 2009 Core2Duo 3.06 (10,1) with the 256MB ATI 4670 card in.

WindowServer spins and only the mouse pointer moves until power management kicks in. Then is a black screen with no response to anything unless you hard power cycle.

The issue appears to be related to how hard the GPU is being worked and monitoring of the watchdog pats that the GPU returns. Safari aggravates the issue with it's GPU offloading but any app that keeps the ASIC busy is likely to cause the issue also.

I have heard of a solution that dates back to Snow Leopard 10.6.2 which has an ATI driver that omits this checking and therefore works continuously.

That driver is clearly very old but worth using until Apple fix this issue, if ever.

I do hold out hope because there are quite a few Mac platforms out there with ATI/AMD ASIC's in.

One thing clear to me since the dawn of chipset graphics is that I'm often clear of a problem in the cheaper Mac's that always rear their ugly head in more expensive ones.

I too was plagued with NV issues in 2007 and 2008 modes. Then again later in another platform. I have also hit issues with ATI chips. And in all that time, my GMA950, HD3000, HD4000 and Iris platforms have performed flawlessly.

Perhaps it's worth spending less on the entry Mac's then spec up their CPU, RAM and storage so you don't hit desecrate GPU problems that plague Apple.

Hope this helps,

TonyMac.

FYI - It can also be because of a third party app installed in the bar at top of screen. Just got through having lots of issues again after that and I gave it three days to correct itself to no avail and after I removed it, the problems ceased.

Which App was it that you removed and solved the issue? I have a few in the top bar but they have been there forever though only recently upgraded to Sierra when the problems started

I will add that it seems to happen while scrolling with mouse wheel. No hard evidence, just a possible coincidence?

FWIT, I had the exact same iMac; same problem particularly with Safari but occasionally with other apps like Mail, for a month after the Sierra upgrade. Searching support pages for more answers, I stumbled across a reference to Trusteer Rapport by IBM, a security feature promoted and recommended by various financial institutions.

I remembered installing it years ago. I has caused no conflicts (that I was aware of) through multiple OS upgrades.

It doesn’t appear as a Safari extension or plug-in. It doesn’t appear as a stand alone app like a anti-virus program. You access it at the bottom of the System Preferences window, as you would Flash Player. It updates itself automatically and I pretty much forgot about it.

I opened System Preferences, disabled the program, and both Mail and Safari worked correctly. I then uninstalled it completely, and (so far for a couple of days) Mail, Safari and everything else continues to work as they should. No freezes. The whole system seems noticeably more responsive.

The Trusteer Rapport website says it supports both the latest OSX and the latest version of Safari. Didn’t seem to be true for me, however, once I did the Sierra upgrade.

I removed Trusteer Rapport and my problems seem to have stopped. See full post 20 NOV above.

I removed Rapport, and I still have the same problems. No help.

Sierra, Safari continue to test my patience!

I agree but I don't think it's safari.

About a week ago my IT created a new user for me. The crashing slowed down but didn't stop. They re-seated my ram. No luck.

What they are saying is it's a kernel panic. Granted I am working the processor hard sometimes, but other times it's a click in a finder window with little open that does it. Something gets stuck sucking all the processor load.

We had this problem the first couple months of El Capitain too. Then an Apple update cured it, with no mention of the cause.

Come-on Apple. This is totally unacceptable. Enough people have this problem for long enough. There is an issue with your drivers and the video cards in the older iMac. I've had this for years and each MacOS or OSX update I hope that this will be the one where you fix it. But no.

I will not be using Safari after this post. Firefox or Google Chrome - your nemesis have better software than you do in this regard.

It's not difficult to reproduce and it must be easily fixable.

I'm not going to buy a new iMac when my 2009 works just fine. And when the day comes to get that next bright and shiny computer - whether or not it is an iMac will depend on how you respond to this issue. The planned obsolesce may be your own.

I am very angry!!!!!!!

I seriously doubt it has anything to do with graphics drivers. As I experienced the problem as well (pas tense, as I downgraded back to El Capitan), but don't have either an ATI, nor an nVidia graphics card. My iMac has an Intel Iris Pro card.

It could be limited to iMac's though, as I don't remember any other Mac being mentioned in this thread.