24" C2D iMac Misbehaving, Help!!

[Sean7512]

Well, since yesterday, my new iMac has been having troubles. It all started yesterday when I received my first ever kernel panic while watching a movie using VLC. I am fairly new to Macs, got my first one in May of 2004, but never had a kernel panic. Alright, that was fine, I restarted the computer by holding the power button and it took maybe 10 minutes before it started. I got scared, but when it finally came up, everything was fine. So today while watching hockey highlights in Safari, Safari repeatedly stopped responding. I did not force quit though, and after about 2 minutes it would come back and work. Then just now, I was using a sound editing program to make a ringtone for my Razr. I switched to Safari for a quick second, and then went back to my ringtone to find that the program froze up. I waited, but it never came back and I was forced to Force Quit it. The sound program is using Rosetta if that would have anything to do with it. What is going on, should I be concerned??

Here are the specs:
24" C2D iMac
2GB Ram (all ram from Apple)
500GB HDD
NVidia 7600 GT w/ 256MB vram
Bluetooth Mightymosue/Keyboard

Any suggestions?

Edit:

Well, I just repaired permissions and I have NEVER seen soo many permissions that were wrong. I copied and pasted the window that shows which permissions were fixed into word. And it produced a document with 301 pages!!! That is insane, no? I never normally get more than like 4 permissions screwed up, this is insane. I wonder if it fixed any of my problems, or would permissions not be a cause of kernel panics and applications freezing

 

[JAT]

Starting to sound like you have a hard drive issue. If you have anything on there that's important, I'd back it up right now. Then do some checking on the drive.

 

[beatsme]

this is why (in an unrelated thread) I mentioned that I usually re-format HD/re-install OS on new machinery. You probably just got a funky install from the factory. It happens.

but yea, back up your data, and do some HD checking. Or since you're backing up anyway, you might skip the HD checking and just re-format/re-install. If it was the OS, problem solved, and if it's the HD, it's very likely the problems will re-appear.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

I have allways wondered about the process Apple uses to install the OS on new Machines? Some little old lady loading each one into each machine? Or a old copy of the OS thats been used millions & millions of times by the manufactor of the hard drives? Or Steve Jobs waves his magic pod and presto!

 

[Sean7512]

Well ever since I repaired those pesky permissions I have not had a SINGLE problem *knocks on wood*. Out of curiosity, how do I check my disks....I know I put the install disc in and boot from it (from holding 'c' in??) but I'm unsure what to do after that, can anyone help me out?

 

[zerolight]

I have allways wondered about the process Apple uses to install the OS on new Machines? Some little old lady loading each one into each machine? Or a old copy of the OS thats been used millions & millions of times by the manufactor of the hard drives? Or Steve Jobs waves his magic pod and presto!

When you buy a Mac, it's almost always the latest release of the OS will all the latest fixes, just like the rest of us download with System Update. Apple will have this stored in the manufacturing plant as a disk image, and will update it when they release new fixes on System Update too.

There'll be an area in the manufacturing plant where they connect HDDs to a computer of sorts (probably several at a time) and write the entire disk image to the new HDD. Thus every HDD will have what appears to be a brand new install on a freshly formatted HDD, because that is essentially what the disk image will be.

If your computer starts locking up, it's unlikely to be a bad install and more likely to be a failing HDD. This happens. It's just pot luck. Some drives last their expected lifetime, some last days. There's no way to tell until it's put to use. I bought a Seagate drive once, used it for a week, it started having issues, I checked it on the Seatools application and it was indeed, failing. Seagate had a 5 year warranty and immediately replaced the drive.

Anyway, as has been suggested, your Apple may be having issues with the HDD which may need replaced. Alternatively you may have a dodgy GFX card or Soundcard that's causing lockups.

Finally, check to see if you have any software that's been recently installed and could be causing issues. For example, on both my current 24 iMac and my previous G5 dual 2.7, I found that installing Growl (as slick as it looks) caused instability, lockups, beachballs, the whole nine yards. As soon as I removed it my system became uber-stable again.