Can anyone help me with my Imac problems?

[luffytubby]

Hello. In the last year, my 24'' Imac(2008 model) have been acting weird on me.

I am facing burn-in in the screen, but the biggest problem is the random crashes. I will say that every day I get around 10 freezes, were the system hangs completely.

I downloaded temperature widget, and it didn't seem to have a problem with heat. On the other hand, I rarely hear the fan anymore, but that just might be my imagination.

I upgraded to Snow Leopard and it sort of made it worse. The programs that usually make the system hang are Itunes and Firefox. They are the sinners, but it seems to be related to everything that requires heavy computering.

I tried doing a boot camp partition, and the system hang in the middle of it - When I opened it again, the space was gone but the partition was not created, so I lost 200 GB of space somewhere, and I don't know how to get it back. I tried using the disk utility but it couldn't fix the problem with my hard drive.
I can't really afford to take the machine in for repair as I need it for work non-stop.

My big question is now: Should I use time machine, to back up all my stuff and programs, and then reformat the whole OSX from scratch or is it a hardware problem?

 

[spinnerlys]

If you have an external HDD handy, take the Time Machine route first and reinstall. If that does not solve your problem, then you can always go for a repair later.

Btw, before you reinstall, repair permissions first and see if that helps. Also verify the disk to see if the HDD is the culprit.
And run the Apple Hardware Test before you reinstall to see if everything is alright.



Even though some might get annoyed of reading this, the thread title guy strikes again:

A more descriptive and precise thread title will help cater to the right audience and get you more responses.
To edit your thread title, just click on the

button on the bottom right of your original post and then click the "Go Advanced" button below your message.

Have you also taken a look at MRoogle, since that question may have been asked several times?

"How to maximise your MacRumors troubleshooting experience" created by mad jew in 2006​

 

[dexthageek]

My MBP started doing the same thing. Random freezes, most would recover, even when attempting to send an "im" with Adium resulted in a beachball for a few seconds.

Sounds like a HDD issue to me. I would run some diagnostics on the drive and check the S.M.A.R.T values. To be safe I would backup anything important immediately.

I would check the Console as well. Some drive errors are reported in the logs.

 

[Robert Grant]

Yeh I agree with the posters above, make sure you have a backup of everything, try repairing permissions and hard drive then if that doesn't help do a clean re-installation.

Regarding the burn-in, is your iMac nearly flat up against the wall? If it is try and move it away from it. To get rid of the burn-in at the moment change your desktop background to solid white and leave it on over night.