Mid-2010 iMac completely freezes, becoming more regular...

[Holte139]

Hi everyone, was wondering if you might be able to help me try and figure out why my iMac keeps freezing.

My specs are: 12.5 inch, mid-2010 iMac, 3.06 GHz Intel Core i3, 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3, ATI Radeon HD 4670 256 MB, 500 GB SATA Disk HD with 229GB free.

I've noticed, especially since upgrading to El Capitan, although it did happen very occasionally on previous OS X versions, that every so often my computer will completely freeze. I can't open the force quit menu, open mission control, or move my mouse. Even the time freezes. It's becoming very regular now, at least once a week. But it only tends to happen when I have Safari open and am reading the web. I can never recall it happening whilst working with any other piece of software. If there is genuinely something wrong with my computer then I'd be happy to consider buying a more up-to-date machine, but if Safari turns out to be the problem, I don't want to risk buying another Mac in case I have the same problems on a much more expensive machine.

 

[kazmac]

What little I've read in Apple support forums says try to Clear your history in Safari.

Do you have another browser installed? If not, download the secondary browser of your choice Firefox, Opera, Chrome and see if this still happens.

Not Safari, but I've heard EC Apple mail software also freezes the system CPU and the RAM for some folks.

My only other advice here is to search around the official Apple support forums and see if you can find a fix.

I am still on Yosemite on my 21.5" 2010 iMac given how this and Mavericks nearly bricked this machine, I don't dare upgrade to EC. The week I used EC on the late 2015 27" iMac I had, I was seeing freezes a lot (largely in the internal dvd player software...)

 

[chscag]

Hi everyone, was wondering if you might be able to help me try and figure out why my iMac keeps freezing.

My specs are: 12.5 inch, mid-2010 iMac, 3.06 GHz Intel Core i3, 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3, ATI Radeon HD 4670 256 MB, 500 GB SATA Disk HD with 229GB free.

I've noticed, especially since upgrading to El Capitan, although it did happen very occasionally on previous OS X versions, that every so often my computer will completely freeze. I can't open the force quit menu, open mission control, or move my mouse. Even the time freezes. It's becoming very regular now, at least once a week. But it only tends to happen when I have Safari open and am reading the web. I can never recall it happening whilst working with any other piece of software. If there is genuinely something wrong with my computer then I'd be happy to consider buying a more up-to-date machine, but if Safari turns out to be the problem, I don't want to risk buying another Mac in case I have the same problems on a much more expensive machine.

Run a verify on your hard drive before doing anything else. Boot to Recovery (command + r), select Utilities, Disk Utility, and verify the hard drive. Hardware problems can cause freezing, however, so can software but it's best to eliminate the hardware first. And... keep up with your backups.

 

[kazmac]

Solid advice there... listen to chscag before me OP.

 

[havokalien]

Well if you have not reflowed the video card and redone the paste, and use smcfancontrol, as I have repaired 5 of these now. That would be my first concern. Video card starting to fail is common to these now.

 

[Holte139]

Thanks, I'll test all this out later once I've finished work!

 

[AlexisV]

Freezes are often a bad memory module. Take one out / swap it

 

[havokalien]

nevermind wrong thread

 

[widescreenparis]

OSes become unstable after a while, and successive upgrades usually make thing worse. Consider making a clean install of El Capitan. If freezes still occur then it's a hardware problem.