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New 4850 3.06ghz iMac freezing multiple times a day.
- Thread starter Tymbo
- Start date
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I got my iMac this morning. 24" 3.06 4850.
Crashes too
One of the first things I done was play a HD movie from Apple gallery and it died within about 30 secs of playing fullscreen. I can play intensive games (Prey, Flatout 2, etc) and it runs absolutely perfect, havnt had a freeze during a game yet (could be coincidence). Been on and off it all day and had about 4 or 5 freezes...
Tried looking to see if i can see anything obvious in the crash logs or any console messages... no such luck but then although I consider myself to know OS X pretty well i dont pretend to know all of what im looking at in the logs. Perhaps someone more in the know could check them out (surprised no one's mentioned it already actually).
Apart from the freezes its an absolutely beautiful machine and extremely fast... such a shame they've gone out with this niggling problem..
Gonna give it a while before I complain to Apple - hoping for a magical software fix - see how it goes during it's first week.....
Good luck to those still waiting on theirs... it really can't be encouraging to be reading these threads
Crashes too
One of the first things I done was play a HD movie from Apple gallery and it died within about 30 secs of playing fullscreen. I can play intensive games (Prey, Flatout 2, etc) and it runs absolutely perfect, havnt had a freeze during a game yet (could be coincidence). Been on and off it all day and had about 4 or 5 freezes...
Tried looking to see if i can see anything obvious in the crash logs or any console messages... no such luck but then although I consider myself to know OS X pretty well i dont pretend to know all of what im looking at in the logs. Perhaps someone more in the know could check them out (surprised no one's mentioned it already actually).
Apart from the freezes its an absolutely beautiful machine and extremely fast... such a shame they've gone out with this niggling problem..
Gonna give it a while before I complain to Apple - hoping for a magical software fix - see how it goes during it's first week.....
Good luck to those still waiting on theirs... it really can't be encouraging to be reading these threads
When the HD2600 cards were dying, we used to be able to kernel panic by sleeping the iMac after a freeze (back button tap) and then it would panic when re-awoken.
@gfw123, maverick72, Gredin, Tom Dahl, synagence, and mikeyredk
Thank you guys for the non-freezing replies. That kinda keeps my faith up a bit. I guess I can stay this way until I actually get my hands on my iMac.
I agree... if it were not for their replies, it would seem like everyone's having problems and apple would be expected to recall and I would lose faith int he 4850's.
Gotta also keep in mind that users who don't experience problems tend to be enjoying their computer rather than browse a troubleshooting forum!
I Cancelled my ATI-iMac Order Today
+++
I'd ordered a 2.93.. ATI iMac the end of March.
That iMac is/was scheduled to be shipped 8 May
After reading this thread I decided to call Apple, mention "the problem",
& willing to halt/delay my order until I was assured
that Apple did/will square things away by 8 May or I'd cancel.
After speaking with Sales, Tech and AppleCare,
with me reassuring them that this ATI iMac problem is no "rumor",
and after them suggesting I accept the order, take my chances,
and me saying, "No Way! Jose!", AppleCare finally agreed
that I should cancel my order, and re-order
when I feel that it's in my best interest to do so.
They never directly acknowledged that a problem exists: prolly/maybe indirectly;
but, fahgeddaboutit.. it's statistically obvious that a problem exists.
+++
+++
I'd ordered a 2.93.. ATI iMac the end of March.
That iMac is/was scheduled to be shipped 8 May
After reading this thread I decided to call Apple, mention "the problem",
& willing to halt/delay my order until I was assured
that Apple did/will square things away by 8 May or I'd cancel.
After speaking with Sales, Tech and AppleCare,
with me reassuring them that this ATI iMac problem is no "rumor",
and after them suggesting I accept the order, take my chances,
and me saying, "No Way! Jose!", AppleCare finally agreed
that I should cancel my order, and re-order
when I feel that it's in my best interest to do so.
They never directly acknowledged that a problem exists: prolly/maybe indirectly;
but, fahgeddaboutit.. it's statistically obvious that a problem exists.
+++
@gfw123, maverick72, Gredin, Tom Dahl, synagence, and mikeyredk
Thank you guys for the non-freezing replies. That kinda keeps my faith up a bit. I guess I can stay this way until I actually get my hands on my iMac.
I got mine yesterday and have been on it for quite a number of hours already (it's a 3.06GHz/ATI 4850/with wired mouse and keyboard), streaming videos, loading software and doing photo editing, web surfing w/Safari..... not one crash yet.
This iMac ATI-issue is being discussed on Apple.com
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9334843
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9334843
I would recommend that everyone who has a freezing 4850 iMac respond in that thread. The more complainers there are the harder of a time Apple will have in hiding from this.
You know, you'd think that with an extra 4-6 weeks from the announcement of this solution, which was accompanied by Apple's own benchmark results that they would have rolled a stable product out since they essentially control everything about how these Macs are developed.
Then again, the 4-6 week delay could have been caused by freezing issues they were experiencing on some machines with the 4850 that they couldn't quite pinpoint.
Obviously if this were a universal issue it would not just be a matter of only those with problems posting to user forums. It would have been all over the news already.
Whichever the case, it definitely looks like deja vu all over again to me.
Since mine arrived on the 10th, it has frozen numerous times. Unfortunately most of the more recent times are when AppleCare is closed. I spent over an hour with tech support yesterday and they had me do numerous steps to pinpoint the problem. However, no hardware issues came up and no repairs were needed. Now, I'm supposed to call back when it happens again. It did afterwards but of course they were closed. Maybe this weekend I'll be so lucky. I'm getting frustrated and tempted to use my old PowerMac sitting on the desk next to me. It's very crowded with 2 computers, 2 keyboards and 2 mice altogether!
Actually, it would be better for you, and everyone involved, to complain as soon as it happens. If Apple does not know the enormity of the situation, then it won't be as high of a priority for them to fix it. If I were in your shoes, I would call right away.
Bryan
+1. People were too slow last time and it took 2 months for Apple to officially acknowledge a problem and then another month to fix it. Keep their feet to the fire.
Same Problem
Yeah, I had the same problem. I called Apple earlier today about it and they made me try four things: (1) turn off iMac and unplug cord (something about resetting something or other) turn back on; (2) turn off iMac, turn back on while holding shift to boot in Safe Mode; after booting in safe mode wait a minute or so then restart normally; (3) turn off iMac, turn back on while holding P+R+Opt+Cmd to reset parameters; (4) if all those failed I was told to repair disk permissions, verify disks, and repair disks through disk utility.
I did all that and still had the freezing problem. I thought that there might be compatibility issues with Safari 4.0 (thought of that on my own, so no thanks to Apple) so I switched back to 3.0. No freezes yet, but I'm about to try to watch some Hulu so I'll let you guys know what happens after that.
On an interesting side note, when alternating repairs of permissions on the Hard Disk and the Macintosh HD, I can perpetually repair permission. There is always a huge laundry list of permissions that get repaired. Any ideas why?
One last question regarding Bluetooth keyboards: are the up/down arrows supposed to be touch sensitive, because mine definitely are and I hate it. First time I have ever been upset with Apple. Better be the last.
Yeah, I had the same problem. I called Apple earlier today about it and they made me try four things: (1) turn off iMac and unplug cord (something about resetting something or other) turn back on; (2) turn off iMac, turn back on while holding shift to boot in Safe Mode; after booting in safe mode wait a minute or so then restart normally; (3) turn off iMac, turn back on while holding P+R+Opt+Cmd to reset parameters; (4) if all those failed I was told to repair disk permissions, verify disks, and repair disks through disk utility.
I did all that and still had the freezing problem. I thought that there might be compatibility issues with Safari 4.0 (thought of that on my own, so no thanks to Apple) so I switched back to 3.0. No freezes yet, but I'm about to try to watch some Hulu so I'll let you guys know what happens after that.
On an interesting side note, when alternating repairs of permissions on the Hard Disk and the Macintosh HD, I can perpetually repair permission. There is always a huge laundry list of permissions that get repaired. Any ideas why?
One last question regarding Bluetooth keyboards: are the up/down arrows supposed to be touch sensitive, because mine definitely are and I hate it. First time I have ever been upset with Apple. Better be the last.
Everyone just needs to raise hell with them until they admit to the issue and what their plan is to fix it.
It also might not be legal in some states for them to charge the restocking fee for a return if the product is defective with no plan from Apple on a fix.
Don't call the store, call APPLE and talk to technical support. Yes, I know the store is Apple, but talking to Apple over the phone is the best way to go, IMO. And yeah, I don't believe it's App/software related, but rather something wrong with the hardware itself.
When it crashed was you using Safari too? Have you tried switching to firefox just to see if the freezes quits. That would be interesting to find out.
My iMac crashes too...
So, at first, I thought my iMac is perfect, no dead pixel, no freeze (at least the first 12 hours of continuously using it.) However, today, it freezes twice. First time I was listening to music using iTune and browse the web using Firefox. The second time I was watching videos on YouTube using Firefox. They all crash the same way, suddenly everything freezes and the speaker will be repeating the last sound it plays.
New to mac so I am not quite sure, will OS X generate any crash logs which we can see what's causing it? I found DirectoryService.error.log under Logs, but it only shows "Improper shutdown detected." Judging by the time, it's generated "after" the crash happened. The info doesn't help much. I read somewhere that there's an application called Crash Reporter, but search using Spotlight only returns CrashReporterPrefs, not the actually app.
I don't get how come Mac users always have the confidence to claim Apple makes computer that just works. Based on the this thread, the iMacs we have are far from stable. Although everything else is fine, random crash without any obvious cause is just annoying as hell.
So, at first, I thought my iMac is perfect, no dead pixel, no freeze (at least the first 12 hours of continuously using it.) However, today, it freezes twice. First time I was listening to music using iTune and browse the web using Firefox. The second time I was watching videos on YouTube using Firefox. They all crash the same way, suddenly everything freezes and the speaker will be repeating the last sound it plays.
New to mac so I am not quite sure, will OS X generate any crash logs which we can see what's causing it? I found DirectoryService.error.log under Logs, but it only shows "Improper shutdown detected." Judging by the time, it's generated "after" the crash happened. The info doesn't help much. I read somewhere that there's an application called Crash Reporter, but search using Spotlight only returns CrashReporterPrefs, not the actually app.
I don't get how come Mac users always have the confidence to claim Apple makes computer that just works. Based on the this thread, the iMacs we have are far from stable. Although everything else is fine, random crash without any obvious cause is just annoying as hell.