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iMac Freezing Fix ETA?

wakerider017

wakerider017

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 20, 2006
1,790
1
US of A
Hey guys,

Just installed Leopard on my new 24" SiO2 iMac. Seems like it is crashing even more now...

What's the story with the Update?

Apple working on a fix?

When can we expect to see it?
 
My machine is even worse now after installing Leopard. I had a few lock ups in Tiger after I downloaded the iMac 1.1 patch but Leopard freezes up randomly now and the screen goes black at times though the machine is still on so I have to power down. The mouse won't work upon wake up either. Hmmm
 
flopticalcube said:
When Apple finally acknowledged that it was a problem and promised a fix (Oct 4th) they said "by the end of the month". So Oct 31st I guess. Some are saying Monday. I shall not be holding my breath.
Click to expand...

Cool!

At least they have a timeframe and they are acknowledging the problem!

I am glad this is a software issue and not hardware!

Richard.John said:
My machine is even worse now after installing Leopard. I had a few lock ups in Tiger after I downloaded the iMac 1.1 patch but Leopard freezes up randomly now and the screen goes black at times though the machine is still on so I have to power down. The mouse won't work upon wake up either. Hmmm
Click to expand...

Same exact symptoms as you!

Time Machine and PhotoBooth Kill my Mac!

Leopard has froze on my about 6-7 times today! OUCH!
 
wakerider017 said:
Cool!

At least they have a timeframe and they are acknowledging the problem!

I am glad this is a software issue and not hardware!
Click to expand...

I hate to burst your bubble but until anything is proven otherwise I am keeping a very skeptical attitude towards this. It took Apple nearly two months to acknowledge that it was an issue and I am not sure that the origin of the problem has yet to be determined fully. With enough pressure, however, I am sure Apple will fix it.
 
flopticalcube said:
I hate to burst your bubble but until anything is proven otherwise I am keeping a very skeptical attitude towards this. It took Apple nearly two months to acknowledge that it was an issue and I am not sure that the origin of the problem has yet to be determined fully. With enough pressure, however, I am sure Apple will fix it.
Click to expand...

Well, once Apple admits that there is an issue, they will find a way to fix it...


Took them a while to acknowledge the negative screen iPod Touches. But they made right by it.
 
This problem is not inherent to the new iMac design, otherwise demos at the Apple Stores would also have this problem.
Return defective products for a replacement.
 
snickelfritz said:
This problem is not inherent to the new iMac design, otherwise demos at the Apple Stores would also have this problem.
Return defective products for a replacement.
Click to expand...

It is a problem with the ATI drivers and it does happen at Apple stores. I have walked into the store more than once to see an iMac frozen.
 
Spankey said:
It is a problem with the ATI drivers and it does happen at Apple stores. I have walked into the store more than once to see an iMac frozen.
Click to expand...

I just came from my local Apple store, with the intent of buying a new one today. I didn't. Why? I literally walked up to a new 24" with Aperture installed, fired it up, Aperture that is, and it froze within 2 minutes of use. The "genius" promptly shut it down and explained that people play around with these a lot, and that's usually the issue.

It restarted. And lo and behold, within maybe 5 minutes of browsing around, and once again, it froze solid. This time when launching iMovie. The "genius" explained that they have been having problems with this one, and that the other 10-15 in store are fine. Also proceeded to tell me they have never heard of a "Freezing" issue with the iMacs at all. :rolleyes:

This really disturbed me. I came home empty handed, and frankly, it's pissing me off as I NEED a new machine, and I WANT a new iMac. However, there is NO WAY I'm dropping over 2K for something with this many issues.
 
rotlex said:
I just came from my local Apple store, with the intent of buying a new one today. I didn't. Why? I literally walked up to a new 24" with Aperture installed, fired it up, Aperture that is, and it froze within 2 minutes of use. The "genius" promptly shut it down and explained that people play around with these a lot, and that's usually the issue.

It restarted. And lo and behold, within maybe 5 minutes of browsing around, and once again, it froze solid. This time when launching iMovie. The "genius" explained that they have been having problems with this one, and that the other 10-15 in store are fine. Also proceeded to tell me they have never heard of a "Freezing" issue with the iMacs at all. :rolleyes:

This really disturbed me. I came home empty handed, and frankly, it's pissing me off as I NEED a new machine, and I WANT a new iMac. However, there is NO WAY I'm dropping over 2K for something with this many issues.
Click to expand...


Keep an eye out for a fix this week. I am hoping!
 
Spankey said:
It is a problem with the ATI drivers and it does happen at Apple stores. I have walked into the store more than once to see an iMac frozen.
Click to expand...

Why doesn't this happen with ALL iMacs?
The drivers are the same, the OS is the same, and the hardware is the same.

I can accept that the software and drivers are probably the same on all iMacs, but the hardware is a big question mark, considering that apparently, some iMacs have WD HDD, while others have Seagate HDD.
What else is different?
Is the memory on the videocards from the the same supplier?
Is the ROM from the same supplier?
Are the ATi chipsets and Firmware all the same revision?
Here's the specs from mine, which works perfectly AFAIK:

WDC WD3200AAJS-40RYA0:

Capacity: 298.09 GB
Model: WDC WD3200AAJS-40RYA0
Revision: 12.01B03
Serial Number: WD-WCAPZ2321207
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro:

Chipset Model: ATI,RadeonHD2600
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9583
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B2250F-212
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.212
 
Why doesn't this happen with ALL iMacs?
The drivers are the same, the OS is the same, and the hardware is the same.
Click to expand...

It does with all Aluminum iMacs, to varying degrees. Depending on how much people stress the video card. Things have improved greatly with Leopard. I'm inclined to believe the last set of drivers were tuned towards Leopard as the majority of my problems have disappeared.

I wouldn't walk away from the iMac. It works fine and the freezing doesn't really happen when not playing a game. It did happen once when in screen saver mode, but again, the screen saver was taxing the card. Although the camera did freeze me up after installing Leopard, nothing has crashed. There are some problems with images sticking on the screen. Again, a driver issue.

I'm sure there will be a fix coming sooner than later. The card worked fine before the last driver update so we know there is no hardware updates. Unfortunately driver issues happen in the computer world.
 
flopticalcube said:
Not true for me. It can freeze at any time. I thought it was a video driver overheating issue at first because the first freezes were during games but now it can freeze 10 seconds after a cold boot.
Click to expand...

Same here.

I just made a 5 minute video showing artifacts on the screen and the computer freezing twice.

I will upload it to youtube later today.

I do think it is an issue with the drivers though (not the hardware), as the problem is said to be non-existent in Windows.


Isn't that funny? Windows running better on a Mac than Leopard or Tiger?
 
wakerider017 said:
Same here.

I just made a 5 minute video showing artifacts on the screen and the computer freezing twice.

I will upload it to youtube later today.

I do think it is an issue with the drivers though (not the hardware), as the problem is said to be non-existent in Windows.


Isn't that funny? Windows running better on a Mac than Leopard or Tiger?
Click to expand...

I have had a few problems in windows. The iMac that freezes in OSX freezes in Gary's Mod in Windows with a black screen. The only difference is that it brings the machine down hard! :eek:

Catalyst 7.10 under XP
 
snickelfritz said:
ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro:

Chipset Model: ATI,RadeonHD2600
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9583
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B2250F-212
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.212
Click to expand...

Interesting, here is mine.

Chipset Model: ATI,RadeonHD2600
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9583
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B2250F-207
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.207


This is the same machine, 20" Alu iMac, 2.4Ghz, ATI Radeon HD2600 Pro.
 
Spankey said:
It does with all Aluminum iMacs, to varying degrees. Depending on how much people stress the video card. Things have improved greatly with Leopard. I'm inclined to believe the last set of drivers were tuned towards Leopard as the majority of my problems have disappeared.

I wouldn't walk away from the iMac. It works fine and the freezing doesn't really happen when not playing a game. It did happen once when in screen saver mode, but again, the screen saver was taxing the card. Although the camera did freeze me up after installing Leopard, nothing has crashed. There are some problems with images sticking on the screen. Again, a driver issue.

I'm sure there will be a fix coming sooner than later. The card worked fine before the last driver update so we know there is no hardware updates. Unfortunately driver issues happen in the computer world.
Click to expand...

I play AOE III War Chiefs on my 24" Extreme about twice a day and it's never froze. I just about have all of the graphics options maxxed out in the game. I'll look next time I have it open to see which ones aren't running, but damned near all of them are. I wish I had PS for Mac so I could be doing stuff with that. All I have is my Windows version.

I wonder if it is an ATI problem, could it be that possibly they used some chips on their card from different suppliers, and maybe that's the issue? Some cards have the problematic chip and some don't?
 
davidjearly said:
Interesting, here is mine.

Chipset Model: ATI,RadeonHD2600
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9583
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B2250F-207
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.207


This is the same machine, 20" Alu iMac, 2.4Ghz, ATI Radeon HD2600 Pro.
Click to expand...

It's interesting that your 2600 pro has a different ROM revision than mine.
Anyone having problems with freezing, please post your ATI specs from System Profiler.
 
snickelfritz said:
I can accept that the software and drivers are probably the same on all iMacs, but the hardware is a big question mark, ...
Click to expand...
Exactly! It can't be purely a software issue; there must be some hardware factors involved. It might be defective hardware (e.g., some bad video cards), or it might be a mismatch between OS-X software and the firmware in some video cards (or some hard drives, or some <whatever>). OR, it could be a combination of both. ...or something completely different (such as temperatures?).

When Apple figures out the cause(s) of the problem, they might be able to fix it with hardware/firmware updates....

...or not,

LK
 
I always wondered if iMac Software Update 1.0 or 1.1 also updated the firmware on the video card. I got my iMac early (August 15th), version 1.0 wasn't even pre-installed.

I'm also curious if people who have had their graphics card replaced have a different "Revision ID" or anything else.

Right now I'm in Leopard and have:

Chipset Model: ATI,RadeonHD2600
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9583
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B2250F-212
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.212
 
My 24" 2.8GHz freezes from time to time.

Chipsetmodel: ATI,RadeonHD2600
Type: Beeldscherm
Bus: PCIe
Breedte PCIe-baan: x16
VRAM (totaal): 256 MB
Fabrikant: ATI (0x1002)
Apparaatcode: 0x9583
Revisiecode: 0x0000
ROM-revisie: 113-B2250F-212
Versie EFI-besturingsbestand: 01.00.212


So, I guess this is a 212.
 
same here

snickelfritz said:
Why doesn't this happen with ALL iMacs?
The drivers are the same, the OS is the same, and the hardware is the same.

I can accept that the software and drivers are probably the same on all iMacs, but the hardware is a big question mark, considering that apparently, some iMacs have WD HDD, while others have Seagate HDD.
What else is different?
Is the memory on the videocards from the the same supplier?
Is the ROM from the same supplier?
Are the ATi chipsets and Firmware all the same revision?
Here's the specs from mine, which works perfectly AFAIK:

WDC WD3200AAJS-40RYA0:

Capacity: 298.09 GB
Model: WDC WD3200AAJS-40RYA0
Revision: 12.01B03
Serial Number: WD-WCAPZ2321207
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro:

Chipset Model: ATI,RadeonHD2600
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9583
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B2250F-212
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.212
Click to expand...

Same video data for me and my ALiMac 2.8. No freezing since Leopard, none. I do use SMS to keep my fan speeds up.
 
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