Got my iMac on Monday, and it's been perfect... until today. I've been running ethernet only (on the Mac side) and it's been fine, no freezes. Today I booted into Windows, and it froze while playing a game. In OS X I had wifi off, but I'm thinking it was still on in Windows -- I think one of the many pop up thingies told me that a wifi network was in range. So, another vote for wifi being the culprit.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Can 4850 iMac owners help find the cause of the freezing? Is it WiFi?
- Thread starter avihappy
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Am I the only one here thinking that maybe could be a problem of RAM? In my looong experience with PC...these looks like problems of RAM, 'couse:
1. some people have experienced problem with Wi-fi on
2. some people don't
3. some people stressed the GPU without any problem while other people just playning a DVD found their iMac freezed.
4. If could be a problem of firmware/driver I think that Apple could fix it via internet update instead of spending money to replace them.
I don't know...it sounds like a RAM problem (based on my previous experience). Maybe a whole batch is defective
Ciao
Fabio
1. some people have experienced problem with Wi-fi on
2. some people don't
3. some people stressed the GPU without any problem while other people just playning a DVD found their iMac freezed.
4. If could be a problem of firmware/driver I think that Apple could fix it via internet update instead of spending money to replace them.
I don't know...it sounds like a RAM problem (based on my previous experience). Maybe a whole batch is defective
Ciao
Fabio
Might as well add in my 2c.
I received my machine last thurs (4/16), and ran basic things with no problem, including youtube and other streaming video without any problems. I froze up while playing WoW on friday (in a high density area), and then 3 times within 45 mins just after midnight on sunday. For this whole interval of time I'd been running off the wifi.
Monday I connected all my peripherals and my ethernet cable. I have since had no issues at all.
The machine does pretty good work, although I'm hoping the screen tearing I get while playing WoW will go away when the ATi drivers get updated (which according to blizzard should happen sooner or later).
This thread is convincing me to buy applecare. I'd rather not send mine back over a few freeze's I haven't experienced since, but I don't want to be shooting myself in the foot a year down the line.
I received my machine last thurs (4/16), and ran basic things with no problem, including youtube and other streaming video without any problems. I froze up while playing WoW on friday (in a high density area), and then 3 times within 45 mins just after midnight on sunday. For this whole interval of time I'd been running off the wifi.
Monday I connected all my peripherals and my ethernet cable. I have since had no issues at all.
The machine does pretty good work, although I'm hoping the screen tearing I get while playing WoW will go away when the ATi drivers get updated (which according to blizzard should happen sooner or later).
This thread is convincing me to buy applecare. I'd rather not send mine back over a few freeze's I haven't experienced since, but I don't want to be shooting myself in the foot a year down the line.
You have six months from date of purchase to add Apple Care to the machine. That's more than enough time for Apple to provide info on what the fix is.
The cost of a hardware swapout is dramatically higher for a company than doing a firmware or software fix. So, if there's any way at all they can fix this without cracking open boxes, that's what they will do.
I just completed avihappy's questionaire. I just wanted to report that I received my 24" 4850 equipped iMac yesterday and (so far) have had no problems.
Don't know if any of this is relevant, but it was a BTO. I started with a base 2.96 and upgraded to 3.06. I have the 640GB drive, not the 1TB.
I'm using both Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I am using WiFi (802.11g) exclusively. I have not re-installed OSX, I am using the default install.
- I played iTunes HD Trailers (in fullscreen) for 2-3 hours. No problems.
- I played an entire 1080p MKV rip (using Quicktime/Perian). No stutters, hiccups or freezes.
- I played EVE Online for a few hours. Played exceptionally well with everything set to MAX.
- Left iTunes playing my entire library overnight with the Visualizer enabled (MP3s are streaming via WiFi from a SMB share on another server). It was still playing fine this morning, not a single lockup.
Knock on wood, but everything seems to be running fine for me. I'm wondering if these later batches aren't affected? I ordered my BTO iMac from MacMall about 3-days after the announcement -- so, I know I got put on the bottom of the list as far as fulfulling orders goes. *shrug*
I'll obviously post up if anything changes.. but so far so good!
Don't know if any of this is relevant, but it was a BTO. I started with a base 2.96 and upgraded to 3.06. I have the 640GB drive, not the 1TB.
I'm using both Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I am using WiFi (802.11g) exclusively. I have not re-installed OSX, I am using the default install.
- I played iTunes HD Trailers (in fullscreen) for 2-3 hours. No problems.
- I played an entire 1080p MKV rip (using Quicktime/Perian). No stutters, hiccups or freezes.
- I played EVE Online for a few hours. Played exceptionally well with everything set to MAX.
- Left iTunes playing my entire library overnight with the Visualizer enabled (MP3s are streaming via WiFi from a SMB share on another server). It was still playing fine this morning, not a single lockup.
Knock on wood, but everything seems to be running fine for me. I'm wondering if these later batches aren't affected? I ordered my BTO iMac from MacMall about 3-days after the announcement -- so, I know I got put on the bottom of the list as far as fulfulling orders goes. *shrug*
I'll obviously post up if anything changes.. but so far so good!
Hi,
I've had 2 iMac's over the past couple of weeks (3.06 / 1TB / 4G / ATI 4850), the latest being delivered this morning and both lock up regularly.
Just saw this about the issue maybe being Airport so I decided to test. I can get it to lock up quite quickly by using it normally when there is a lot of network (airport) activity going on.
I have now switched airport off and switched to wired ethernet. Doing a migration, downloading lots of data and performing a time machine backup over the network would all lock the machine quite quickly on wireless, but using wired everything seems to be stable.
I'm 80% convinced that it's an Airport + ATI issue.
Wayne.
I've had 2 iMac's over the past couple of weeks (3.06 / 1TB / 4G / ATI 4850), the latest being delivered this morning and both lock up regularly.
Just saw this about the issue maybe being Airport so I decided to test. I can get it to lock up quite quickly by using it normally when there is a lot of network (airport) activity going on.
I have now switched airport off and switched to wired ethernet. Doing a migration, downloading lots of data and performing a time machine backup over the network would all lock the machine quite quickly on wireless, but using wired everything seems to be stable.
I'm 80% convinced that it's an Airport + ATI issue.
Wayne.
8086 address space ?
I am not a programmer or hardware engineer but I seem to remember something about address space with the Intel architecture and how memory address spaces for embedded hardware can't/shouldn't overlap.
Does anyone know enough about how this stuff works to determine whether the WiFi and ATI hardware maps to some conflicting memory address. I know in the old days you had to make sure stuff didn't overlap in the bios on PCs and I thought the basic underlying architecture hasn't changed to something completely new.
Any thoughts?
I am not a programmer or hardware engineer but I seem to remember something about address space with the Intel architecture and how memory address spaces for embedded hardware can't/shouldn't overlap.
Does anyone know enough about how this stuff works to determine whether the WiFi and ATI hardware maps to some conflicting memory address. I know in the old days you had to make sure stuff didn't overlap in the bios on PCs and I thought the basic underlying architecture hasn't changed to something completely new.
Any thoughts?
I've been following the threads both here and on Apple Discussion boards pretty carefully, and I think I'm right in saying you're one of only two people who have suffered even one freeze with airport switched off. Everyone else reports that switching airport off solves the issue. On the other hand, there seems to be no correlation between our memory and whether we freeze or not - there are people with all memory configurations suffering crashes.
The common factors seem to be: we all have a 4850 card. We have airport on, we crash, we have airport off, we don't crash. I agree that bad memory is frequently the problem, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary I would consider it, but that's not where we are any more. It may be that yours IS a memory issue - clearly the fact that yours crashes with airport off indicates that your problem is not the same as the rest of us. I'd return yours asap.
I was in contact to the Scandinavian Support today. I told them about my problem with the Imac freezing and they ADMITTED that there is indeed a problem and it is related to Imacs with ATI Radeon 4850.
They had "several" reports related to the subject. Status is that a firmware update is expected at a later time. The Apple employee also told me, that due to the nature of this problem, ordinary Apple support people had no access to the reports or an ETA for the firmware.
My Imac will be returned monday, where it will be picked up by UPS and returned to Apple. A new Imac will be shipped (same specs) as priority order and is expected to arrive within a week.
I don't know what to expect from a new Imac. But I will keep returning by the number if need be, if only to create attention and be "the customer from hell".
They had "several" reports related to the subject. Status is that a firmware update is expected at a later time. The Apple employee also told me, that due to the nature of this problem, ordinary Apple support people had no access to the reports or an ETA for the firmware.
My Imac will be returned monday, where it will be picked up by UPS and returned to Apple. A new Imac will be shipped (same specs) as priority order and is expected to arrive within a week.
I don't know what to expect from a new Imac. But I will keep returning by the number if need be, if only to create attention and be "the customer from hell".
A memory error normally creates a dump-error?
Imo it's not needed to play 'customer from hell' in this matter. If it's clear that a firmware update can solve the problem it's better to wait for the update than to change imacs every day in my opinion?
I called Apple yesterday and today to share my experience; I got a data capture tool from a 2nd line helpdesk engineer, i wasn't able to see any weird information, other than a few iPhoto crashes, caused by a frontrow issue. I hope the file contains the data needed to analize the problem in detail. But i am pretty sure i'm not the only one who's been sending these files to them?
I've been building an iTunes library the entire day watched a few HD trailers, converting roughly 1000 Flac files to Alac and no issues what so ever.
Imo it's not needed to play 'customer from hell' in this matter. If it's clear that a firmware update can solve the problem it's better to wait for the update than to change imacs every day in my opinion?
I called Apple yesterday and today to share my experience; I got a data capture tool from a 2nd line helpdesk engineer, i wasn't able to see any weird information, other than a few iPhoto crashes, caused by a frontrow issue. I hope the file contains the data needed to analize the problem in detail. But i am pretty sure i'm not the only one who's been sending these files to them?
I've been building an iTunes library the entire day watched a few HD trailers, converting roughly 1000 Flac files to Alac and no issues what so ever.
Hi, I received my iMac with 4850 yesterday, and have been experiencing no problems yet.
I've been connected with ethernet for the setup and some updates, then I set up the time capsule and have been connected wireless since then.
My machine is 3.06 GHz, 4GB RAM, 1TB HD.
I've been doing only light tasks, like installing software and surfing; played a couple of videos on YouTube, some HD quicktime trailers (full screen), two long .avi clips in quicktime, several songs on iTunes. Now I'm importing my iTunes library through wifi... (it's pretty fast)
I'm asking you what kind of "stress test" should I make to be pretty sure that mine is / is not one of the iMac affected by the freezing issue.
Thank you.
I've been connected with ethernet for the setup and some updates, then I set up the time capsule and have been connected wireless since then.
My machine is 3.06 GHz, 4GB RAM, 1TB HD.
I've been doing only light tasks, like installing software and surfing; played a couple of videos on YouTube, some HD quicktime trailers (full screen), two long .avi clips in quicktime, several songs on iTunes. Now I'm importing my iTunes library through wifi... (it's pretty fast)
I'm asking you what kind of "stress test" should I make to be pretty sure that mine is / is not one of the iMac affected by the freezing issue.
Thank you.
Same here. Four days with wired ethernet no problems.
I have switched to wireless Airport and get a freeze whitin 1 hour.
I have now switched airport off, switched to wired ethernet and everything work good.
I'm convinced that it's an Airport + ATI issue, too.
My english is not so good. I'm italian. Sorry.
I have switched to wireless Airport and get a freeze whitin 1 hour.
I have now switched airport off, switched to wired ethernet and everything work good.
I'm convinced that it's an Airport + ATI issue, too.
My english is not so good. I'm italian. Sorry.
Possible Fix????
I am not an IT professional and I have no idea if this will actually work for a long period of time it is just what worked for me so far.
So I got a brand new iMac 3.06/4850/1TB and on the first day I had 4 freezes 2 with Wi-Fi on and 2 after I turned it off.
I was pretty mad and figured well I have to send it back. I decided that if I was going to send it back I want to wipe the drives to get rid of personal info (I’m a jumpy person) I wiped the drive with a zero write and then re-installed the OS.
Then once the OS started up I immediately installed temperature monitor and smcFan Control I then changed fan speeds to ODD 2023rpm HDD 2862rpm CPU 2013rpm (no reason for the numbers it was just the half way point of the slider)
The fans are now always on (as they were with my rock solid G4 iMac without smcFan control) and guess what my GPU temp went from an average of 56 – 62 Celsius (crashes around 62 for me) to an average of 45 -50 Celsius (40 Celsius while not in use) and low and behold it has not freezed
I was doing iTunes visualize Photoshop and watching TV shows at the same time. I want to push it harder because obviously I should not have to install a 3rd party app to make my computer work (plus it will shorten the fans life, good thing I got apple care)
But if this works for a month or two while apple works on a fix (they better) then I am ok with it.
Now please anyone with more knowledge then me please tell me if anything I did is bad or if pushing the fans that hard is not smart because I really have no idea it just seems ok to me.
I just figured well it crashes because it’s hot why not just make it cooler (my PC fans are always on cooling it off)
Cheers
I am not an IT professional and I have no idea if this will actually work for a long period of time it is just what worked for me so far.
So I got a brand new iMac 3.06/4850/1TB and on the first day I had 4 freezes 2 with Wi-Fi on and 2 after I turned it off.
I was pretty mad and figured well I have to send it back. I decided that if I was going to send it back I want to wipe the drives to get rid of personal info (I’m a jumpy person) I wiped the drive with a zero write and then re-installed the OS.
Then once the OS started up I immediately installed temperature monitor and smcFan Control I then changed fan speeds to ODD 2023rpm HDD 2862rpm CPU 2013rpm (no reason for the numbers it was just the half way point of the slider)
The fans are now always on (as they were with my rock solid G4 iMac without smcFan control) and guess what my GPU temp went from an average of 56 – 62 Celsius (crashes around 62 for me) to an average of 45 -50 Celsius (40 Celsius while not in use) and low and behold it has not freezed
I was doing iTunes visualize Photoshop and watching TV shows at the same time. I want to push it harder because obviously I should not have to install a 3rd party app to make my computer work (plus it will shorten the fans life, good thing I got apple care)
But if this works for a month or two while apple works on a fix (they better) then I am ok with it.
Now please anyone with more knowledge then me please tell me if anything I did is bad or if pushing the fans that hard is not smart because I really have no idea it just seems ok to me.
I just figured well it crashes because it’s hot why not just make it cooler (my PC fans are always on cooling it off)
Cheers
One of the biggest advantages of an iMac is it's silent...
I wouldn't accept an iMac whose fans are always running.
If the ATI iMac really needs to be cooled down even when not being pushed very hard I would call it misconstructed.
My brother owns the 20' iMac and it's almost completely silent - as I expect it from an intelligently designed Apple Computer.
So I really hope this won't be the "fix" that Apple will present us...
I wouldn't accept an iMac whose fans are always running.
If the ATI iMac really needs to be cooled down even when not being pushed very hard I would call it misconstructed.
My brother owns the 20' iMac and it's almost completely silent - as I expect it from an intelligently designed Apple Computer.
So I really hope this won't be the "fix" that Apple will present us...
OK, so far all the data that was submitted via the questionaire indicates this:
Of all the users WITH freezes, all (100%) 4 of them use WiFi. None use ethernet.
Of the users that indicated their iMac was working, 1 used WiFi and 1 used Ethernet.
Of the 4 users WITH freezing (all of whom were on WiFi), 3 turned off their airport and used Ethernet only. None of these three users indicated crashing after switching to Ethernet. The fourth freezing user did not try this test.
Of the 2 users WITHOUT freezing, the 1 user whose iMac was working on Ethernet tried using WiFi for his test, and it still did not freeze.
This is looking good, but I still only have 6 submitted data points.
Of all the users WITH freezes, all (100%) 4 of them use WiFi. None use ethernet.
Of the users that indicated their iMac was working, 1 used WiFi and 1 used Ethernet.
Of the 4 users WITH freezing (all of whom were on WiFi), 3 turned off their airport and used Ethernet only. None of these three users indicated crashing after switching to Ethernet. The fourth freezing user did not try this test.
Of the 2 users WITHOUT freezing, the 1 user whose iMac was working on Ethernet tried using WiFi for his test, and it still did not freeze.
This is looking good, but I still only have 6 submitted data points.
anyone with 8GB ram?
Interesting to me that I have yet to notice anybody posting machine specs that indicate 8GB of RAM. I would have thought that the ability to accommodate the 8GB was a factor in motivating people to buy this model. Should I assume that because Apple charges so much for the 8GB upgrade, that people are planning to order it from 3rd party sources, but are unwilling to do so until the freezing problem is worked out? After all, why invest even more money in an iMac that isn't working to begin with?
I'm expecting mine to be delivered on Wednesday, and as soon as I determine that I can run it without freezing as long as WiFi is off, I'm getting an 8GB RAM kit. I'd love to know of anybody running their iMac with 8GB... It can't be possible that the 8GB users are not having the problem, so they don't have a presence in these forums. Or can it?
Interesting to me that I have yet to notice anybody posting machine specs that indicate 8GB of RAM. I would have thought that the ability to accommodate the 8GB was a factor in motivating people to buy this model. Should I assume that because Apple charges so much for the 8GB upgrade, that people are planning to order it from 3rd party sources, but are unwilling to do so until the freezing problem is worked out? After all, why invest even more money in an iMac that isn't working to begin with?
I'm expecting mine to be delivered on Wednesday, and as soon as I determine that I can run it without freezing as long as WiFi is off, I'm getting an 8GB RAM kit. I'd love to know of anybody running their iMac with 8GB... It can't be possible that the 8GB users are not having the problem, so they don't have a presence in these forums. Or can it?
Yes, I would prefer to get it from a third party, though I'm sticking with 4 for now because I don't need any more at the moment. I do find the ability to upgrade to 8 in the future very attractive.
That's a pretty interesting idea. I'd like to know as well.
I have (had) the 8 GB iMac with 4850 and it froze too. I sent it back yesterday and am waiting for the replacement. It too will come with 8GB.
4850 iMac arrived today - I can repeat the freeze
Having followed these discussions while mine was on the way, I immediately did a full-screen iTunes visualizer test while streaming internet radio over wifi test. Sure enough it locked up after about 20 minutes. I shut it down and repeated the test with the same results. I disabled wifi and no freezing so far. That sounds fairly conclusive. Now do I spend the time loading everything on it hoping for a software fix for this problem?
Having followed these discussions while mine was on the way, I immediately did a full-screen iTunes visualizer test while streaming internet radio over wifi test. Sure enough it locked up after about 20 minutes. I shut it down and repeated the test with the same results. I disabled wifi and no freezing so far. That sounds fairly conclusive. Now do I spend the time loading everything on it hoping for a software fix for this problem?
Still freezes with wifi off
I got my iMac 2.9 with the 4850 on the 22nd. Up until today it ran fine, no freezes, using wifi, ran the iTunes visualizer for a couple hours, etc.
Then today while transferring files it froze. I rebooted, resumed doing what I was doing and 10 minutes later froze again. I rebooted again, turned wifi completely off and tried watching a recorded eyetv program and it froze, rebooted, and just let it sit (wifi completely off still, no ethernet either) and it froze within a minute after booting and not doing anything.
I have since installed Fan Control (and now can actually hear my fans, prior to this the machine was actually 100% quiet) and the machine has been running for a couple hours with no freeze and wifi is back on.
So to summarize.. even with wifi off the machine froze. Fan Control seems to have stopped my problem (so far.. though I don't like the idea of using a third party app to run the internals of the machine).
I got my iMac 2.9 with the 4850 on the 22nd. Up until today it ran fine, no freezes, using wifi, ran the iTunes visualizer for a couple hours, etc.
Then today while transferring files it froze. I rebooted, resumed doing what I was doing and 10 minutes later froze again. I rebooted again, turned wifi completely off and tried watching a recorded eyetv program and it froze, rebooted, and just let it sit (wifi completely off still, no ethernet either) and it froze within a minute after booting and not doing anything.
I have since installed Fan Control (and now can actually hear my fans, prior to this the machine was actually 100% quiet) and the machine has been running for a couple hours with no freeze and wifi is back on.
So to summarize.. even with wifi off the machine froze. Fan Control seems to have stopped my problem (so far.. though I don't like the idea of using a third party app to run the internals of the machine).