FWIW this is EXACTLY what happened to me in Fry's! In fact, the finder "froze" with the magnified items still magnified. I think I was moving it from right to left, but at a pretty normal speed. iPhoto was just launched, then I passed the mouse over to do something else when it froze. iPhoto never came up.
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iMac Freezing Fix ETA?
- Thread starter wakerider017
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FWIW this is EXACTLY what happened to me in Fry's! In fact, the finder "froze" with the magnified items still magnified. I think I was moving it from right to left, but at a pretty normal speed. iPhoto was just launched, then I passed the mouse over to do something else when it froze. iPhoto never came up.
Oh.
That sux. Maybe ATI's QC is crap? Did they say it's definitely driver related (ie: software only)?
The freezing I witnessed started as subtle screen corruption; little white dots appearing randomly.
This was followed immediately by severe corruption of the display with random blotches of color.
This was followed by a black screen or frozen desktop that could only be reset by rebooting the computer.
No rhyme or reason to it.
Looks like damaged hardware to me.
This was followed immediately by severe corruption of the display with random blotches of color.
This was followed by a black screen or frozen desktop that could only be reset by rebooting the computer.
No rhyme or reason to it.
Looks like damaged hardware to me.
This also happened to me. Moving the mouse over the dock. Another one that many people have found is moving into or out of Warcraft in windowed mode. I am sure Apple has done a lot of investigation here. The fix is imminent, supposedly.
Interesting excerpt from Techtool Deluxe report:
"Video RAM
Passed
Video RAM, as all components of your video circuitry, must be fully functional for graphics to be properly displayed. Damaged VRAM can cause missing bits, screen noise, system lock ups, or freezes. TechTool Deluxe tests the VRAM on the Macintosh main logic board, as well as some third-party video cards."
"Video RAM
Passed
Video RAM, as all components of your video circuitry, must be fully functional for graphics to be properly displayed. Damaged VRAM can cause missing bits, screen noise, system lock ups, or freezes. TechTool Deluxe tests the VRAM on the Macintosh main logic board, as well as some third-party video cards."
OK look, you said it yourself that the message can be interpreted in different ways by different people. I interpret that the software fix that is issued by Apple would fix the hardware.
1.1 was a Driver Update but it seemed to make some iMacs even worse, but for some it didn't cause any damage. I can only see this as a Hardware fault.
We have different interpretations and we both want to problem fixed, so let's not argue amongst ourselves and just let Apple take care of this issue.
Remember that only a limited number of iMacs are effected by the Lock-up issue. The rest are flawless (except the screen gradient).
Actually... that's only the model, not the time of manufacture. To find out when your computer was manufactured, look at your serial number. Usually it's something like AAYWWXXXXXXXX where AA is the factory, Y is the year and WW is the week number...
As an example the current MacBook Pro (2.2 GHz, 2.4 GHz, or MacBook Pro 3, 1 as System Profiler notes) is MacBook Pro XX" (Mid-2007).
What are your qualifications to "interpret" this? What facts are you working off?
Like I have said multiple times it is an uneducated guess.
I on the other hand am working off FACTS, Apple stated it was a software fix.
I don't think we can assume "the rest" are any less flawed than those of us reporting the issue. Not everyone uses an iMac the same way. The more some of us push the GPU the more likely it is to crash.
I have greatly reduced the freezes by refreshing the PRAM.
Apple has said this is a software(driver) fix, Blizzard has said it is a software fix. Let's at leas wait until the next update to see if this is true or not.
Otherwise, Apple will have a major recall on its hands.
Definitely not the drivers
Just to clear up the confusion a bit (don't worry, I'll add some more by the end ) - it can't be a driver issue causing the freezing. I say that because we're all running exactly the same driver software (well, allowing for tiger/leopard and 1.1 update differences) and some people are getting freezes, others aren't. If the drivers were at fault, pretty much everyone would get the freezes. I have one and have used it heavily with tiger (including with the 1.1 update) and now leopard, and it's crashed just once.
So.. if it can't be software, it must be the hardware to blame. Although in theory all of the imacs are running the same hardware too, things like the graphics chip will get regularly updated by the manufacturer to improve efficiency in the factory, correct minor errors etc., so in practice there's probably quite a few small differences between all of our imacs.
In practice, that usually makes no difference at all, but I guess (and this part is an educated guess) that some small difference is causing a command sent by the driver to work on some macs, but lock up others.
Now, to bring back that confusion - even if it's technically 'faulty hardware', a driver update could certainly fix it. The driver would need to either avoid doing whatever it is that causes the lockup (by using alternative commands) or detecting the particular part causing the problem and doing something to fix it (perhaps by changing firmware or something).
Just to clear up the confusion a bit (don't worry, I'll add some more by the end
) - it can't be a driver issue causing the freezing. I say that because we're all running exactly the same driver software (well, allowing for tiger/leopard and 1.1 update differences) and some people are getting freezes, others aren't. If the drivers were at fault, pretty much everyone would get the freezes. I have one and have used it heavily with tiger (including with the 1.1 update) and now leopard, and it's crashed just once.So.. if it can't be software, it must be the hardware to blame. Although in theory all of the imacs are running the same hardware too, things like the graphics chip will get regularly updated by the manufacturer to improve efficiency in the factory, correct minor errors etc., so in practice there's probably quite a few small differences between all of our imacs.
In practice, that usually makes no difference at all, but I guess (and this part is an educated guess) that some small difference is causing a command sent by the driver to work on some macs, but lock up others.
Now, to bring back that confusion - even if it's technically 'faulty hardware', a driver update could certainly fix it. The driver would need to either avoid doing whatever it is that causes the lockup (by using alternative commands) or detecting the particular part causing the problem and doing something to fix it (perhaps by changing firmware or something).
Here's my story.
New alum 24" starting freezing after a iTunes update in late September.
Don't know when 1.1 came out, but I always install updates, then freezing became even more noticable.
I took the machine back just under the 30 days from purchase (purchase was 8/29/07). Genius installed OS and when I got the machine home the display was totally garbled rebooting did not help.
Took it back and they gave me a new one, freezing/lockup occured everyday, several times a day.
Installed Leopard and machine became COMPLETELY unusable.
Reinstalled Tiger, did not do the iTunes or the 1.1 updates.
I HAVE NOT had a freeze/crash in two days!!!!
I LOVE my iMac again!!!
New alum 24" starting freezing after a iTunes update in late September.
Don't know when 1.1 came out, but I always install updates, then freezing became even more noticable.
I took the machine back just under the 30 days from purchase (purchase was 8/29/07). Genius installed OS and when I got the machine home the display was totally garbled rebooting did not help.
Took it back and they gave me a new one, freezing/lockup occured everyday, several times a day.
Installed Leopard and machine became COMPLETELY unusable.
Reinstalled Tiger, did not do the iTunes or the 1.1 updates.
I HAVE NOT had a freeze/crash in two days!!!!
I LOVE my iMac again!!!
As I suspected both machines passed. Its not something that trivial unfortunately. C'mon Apple, its Oct 31st.
...and that is why I think its software related.
Wow, mine freezes by doing exactly as you describe...real bummer to find out
. My machine has frozen in the past , but I wasn't able to identify the cause for it because it happened so rarely. Now I know how I can freeze my machine on command --that's horrible.
I've only had my iMac for 7 days, it's a 24" 2.4GHz model. Not a single lock up to date. I don't use iTunes (yet) but I've done all sorts of things with parallels and every day web surfing and such.. never ever locked up. System is 'up to date' with all updates installed that are available at the moment.
Many people reset the PRAM to no success. If it is a Hardware issue it can still be worked around by a software update.
I can reproduce the freeze by going to iTunes, selecting the store, selecting the TV Shows store, and then scrolling up and down on the TV store once it loads. If you scroll slowly there isn't a problem... but if you try and move it just a hair over a snails pace it freezes.
Also - this is on 1.0. On 1.1 (in Tiger) I can repro the freeze pretty much by turning the computer on and doing ANYTHING for about 15 seconds. I did a clean Tiger install and haven't installed any updates, and for the most part haven't come across any freezes, but this iTunes store process will repro the freeze without fail for me.
For those talking about TechTool - I've done all the tests with repitition on there and have come up with no issues. I also did a 5 pass test of the RAM using memtest which came up with nothing at all.
Also - this is on 1.0. On 1.1 (in Tiger) I can repro the freeze pretty much by turning the computer on and doing ANYTHING for about 15 seconds. I did a clean Tiger install and haven't installed any updates, and for the most part haven't come across any freezes, but this iTunes store process will repro the freeze without fail for me.
For those talking about TechTool - I've done all the tests with repitition on there and have come up with no issues. I also did a 5 pass test of the RAM using memtest which came up with nothing at all.
Actually, I don't recall seeing anything official from Apple pointing at the video card. There is, however, other evidence which suggests it:
- Many (but not all) of the freezes seem to happen when the video is doing something specific -- I myself have only seen freezes on mine when playing WoW in full screen mode. Entirely circumstantial, however.
- According to a pair of reports on Digitimes (here and here - but they're subscription only, so just google the links to find secondary reports...), back in the start of August, ATI had apparently slipped up a couple months back and let out some 20000-30000 HD2400 and HD2600 Pro cards into the Windows channel that had defective BIOSes into the channel. As near as I can tell from searching around, that's the *only* source of that info - there's nothing official from ATI. But I suspect this is the main source of the "it's the video card" rumors.
- Someone in posted on a board somewhere (in French) that an Apple Tech "fixed" his freezing problem by replacing the internal video board in his iMac. Not the most reliable report, but interesting, and more fuel for those rumors.
All of which is circumstantial evidence pointing to the video card being the problem, and if it is, it may require a bios update to fix (as implied by the Digitimes articles). That said, if that were the problem, I would expect that any iMac manufactured after early August to not show this problem at all, and I've seen at least one report at least to a machine apparently manufactured fairly recently which still has the issue. So either it's not the video card, or there's some other video card issue at work here.