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New 4850 3.06ghz iMac freezing multiple times a day.
- Thread starter Tymbo
- Start date
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Received iMac today....My first Mac so still trying to figure things out. Been on for several hours with nothing in the way of freezes. I need to figure out how to challenge the system...put it to the test as it were.
It is connected by ethernet. Wifi is still on though not connected.
It is connected by ethernet. Wifi is still on though not connected.
Received my iMac today, had it on since about 11am (now 4pm) and no freezes (touch wood) or any dead pixels. Also using wireless. Good stuff!
I second that, not be an ass, my iMac froze for the first time 4 days after i got it.
I wish you luck, I thought the same thing, worked great for about 5 or 6 hours (I got mine yesterday), on WiFi, moving gigs of movies and stuff, installing WoW, it was when I played WoW at full settings for a half hour, it locked up.
Has ONLY locked up once, maybe a fluke, but it was very, VERY, hot. So I installed SMCFanControl and have not had anything else since.
Hopefully I won't have the same problems as you, fingers crossed eh? At least you only had bother once and hopefully won't have any further problems. Will remember that SMCFanControl just in case
I received my replacement today. I have been trying to lock it up. I ran 2 HD trailers and a Hulu movie at one time. I just finished a 35 minute iTunes visualizer test at full screen. No freeze. I did this with Wi-Fi off and on Ethernet.
Next, I am going to enable Wi-Fi to my Extreme and rerun the tests.
Next, I am going to enable Wi-Fi to my Extreme and rerun the tests.
Ok to catch you up to date. I emailed Tim Cook, the acting CEO of Apple while Steve Jobs is taking some time off. I got a phone call from his team. They had a High Level Tech Support Specialist contact me today and they gave me a program to capture my logs to trace why my freezes have been happening. They are putting a High Priority on it and I should know something within 24-48 hours. I will relay the findings here.
I did ask her a few questions regarding fan control, I see on this site that some of you are installing smc and other software and making your fans go faster to cool down the temperatures. She told me that it is not recommended that you do this, and that is because it will make your fan not last as long as it should for one thing. That alone is good enough for me. I did install istat to monitor some readings. She said that is ok, but they are not 100% accurate. But they will give you some idea of what is going on.
Also did you know that on your 2nd DVD install disk where applications is on there is a Hardware Test program. The instructions on how to use it is on the disk. You can try that if you like. Mine passed ok.
According to this Tech Support Specialist, the Apple Engineers do not have enough data yet and needs to collect as much as they can to figure out the program. So from that I think this will not be a quick fix. We are probably looking at least a month at the earliest to see a fix on this and maybe longer.
This of course is only my opinion and I could be way off. If you get a chance, call your Apple Tech support and tell them that you want to discuss with a High Level Tech Support Agent and give them your logs for the engineers to look over. The more logs they have to review the faster this fix will come. The program they use to capture the logs is called CaptureData81.
It will capture only the crash logs and make a DMG file in which you will upload to send by email back to the Support Agent. If you want a faster fix, then do this today. Contact Apple Support and tell them that you want the CaptureData81 program and that you want to give them your logs for the Apple Engineers to review. The more logs they have the faster we will get rid of these lockups. Hope this helps.
Sorry to repeat myself on these threads but I wanted to make sure more people see this and take action so we can get the fix faster.
I did ask her a few questions regarding fan control, I see on this site that some of you are installing smc and other software and making your fans go faster to cool down the temperatures. She told me that it is not recommended that you do this, and that is because it will make your fan not last as long as it should for one thing. That alone is good enough for me. I did install istat to monitor some readings. She said that is ok, but they are not 100% accurate. But they will give you some idea of what is going on.
Also did you know that on your 2nd DVD install disk where applications is on there is a Hardware Test program. The instructions on how to use it is on the disk. You can try that if you like. Mine passed ok.
According to this Tech Support Specialist, the Apple Engineers do not have enough data yet and needs to collect as much as they can to figure out the program. So from that I think this will not be a quick fix. We are probably looking at least a month at the earliest to see a fix on this and maybe longer.
This of course is only my opinion and I could be way off. If you get a chance, call your Apple Tech support and tell them that you want to discuss with a High Level Tech Support Agent and give them your logs for the engineers to look over. The more logs they have to review the faster this fix will come. The program they use to capture the logs is called CaptureData81.
It will capture only the crash logs and make a DMG file in which you will upload to send by email back to the Support Agent. If you want a faster fix, then do this today. Contact Apple Support and tell them that you want the CaptureData81 program and that you want to give them your logs for the Apple Engineers to review. The more logs they have the faster we will get rid of these lockups. Hope this helps.
Sorry to repeat myself on these threads but I wanted to make sure more people see this and take action so we can get the fix faster.
"Sleeper" potential...
I agree with the above poster, using the CaptureData program may help a lot to speed up a fix. It was the first thing the Apple tech guy told us to do when we called.
For those of you who haven't had any freezes... be warned! I have had no freezes either for any 'everyday' operation since I bought it one week ago. I am using everything that people have talked about wi-fi etc. However, when I played games in bootcamp... the exact type of freeze occurred that everyone has been describing. The timing is random (though within 5 minutes to 2 hours of playtime in my experience).
I thought I was one of the lucky ones to have a trouble-free computer. Unfortunately not.
My recommendation to you is that you try out some high end game or two on your computer, something that will make it sweat a little - it is a great way to 'test drive' the Mac and see if it can really handle itself. Otherwise, you may find many moons later that your computer was a "sleeper" and to make matters worse, your warranty is long gone...
Just my 2 cents.
I agree with the above poster, using the CaptureData program may help a lot to speed up a fix. It was the first thing the Apple tech guy told us to do when we called.
For those of you who haven't had any freezes... be warned! I have had no freezes either for any 'everyday' operation since I bought it one week ago. I am using everything that people have talked about wi-fi etc. However, when I played games in bootcamp... the exact type of freeze occurred that everyone has been describing. The timing is random (though within 5 minutes to 2 hours of playtime in my experience).
I thought I was one of the lucky ones to have a trouble-free computer. Unfortunately not.
My recommendation to you is that you try out some high end game or two on your computer, something that will make it sweat a little - it is a great way to 'test drive' the Mac and see if it can really handle itself. Otherwise, you may find many moons later that your computer was a "sleeper"
and to make matters worse, your warranty is long gone... Just my 2 cents.
Two days of operations now...plenty of downloading, installing, multi tasking....not a freeze to be seen.
Caveat: I am a newbie Apple type...so don't know if there are other ways to stress the system to the max and see if a freeze occurs. All I know is I am making it do a lot of things at once and no problems.....so far...lol.
Caveat: I am a newbie Apple type...so don't know if there are other ways to stress the system to the max and see if a freeze occurs. All I know is I am making it do a lot of things at once and no problems.....so far...lol.
How much do you actually use you iMac? Is it on 24 hours a day? Do you put it to sleep at night? How many hours would you say you use it in a 24 hour period if you would not mind answering? I am just trying to figure out your luck in having a machine that does not freeze. Could it truly be the fact that you are wired and not wireless? If another week goes by and you are in fact using your iMac a lot then it would point to that fact that the wireless turned on is a major factor in the lock ups.
Are you wired (using Ethernet Cable) or wireless like airport express or Extreme?
I applaud there efforts, but I can't honestly believe their intentions. Why would they want you to test for them like this when all they have to do is use an imac in a wifi environment? It's like they've never seen the freeze, according to what you've shared with us. If they had, they wouldn't need their users to test something that is reproducible by casual use.
Sound slike they said what they said and sent what they sent to keep you satisfied, because afterall........... that worked.
Well they said they wanted to collect all the data they can from folks. It could be that they are pacifying us but I really doubt that. They want a fix for this too. It has to be costing them money to take these iMacs back and some users are canceling their orders entirely. They have certain steps or procedures they must go through in order to troubleshoot this.
They are no doubt testing the machines that are being sent back, but if others would ask for the CaptureData81 file from support and upload it to them for the Apple Engineers to review. I think the fix would come faster than doing nothing.
Anything we can help to get this fixed faster I am all for it. It is not like we are doing their job, we are just helping in solving the bad situation we are all in.
One thing that you have to keep in mind, this is your replacement that you ordered on the 16th of April. And it freezes. So asking for replacement after replacement is not going to fix things. We need to give Apple feedback, in any way we can help so we can get these iMacs working again. Granted they have your 1st one and can troubleshoot it. But Apple is working on this and we have to do what we can and for those who do not want to help ( and I am not saying that you don't want to help, so don't take this the wrong way) then they will have to wait it out or return their iMacs and get their money back.
iMac Freeze Fix
I got my iMac last Saturday and immediately started having issues with system lockups anytime I played back video for an extended period of time in Final Cut Pro or Firefox.
However, since I installed iMac Fan Control (http://www.derman.com/Download/Special/iMacFanControl.html), I haven't had a single freeze. It's a free download and you can just use the settings that are posted on the website. Hope this helps.
I got my iMac last Saturday and immediately started having issues with system lockups anytime I played back video for an extended period of time in Final Cut Pro or Firefox.
However, since I installed iMac Fan Control (http://www.derman.com/Download/Special/iMacFanControl.html), I haven't had a single freeze. It's a free download and you can just use the settings that are posted on the website. Hope this helps.
Installing Fan Control did not stop the Freezing
I am glad to hear that you haven't had any freezes since. I also installed that program and at the website's recommended settings, unfortunately my computer froze twice within 3 hours of installing the program... The first freeze occured when the computer was on screen saver, the second time was when surfing the net. The computer's heat was at about 40 degrees Celsius, not exactly a worrying temperature, so at least it doesn't seem to be overheating. Something else must be causing these freezes.
Let's hope Apple is coming closer to a solid solution for all this. Speaking of, has anyone seen or heard anything official from Apple that acknowledges the "freezing" issue? So far, all I have seen on the boards is hearsay, as sincere as we all may be, it sure would be nice to hear something official from Apple (hint hint nudge nudge)...
By the way, has anyone been experiencing this freezing with iMacs that have the GT120 or GT130 graphic cards installed? Or is it only the ones with the ATI 4850 installed?
I am glad to hear that you haven't had any freezes since. I also installed that program and at the website's recommended settings, unfortunately my computer froze twice within 3 hours of installing the program...
The first freeze occured when the computer was on screen saver, the second time was when surfing the net. The computer's heat was at about 40 degrees Celsius, not exactly a worrying temperature, so at least it doesn't seem to be overheating. Something else must be causing these freezes.Let's hope Apple is coming closer to a solid solution for all this. Speaking of, has anyone seen or heard anything official from Apple that acknowledges the "freezing" issue? So far, all I have seen on the boards is hearsay, as sincere as we all may be, it sure would be nice to hear something official from Apple (hint hint nudge nudge)...
By the way, has anyone been experiencing this freezing with iMacs that have the GT120 or GT130 graphic cards installed? Or is it only the ones with the ATI 4850 installed?
Freezing
I have been keeping up with this thread and did my own research this morning. I have a 2.93 with the 4850 card. Connected by ethernet ran for two hours various videos and itunes visualiser all full screen and hd. The machine crashed after 2.5 hours. Undid ethernet cable and ran for a further 15 mins. until it crashed again. In order not to lose heat I then switched off the airport card and ran visualiser again - full screen for half an hour with no further freezes. I am not a techie but I read the temperatures at the freeze point and they are as follows: - HD 51, CPU 44, heatsink 43, GPU 63, Diode 59 GPU heatsink 57. HD bay 50. The fan speeds were CPU 1199, Hard Disc 1599, Odrive 799.
The mac was shipped from Shanghai on 8th April.
I am not a heavy user and before today had not experienced a freeze. I had to actually go looking for it and, sure enough, there it is.
All you guys who are more qualified than me - take what you want and throw the rest away! Hope some of it helps.
I have been keeping up with this thread and did my own research this morning. I have a 2.93 with the 4850 card. Connected by ethernet ran for two hours various videos and itunes visualiser all full screen and hd. The machine crashed after 2.5 hours. Undid ethernet cable and ran for a further 15 mins. until it crashed again. In order not to lose heat I then switched off the airport card and ran visualiser again - full screen for half an hour with no further freezes. I am not a techie but I read the temperatures at the freeze point and they are as follows: - HD 51, CPU 44, heatsink 43, GPU 63, Diode 59 GPU heatsink 57. HD bay 50. The fan speeds were CPU 1199, Hard Disc 1599, Odrive 799.
The mac was shipped from Shanghai on 8th April.
I am not a heavy user and before today had not experienced a freeze. I had to actually go looking for it and, sure enough, there it is.
All you guys who are more qualified than me - take what you want and throw the rest away! Hope some of it helps.
Well I don't think temperatures has that much to do with it. Here are some of my readings when I was stressing the system and it did not crash.
CPU-50 GPU-72 GPU Diode-72 GPU Heatsink-68 Northbridge-77 Optical Drive-49 and power supply-81 and HD Bay-55 Those temps are high but they did not crash my system. Fans were running at CPU-1912 HD-2835 and Optical Drive-980.
Mine crashes different times, using WiFi during itunes with visualizer, but it has crashed in email and iphoto not doing much. So it is random.
So you don't set any credence by the freezing with airport switched on and none when switched off
Well I am about to test that situation tonight. I will switch over to wired for the weekend and do some heavy testing of my own and see if it locks up. It might have something to do with the wireless though Tech Support seems to not agree at least at present time. They are still researching the subject.