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Aluminum iMac Random Shutdown

L

LittleJoe

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 23, 2006
106
0
Worthington, OH
Ive had my 20" 2.4 for a week now and it just randomly shut down on me. It was an instant shutdown. Just browsing the web and watching a video then instantly dead. It happened the day after purchase as well but I didnt think anything of it until now.

I talked to a friend of mine with the same spec'd machine and its happened to him as well today. He actually had his out of the box for a whole 2 hours when it happened to him.

Maybe this is somewhat normal? I dunno. I never had a problem with my MacBook Pro like this, hell not even my pismo.

Hopefully this isnt a sign of things to come.
Has anyone else experienced this?
 
How are your temperature readings? It could possibly be overheating.
If not, do a RAM test.
 
It most probably is the ram. Did you change the one that Apple shipped with your mac? If so best thing call up and get them to send a couple new sticks.
 
It could very well be RAM, at least I would hope its the ram.
I have installed a 1GB stick of Crucial alongside the apple stick.

It passes all RAM tests. I reseated it for the hell of it. I had the problem before the upgrade and once after... so if it was bad clues would point to the apple stick.

As for my friend his shutdown was on the stock 1GB.

Also the temps are all within normal... though the GPU Diode temp (whatever that is) is at 70C and thats with no video running. Hmmm.
 
Same problem

Yeah I have the same problem.
I bought a 20" 2.4 Ghz iMac and bought a 3rd party 1GB RAM to put in it. It passed all the RAM tests and it wasn't overheating.
I'm taking mine to the Apple Store to let the "Geniuses" look at it.
I'll let you know what they say.
Glad I'm not the only one having this problem.
 
2nd iMac, same song

I got my 20", 2.0MHz machine on Aug 10. It did the random shutdown many times the first day out of the box. Took it back to Apple Store, the nice folks tried a number of tests but could not reproduce the shutdown. After another day of shutdowns, they gave me a new machine.

The new unit also has random shutdowns, albeit not as frequently.

I'm putting additional RAM in this weekend and will reseat the Apple stick at that time.

I REALLY like the new iMac, but this shutdown behavior is dousing the fun.

Cheers.
 
angrygolfer said:
I guess LittleJoe never posted what the end result was? I am having the same exact problem.
Click to expand...
Thought I was good to go... went a few weeks with no problems... then BAM... it happened again. I walked away from the computer for 5 minutes to come back to a dead machine. Rebooted and everything was fine. Sigh... now I just need to find the time to drag this thing up to the Genius Bar so they can tell me they cant find a problem with it.
 
Well... before I went in the iMac started freezing crazy style. After reboot id get anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes of use out of it and then everything would freeze other than the cursor. I tried switching ram, swapping slots, an OS reload, nothing worked to fix it. Crashed 5 mins in after the reload. Ran the hardware test and it found no problems.

Took it to the genius bar, and they swapped the machine on the spot for me.

Best customer service ever.
 
Mine has been doing the total loss of power random shutdown too. Just for fun I tried another outlet on surge protector and seemed better. Better, as in not as often. I have to wonder if something in that can be causing a random prob. I would think it would affect all the outlets however. And yes I did all the hoops and resets and erase and reinstall and smc fan control widget etc.

Obviously until this problem is recognized by Apple I doubt I will bring it in. I don't need them poking around for a week just to say it worked fine for them. Once they isolate the cause on other macs I am sure they will know just where to go and what to do.
 
Note that the random freeze with cursor still active is the notorious (and Apple-acknowledged) software issue. If these problems are at all related, consider rolling your iMac Software Update back to 1.0, which has helped some of us who have the problem.
 
I am experiencing a random shutdown issue. 20" iMac (Mid-2007) with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo and a Radeon HD2600 Pro.

I can't seem to find any cause for the failure. I've seen it happen with the original RAM, replacement RAM, and the RAM from my laptop.

The failure does not seem to be related to overheating; I checked the temperatures after the failure and did not see any problems.

The first failure happened within a few days of getting the system. I attributed it to poorly seated RAM (after I tried to check what brand it was but failed,) but it's happened since reseating the memory. It even shut off once while trying to run Apple Hardware Test.

I've left the system running for weeks between shutdown without the system shutting down (although I have yet to get more than 10 days without a freeze.) The most recent freeze, however, occured about an hour after the system was woken up. Before that point, the system had sent all but 10 minutes of the last 14 hours asleep.

I have seen it happen more than once in a short period of time. It happened multiple times when I was trying to install Leopard (I eventually got it to work.) After the first failure, I went back to Tiger and used the system fine for a few days before trying again.

I am going to take the system off of the UPS, and then I am going to call Apple every time it happens from now on.

The UPS has AVR, has only the iMac plugged in to it, and has worked for over six months with a constant load much higher than that of the iMac. The power is fairly clean to begin with; there is no evidence of the failures being correlated with brownouts.
 
Damn, Mac's with Bad screens? Mac's that freeze? Mac's that are shutting down? What's next? Exploding iMac's?

I can't remember when Apple has had as many problems with a new product. I've been ready to pull the trigger and buy an iMac but at this point it's just not worth the potential problems. I may wait until the next revision (Jan?) or maybe not at all (I hope not).

It doesn't help that Apple isn't forthcoming about these issues.

I'm kind of surprised the media hasn't picked up on this.
 
Hmmm... I had the everything-freeze-but-the-mouse AND the random sudden shutoff tonight.

Im on day 2 of my first 14, so I may be taking this unit back.
 
I suspect that the optical drive in my iMac may have something to do with its problems. I had trouble reinstalling Leopard due to what I thought was a scratched disk, but I tried to burn a DVD earlier and the system shut down...


edit- 30 minutes later, I had another sudden shutdown. Firsrt, I wrote the Leopard disk image to a FireWire hard drive on another machine. next, I was about 15 minutes in to backing up the iMac's hard drive to the FireWire drive, and the Mac shut off.
 
Uh oh. So, these problems should show up from when you first start using your imac, right? Right?! :D

Tom J said:
Damn, Mac's with Bad screens? Mac's that freeze? Mac's that are shutting down? What's next? Exploding iMac's?

I can't remember when Apple has had as many problems with a new product. I've been ready to pull the trigger and buy an iMac but at this point it's just not worth the potential problems. I may wait until the next revision (Jan?) or maybe not at all (I hope not).
Click to expand...

I've heard of an iPhone screen that exploded outwards (while charging).
 
I've been running Windows Vista for the last week and I've gotten a few freezes, where the system stops responding to input, the internal display shuts off, and the external display shows a black screen - but the fans are still running.

I suspect that the Vista freezes and the OS X shutdowns are the same issue, just with the system fully powering down while OS X is running.
 
Same thing

ya same thing is happening with me. the weird thing is, i have looked around the forums and a lot of the people with the problem bought their imacs during the third week of august including me. i am going 2 the apple store 2day 2 possibly get a replacement.
 
i got my imac the first or 2nd week it came out I believe and this problem just started happening to me


what to do?
 
This has happened to me 3 times. Twice while using the ichat new effect download from the apple site, and once while using microsoft word which just arrived her yesterday. It really pisses me off.
 
how long have you had your new iMac?

The whole reason I switched is to avoid this annoyance...and apple phone CSR is only covered for the first 90 days or they force you to buy this apple care crap...

what kind of customer protection is that
 
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