new iMac freezing problem

[smitty330]

I was working in aperture today and also running iTunes, and that was it. I clicked something and it froze. Everything did i could not force quit or anything. Although the music was still playing it was not skipping or anything. THis is the second time this has happened. I do not like holding down the power button to restart my iMac it makes me feel jipped. I just paid all of this money for a new working computer. WHAT THE HECK This should not be happening. Anyone else having similar problems??

[mad jew]

If it's new and you don't have any third party components connected that could be at fault, then take it back pronto.

[Logic777]

I have been busy all week importing my CD's into iTunes and on a few occasions, iTunes gave me the color wheel and I had to force quit. On one occasion, I couldn't get the force quit to pop up and had to hold down the power button. I have only had these issues while importing CD's however. Not sure what to make of it either at this point.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Sounds like the machine just hung up on something in Aperture. Honestly, using any intensive programs (pro-apps, parallels/fusion, photoshop) is always going to cause a little trouble.

Happens to me once every few months.. Everything's frozen, music keeps playing. I usually leave it alone for 10 minutes to do its thing, and more often than not it will recover without needing to be unplugged. Your machine is almost certainly not defective.

[NEiMac]

I have a brand new iMac too. This happens to me when browsing the video sections in iTunes store mostly. It will freeze the hole computer up. I have ran hardware tests, lots of other programs this seems to be a iTunes bug to me. I ordered mine and not to excited about going without it for a few days, because of a bug. That being said it doesn't get fixed soon I may have to return it. Very annoying bug that quite frankly has killed the excitement of getting this iMac.

[rainydays]

I was working in aperture today and also running iTunes, and that was it. I clicked something and it froze. Everything did i could not force quit or anything. Although the music was still playing it was not skipping or anything.

Did you by any chance push the full screen button? That hung Aperture every time for me.

My guess is that it could have something to do with the graphics driver. But then again, it could be something completely different.
I somehow doubt that it's a hardware issue though.

[args]

Running iTunes, clicked on Disney Channel and it froze. I could not force quit or anything. Sound & music was still playing it was not skipping or anything. Has happened three times. Had to hold down the power button to restart my iMac. Very upset, will probably return system. I cannot risk further crash as I may lose vital information.

I really hope that they come out with a fix for this! Anyone else with problems like this?

[casjohnr]

Mine does this too, another reason I'm gonna get a exchange on my iMac

[mmzplanet]

Mine is doing it too... I dont think its the iMac though... it could be something in iTunes that needs to be fixed too.

[mad jew]

mmzplanet, what makes you think it might be iTunes? Has it stopped freezing since the recent iTunes update(s)?

[oduinnin]

I too have had a problem with hanging while iTunes is running.
it has happened twice and I've only had this iMac 1 full day.

It may have something to do with graphics driver. However, it must also involve iTunes since this is our commom link here.

Mine 1st time did spinning beach ball after opening than shortly closing iMovie. After spinning for a while, it did an "unexpected quit".

Later, I had iTunes playing and went to open Safari from the dock which at the time was hidden. When I dragged the mouse pointer over the dock area, it would not come up! Then iTunes wouldn't close. After force quitting iTunes and opening up the dock preference, turning off the "hide" feature, it reappeared. However, it would not magnify no matter where I set it in the preference panel. After logging out of my account, then logging back in, everything worked normal. My iMac sent a report to Apple. I wonder how many of these reports they are receiving.

One more thing, I have the 24" with the 2.8GHz Extreme. What model do each of you have?
:mad::mad:

[Luap]

There is an iTunes 7.4.1 update out now. Although the SUCP didnt say what was new/fixed in it.
But for the record, there are a few things which currently trip these new iMacs into a freeze. Quite a few popular games are doing it too. Annoying..
I suspect it is a software glitch, rather than any hardware fault. So a suitable software update should fix it. Fingers crossed...

[oduinnin]

I too have had a problem with hanging while iTunes is running.
it has happened twice and I've only had this iMac 1 full day.

It may have something to do with graphics driver. However, it must also involve iTunes since this is our commom link here.

Mine 1st time did spinning beach ball after opening than shortly closing iMovie. After spinning for a while, it did an "unexpected quit".

Later, I had iTunes playing and went to open Safari from the dock which at the time was hidden. When I dragged the mouse pointer over the dock area, it would not come up! Then iTunes wouldn't close. After force quitting iTunes and opening up the dock preference, turning off the "hide" feature, it reappeared. However, it would not magnify no matter where I set it in the preference panel. After logging out of my account, then logging back in, everything worked normal. My iMac sent a report to Apple. I wonder how many of these reports they are receiving.

One more thing, I have the 24" with the 2.8GHz Extreme. What model do each of you have?
:mad::mad:

Everything seems to be working fine now. I had iTunes up all day yesterday with no problems whatsoever. In fact, I worked with iPhoto most of the day and also had Safari open. In the background, whenever I had a pause, the new SMP version of Folding@Home running (and it's fast too!). So, overall, I exercised my new iMac quite throughly and it ran superbly. BTW, the Dock works normal again. I think iTunes 7.4 must have been messing with Quartz or some part of screen display interface.

I'm happy today. :D (except today is wifey's turn to play with it, so, I'm back to my trusty MacBook Pro)

[cyks]

Sadly, I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one having issues.

I can't confine it to any one program that's the cause- iTunes is rarely open and it's crashed in WoW, Word, and Quicktime (off the top of my head- possibly more).

It doesn't seem to be a full lock-up though, but rather a video redraw problem from what I can tell. The screen won't change, but I can still usually open, play/ stop iTunes from the keyboard and with 'Command-Tab' can get the feeling that I've changed programs.

If there's a beachball, it's also rarely over the whole screen, but rather, just some random boxed area (as if I was going over a window for some app that I can't see).

In an attempt to try to 'fix' the problem, I've tried on 2 occasions to force the iMac to sleep via button on the back, waited a few minutes and awoke it- to find serious screen redraw issues (repeating areas and visual noise throughout).


Brand new iMac 20".... the closest Apple store is over an hour drive, so if there are any ideas for me, I'd appreciate them before I take the drive to find that they can't find anything wrong.

Thanks,
cyks

[knapkin]

Sad to say the latest driver update did not fix the issue. It is most certainly a video problem.

I am able to ssh into my imac when it freezes to see what is going on/try to fix things/issue a sudo reboot command to avoid having to hit the button.

While frozen, the cpu was 98% idle leading me to think that it will not just work it out, but that somthing in the graphics driver is stuck.

The freezes had only happened with WoW for me, so I thought that was to blame, but I just had a Safari only freeze up. It mostly seems to happen when I change window focus, i.e. clicking on a window in the background to bring it forward.

[fawk3s]

Hi,

Im having the same iMac freezing problem. It seems to be something with graphics, because every time I play UT2004, it simply freezes and I have no other choice than pressing the power button again. If anybody gets the fix, Im interested, but Im guessing its coming up in the forthcoming update or in the leopard.

Greetz

[mslide]

I got my 20" iMac shortly after the new ones were released. Its frozen on me about 5 times now, to the point where I have to hold the reset button down. Usually it's happened with just safari running. I've also had to force quit out of safari and WoW several times, although everything has been fine for the past 2 weeks or so.

Just because it's made by Apple doesn't mean it can't hang up. Ironically, my windows xp bootcamp partition has not froze up once; nor has my home theater box, running windows MCE. Oh well. Still love the imac though.

[Luap]

Hi,

If anybody gets the fix, Im interested, but Im guessing its coming up in the forthcoming update or in the leopard.



It needs to be fixed in 10.4. And likely (hopefully?!) will be. But in case you were wondering, exactly the same problem exists in the latest build of 10.5 also. But then it likely contains the same half baked graphics drivers, so thats not entirely surprising.

[RichardJohn]

:| On my Vista machine with 1GB RAM, I usually have Photoshop, Picasa, Firefox, Windows Live Messenger, and Microsoft Expresison Design, and it never locks up. Is running that much stuff going to be a problem on a iMac?

[Luap]

Is running that much stuff going to be a problem on a iMac?

It shouldn't be. As it usually never is for Macs. But currently these latest iMacs are buggy, and should not have left Apple in this state.
If I knew then what I know now, I would not have bought mine. And would have either bought a different mac, or waited on Apple fixing the issues with these new iMacs before buying.

[Neeper]

My new 20" imac freezes everyday, practically every few minutes!! I am so pissed and disappointed. I think it's definitely the graphics card, because my iTunes still works and I can eventually get it to sleep. When I wake it up, there's a lot of garbage or noise on the monitor. What should I do? Can a software update eventually fix this issue? It seems to freeze on me the most when I scroll the dock.

[togermano]

My new 20" imac freezes everyday, practically every few minutes!! I am so pissed and disappointed. I think it's definitely the graphics card, because my iTunes still works and I can eventually get it to sleep. When I wake it up, there's a lot of garbage or noise on the monitor. What should I do? Can a software update eventually fix this issue? It seems to freeze on me the most when I scroll the dock.

since the new imac updates this happens to me 2

[Neeper]

since the new imac updates this happens to me 2
I was actually wondering how this even started. It never used to happen. It started about a week ago. I can't even use the computer anymore. It freezes EVERYTIME! So you think it was the update that caused it? How do we uninstall the update?

[Neeper]

Ok, the update was the culprit. I did what Yuppi said to do in this thread, and my iMac doesn't freeze anymore.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=4202786

[intelliot]

I have a similar problem. I'm on the phone with Apple support now, but she doesn't seem to be aware of the problem. I already attempted the rollback to 1.0, and it didn't fix it.

Now she's trying to have me boot from the Install Disc and run the Disk Utility. They already did that the last time I called them, and it didn't fix the problem.

Apple support is disappointingly incompetent.

[intelliot]

Sounds like the machine just hung up on something in Aperture. Honestly, using any intensive programs (pro-apps, parallels/fusion, photoshop) is always going to cause a little trouble.

Happens to me once every few months.. Everything's frozen, music keeps playing. I usually leave it alone for 10 minutes to do its thing, and more often than not it will recover without needing to be unplugged. Your machine is almost certainly not defective.

My iMac is about 1 week old, and it has already frozen 7 times. Perhaps I push it too hard, but my ThinkPad could handle this kind of work with no problem.

[CRIIM44]

My iMac is about 1 week old, and it has already frozen 7 times. Perhaps I push it too hard, but my ThinkPad could handle this kind of work with no problem.

My imac is about a month old and has frozen up a few times but has done it twice already this morning...grrr my old powerbook has only frozen up on me while running photoshop, final cut pro, safari, itunes, imageready and flash pro:D

this thing locked up on iphoto, itunes and safari

[sushiman]

It shouldn't be. As it usually never is for Macs. But currently these latest iMacs are buggy, and should not have left Apple in this state.
If I knew then what I know now, I would not have bought mine. And would have either bought a different mac, or waited on Apple fixing the issues with these new iMacs before buying.


My 6 year old Fujitsu died yesterday , and I was planning on saying sayonara to PC and getting an iMac , but now I'm having second thoughts . :confused:

[HLdan]

My 6 year old Fujitsu died yesterday , and I was planning on saying sayonara to PC and getting an iMac , but now I'm having second thoughts . :confused:

Well have a 3rd thought because for the most part people that have bad experiences post to tell about it and the people that are having no issues generally don't post. The forums get misused so much from people just posting to complain about what's no right.
I, along with many other posters are not having any freezing or crashing issues after the last update. Not to say the people who have complained don't have a legit issue but many things can factor in such as bad ram from Apple, bad 3rd party ram, 3rd party beta apps that don't agree with the operating system or graphics card drivers.
You have to buy and see for yourself.
So keep in mind, generally out of 100 people who have bought the iMac there may be 10 posters that will complain of issues while the others don't bother, why should they if everything is all good.

[sushiman]

Well have a 3rd thought because for the most part people that have bad experiences post to tell about it and the people that are having no issues generally don't post. The forums get misused so much from people just posting to complain about what's no right.
I, along with many other posters are not having any freezing or crashing issues after the last update. Not to say the people who have complained don't have a legit issue but many things can factor in such as bad ram from Apple, bad 3rd party ram, 3rd party beta apps that don't agree with the operating system or graphics card drivers.
You have to buy and see for yourself.
So keep in mind, generally out of 100 people who have bought the iMac there may be 10 posters that will complain of issues while the others don't bother, why should they if everything is all good.

Believe me , I want to buy a Mac and say sayonara to PC . However , after reading about the freeze ups on this thread and elsewhere , and the potential for glitches in Leopard when it first comes out , I'm worried that I might step right into problemos with Mac at the outset and that would ruin the whole switchover experience for me . I wish I could wait until the end of the year , but as I said earlier my PC died a violent death yesterday .

[HLdan]

Believe me , I want to buy a Mac and say sayonara to PC . However , after reading about the freeze ups on this thread and elsewhere , and the potential for glitches in Leopard when it first comes out , I'm worried that I might step right into problemos with Mac at the outset and that would ruin the whole switchover experience for me . I wish I could wait until the end of the year , but as I said earlier my PC died a violent death yesterday .

Firstly, Leopard has not been released so anything said about it negatively is all speculation. You shouldn't make purchase decisions based on speculation, that's illogical.
Secondly, I just mentioned to you that my iMac is fine and other forum members have posted in response to other negative posters about the freezing that theirs was fine as well. Usually most things like this are driver or software issues and generally not hardware. Most people with the freezing issues acquired them after the most recent software update from Apple and that was for the graphics card so now you know it's just software issue and Apple will take care of it soon.

Third and last, Windows Vista's never ending issues haven't stopped any of the die hards from buying new PC's so you either have to get over it and just buy and see for yourself or cheat yourself out of pleasure because of what you have read on the internet but never experienced it for yourself.

[nickf]

I think the freezing issue is graphics driver-related.

My 2.4/20" Al iMac arrived at the weekend, and I duly installed the relevant Apple sw updates.

WoW froze up on me twice within 10 minutes of playing last night. Symptoms are as described by others - the sound continued, and the mouse was responsive but the machine was otherwise locked-up solid. Immediately before the first crash a lot of texture errors appeared on screen (spell effects replaced by white squares). Ironically, my previous machine (a 7 year old G4) would happily work for months without requiring a restart.

Lets hope that ATI/AMD and Apple are working on fixing this.

[CRIIM44]

i wouldnt let something like this stop you from purchasing.. Just cause you see people on here posting it up doesnt mean it will happen to you. It is also just a video driver fix like has been said before.

[RevToTheRedline]

i wouldnt let something like this stop you from purchasing.. Just cause you see people on here posting it up doesnt mean it will happen to you. It is also just a video driver fix like has been said before.

Yep, just like CRIIM44 said, there are TONS of happy people on here like me, that haven't had a single problem, mine is almost a month old, no freezing what so ever.

Just remember, most people come to forms when they have problems, rarely do people don't have problems come to a forum like this.

[CRIIM44]

Yep, just like CRIIM44 said, there are TONS of happy people on here like me, that haven't had a single problem, mine is almost a month old, no freezing what so ever.

Just remember, most people come to forms when they have problems, rarely do people don't have problems come to a forum like this.

basically what i was saying in a nutshell


Even though i had a freezing problem it seemed to work itself out and i am happy.

[caseydude]

same problem here a few times in itunes they need to get this isssue fixed asap.

[intelliot]

i wouldnt let something like this stop you from purchasing.. Just cause you see people on here posting it up doesnt mean it will happen to you. It is also just a video driver fix like has been said before.

It only happens when I'm pushing the iMac to actually getting some work done. For example, one time I was trying to drag a 23-minute song from iTunes into iMovie '08. Apparently that kind of stress is too much for it to handle. But if you're just playing with 3-minute songs, it'll probably be fine-- and I can imagine less-demanding users having a fine time with this computer.