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New 4850 3.06ghz iMac freezing multiple times a day.

Omni Geno said:
It needs to be:

Originally Posted by Bubba Satori
"We don't know how to build a $500 computer that isn't junk. But we can sell a sh*teload of $2,000+ computers that are. Ha Ha Ha." Steve Mobs


I don't really agree with this but it sure is funny :). Well done, sir.
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I sell Apple computers and PCs. I need a healthy sense of humor to stay sane. I'm not sure I've succeeded. :eek:

homer_the_scream.jpg
 
This helped me a bit with the freezing...

I just read this on the Apple forums by rkaufmann87 and although I didn't expect it to do anything for a new (one week old) Mac, it did help:

Below are instructions on how to do SMC and PRAM reset together:

1. Turn off your iMac and unplug everything from it for 30 seconds.

2. Plug in the power cord, keyboard and mouse only.

3. Press the power button and immediately hold down the Option, Command, P & R keys until you hear the second gong then release the keys. Your machine will start up normally, then check for the issues you are having.

The result - my computer seems to freeze less often and interestingly, there is no noise now when it freezes. It doesn't have that nasty repeating sound anymore, just a frozen silence...

Certainly not a 'fix' but an improvement at least. Anyway, just thought I would share.
 
Question for you all, I asked in another thread, but it wasn't a very popular one.

I bought an iMac with a 4850 for my fiance (we play game together, so I wanted to get a good card). This will be her first Mac, and she is coming from an almost 4 year old Dell M1710 gaming laptop that within the past month has been locking up from overheating.

Anyway, I have been reading up on the iMac and these problems, and now it has me concerned her not 4-year old computer will do the same thing, just more often. She has to use WiFi too.

So my question is, if I disable WiFi, is there a USB WiFi device I could buy for the short term until they work this out? I have seen them on NewEgg for as low as $20, but have yet to see anyone bring this up.

Thanks!
 
Does anyone know if the replacement iMacs going around are brand new or refurbished units?

Also, does the 14-day period for exchanges/returns count for when they arrive at your doorstep or when you make the order online?
 
Darn I don't think I will ever find what makes MY iMac freeze. I have Wi-Fi on, and I am watching Hulu videos with the itunes visualizer on in the background, and posting this comment. Yet, No freezes.

Although earlier, while watching one video on youtube in HD, it froze. Wi-Fi enabled.

I have had this computer for a week, coming from my macbook 2006 that NEVER once froze. I don't want to return this computer, because I got it with an employee discount from a friend that is working there now, but obviously won't be working there forever..

Dang, what to do!
 
cwazytech said:
Well, I for one have a strong feeling that the freezing is wi-fi related. I just wish I could relate the wi-fi with the graphics card as the cause. A sure-fire way for me to re-create the freeze is by streaming music from iTunes to a speaker while leaving the visualizer on full screen. I just tried playing music in iTunes with the visualizer on & with wi-fi off, and I went through 5 songs without a flaw. Then I tried streaming music with the visualizer on and I think my computer froze within 30 seconds. It also freezes with casual wireless internet use. I have no problem plugging my ethernet cable directly into my Mac but I need to be able to stream movies to my Apple TV.
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If you have a wireless router, you will not need the airport. I stream to my xbox360 and PS3 without the airport on my older iMac. I'm thinking about buying one of the new 4850 iMacs tomorrow since I dont NEED wifi. I can wait for a fix. :)
 
wifi

Everyone is clinging onto the hope that it's wifi :)

Without wanting to sound like a kill joy; I've had two freezing imacs.. both freeze with wifi OFF.

I've also tested 1) disabling the card in windows and 2) using a cable

Both imacs still froze.

Hey, perhaps I got two faulty freezing imacs with a totally different issue ;)
 
viva la ben said:
Thats been my experience as well. Everything works until I try maxing out settings in games. I have lockups during Prey in MacOS and L4D under XP.
I havn't tried lowering the video settings though....hard to do when everything looks great maxed out(for a couple minutes at least)

I'll have to try out lowering the video settings for now.

Another thing I noticed were the power supply and northbridge getting extremly hot ie 78 degrees C
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Since I disabled the AirPort card and using a ethernet cable to connect to my router I've had no freezes at all.

Kicking my iMac to it's limits by ripping / encoding DVDs, running 3 VMs in Paralles, and playing Prey with maxed up settings all the the same time it's all running fine without any freeze.

The temperatures of the northbridge and power supply are as hot as yours. Between 75 and 78 degrees.

Just got my first replacement mac yesterday. Tried to kick this machine to it's limits as well but with WiFi enabled... and got those freezes again. Phoned with the Hotline today and will get another replacement... never ending story?

I'm not sure if a firmware patch would get those issues fixed because there are many iMacs out there without those freezing-problems and enabled WiFi.
 
Tymbo said:
are you using wifi?
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sorry for late answer, but

Internett is connected by ethernet through a wi-fi switch,The printer uses wi-fi, cause i have more than one computer. - keyboard is wired (i earn 2 usb ports that way) and mouse is bluethooth.. (lost blue thooth connection a couple of times..)
 
Partyschaum said:
Since I disabled the AirPort card and using a ethernet cable to connect to my router I've had no freezes at all.
......
I'm not sure if a firmware patch would get those issues fixed because there are many iMacs out there without those freezing-problems and enabled WiFi.
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Many? By my count, across both this board and the various threads in Apple Discussions, there are only two people who claim to have wireless enabled with no crashes. There are many who post initially that they have no crashes, but then a few pages further on they pop up again and say "oops, guess what, two days later, and now it's crashing all the time - if I turn wifi off though it's fine."

Regardless, there are enough people now being told by support that there is a fix in the works that I think something is on its way, and I would assume that's software. If it was hardware, they wouldn't be advising people to hang on to their current machine at the moment "because a fix is in the works".

Maybe I'm just clutching at straws, but I do have faith that there is a fix coming at some point.
 
Poisednoise said:
Many? By my count, across both this board and the various threads in Apple Discussions, there are only two people who claim to have wireless enabled with no crashes.
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...that's like standing in a doctor's waiting room stating that no healthy people are around.

Poisednoise said:
If it was hardware, they wouldn't be advising people to hang on to their current machine at the moment "because a fix is in the works".
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Maybe, maybe not... but i'm not willing to wait for an upcoming possible patch in some weeks because if it's still some buggy hardware then they wouldn't give me a new replacement mac. Instead they will point me to the next apple repair center and I won't see my mac for weeks.
 
Just to chime in, I've had a 4850 3.06 iMac for nearly 2 weeks now, and have not had a single freeze. In fact, no application has even crashed, the thing is a dream.

I have been using WiFi, and performing some pretty intensive tasks like rendering video from After Effects, moving terabytes of data around etc. I even have Windows XP installed, and that performs well too.

This is not me being smug, it's just in response to people saying there are only 2 non freezing iMacs out there. Make it 3.
 
I just played L4D in XP for 2 hours without any lockups.
2.93GHZ w/4850 and all settings at maximum.
wifi was disabled, and it was the longest I've been able to play.
I'm thinking it's definatly the wifi :D
 
I have transferred about 20GB now, run iTunes visualizer on Full Screen, and been installing WoW (it downloads and installs at the same time with their online client tool), plus web browsing, installing apps, etc.

Not a single freeze yet, all over WiFi. 2.93GHz, ATI 4850, delivered this afternoon at about 2:30 EST.
 
VulnoX said:
I have transferred about 20GB now, run iTunes visualizer on Full Screen, and been installing WoW (it downloads and installs at the same time with their online client tool), plus web browsing, installing apps, etc.

Not a single freeze yet, all over WiFi. 2.93GHz, ATI 4850, delivered this afternoon at about 2:30 EST.
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I did similar things with my replacement mac too, but then after about 12 hours I got my first freeze. After that it freezes frequently. Not only while heavy WiFi usage but while listening to internet radio streams via iTunes only. It really sux. I'm not sure if a simple Firmware-Update would fix this. I mean, there are iMacs fully without those problems. Maybe it's a real bad hardware bug with the WiFi. Regarding to the very high temperatures in the iMacs that could possibly be one reason for those problems.

While playing oder encoding rippded stuff my iMac heats up to 75 till 80 degrees... is that normal?
 
Partyschaum said:
I did similar things with my replacement mac too, but then after about 12 hours I got my first freeze. After that it freezes frequently. Not only while heavy WiFi usage but while listening to internet radio streams via iTunes only. It really sux. I'm not sure if a simple Firmware-Update would fix this. I mean, there are iMacs fully without those problems. Maybe it's a real bad hardware bug with the WiFi. Regarding to the very high temperatures in the iMacs that could possibly be one reason for those problems.

While playing oder encoding rippded stuff my iMac heats up to 75 till 80 degrees... is that normal?
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When you say 75-80, do you mean the ambient temp? Mine is at 77 right now, was higher when I was doing the visualizer and everything else.
 
VulnoX said:
When you say 75-80, do you mean the ambient temp? Mine is at 77 right now, was higher when I was doing the visualizer and everything else.
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*lol* I meant degrees celsius and in fact those inside my mac. :)

And yeah, it's especially the temperatures of the power supply, northbridge and the GPU. FYI: 80 degrees celsius are about 176 degrees fahrenheit. :)
 
Partyschaum said:
*lol* I meant degrees celsius and in fact those inside my mac. :)

And yeah, it's especially the temperatures of the power supply, northbridge and the GPU. FYI: 80 degrees celsius are about 176 degrees fahrenheit. :)
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Alright, I thought it was weird to be going by the ambient, and wasn't sure if you were using Celsius or not. Anyway, right now, mine is 124 at the CPU, and 135 at the GPU, but I have only been copying files and installing WoW, have not played any games or anything recently, when I do I will update.
 
Apple is on the case

Apple is on the case, and working hard on a fix. It may be in 10.5.7, or it may be a stand alone software update. They are aware of the problem, and they are going to get it squared away as quickly as possible.
 
jameskohn said:
Apple is on the case, and working hard on a fix. It may be in 10.5.7, or it may be a stand alone software update. They are aware of the problem, and they are going to get it squared away as quickly as possible.
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Who at Apple have you spoken to and at what support level to know that a fix is in the works?

You shouldn't post this in multiple threads if you aren't going to provide more details.
 
Well my new computer froze twice on me so i called apple tech support and talked to a guy who thought he new everything. I told him i was experiencing the same issues as others on a mac forum and he told me not to believe everything i read on forums. Douche bag. This guy was so convinced he knew what the problem was. He told me it was no doubt a software issue and all i needed to do was reinstall Leopard. He said this will fix the issue for sure. Well i did... and guess what, it froze the next day. thanks for nothing apple tech guy! I will call apple tech support everyday for the rest of my life to complain now.
 
I spoke too soon. The iMac didn't freeze at all until I finally got WoW installed, played for 20-30 minutes, and then full lockup.

I switched to Ethernet, and its been fine since.

So, this has to go to my fiance, who needs to use WiFi, not next to the router like me. Can I get her a USB WiFi adapter until this gets worked out?
 
Guess I'll try doing wired internet for a few days and see if anything seems to be better, have it lock up twice today so far....
 
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