Green lines on iMac, when using EyeTV or VLC, and crashing

[glossywhite]

Hi there. My friend has the 24" white, 2.16Ghz iMac - spec:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac-core-2-duo-2.16-24-inch-specs.html

He is currently running a fully updated install of Tiger, and running EyeTV v2.5.3 and VLC (unknown version). Here are the problems being exhibited:

1/ When EyeTV is running, it will sporadically, and unpredictably, crash without explanation.

2/ Many times, the iMac will not even boot - it gets so far @ the grey screen, and then the "Please restart your computer" screen pops up:

http://rajuv.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/photo.jpg

3/ Also, when using either VLC or EyeTV, sometimes there are patterns of green *horizontal* lines, spanning the area of the video playback window (NOT the entire iMac screen) - this happens a LOT.

I have booted in safe mode, verified the volume in Disk Utility, repaired permissions, and it still exhibits these same issues. Also, EyeTV will freeze when displaying video, quite often.

Before I waste any time pursuing graphics updates, or wiping and upgrading to Snow Leopard for my friend, I am wondering if this is an issue experienced by anyone else with this model?. Google throws up a LOT of "green line" results, but I wanted to be extremely specific, to narrow this down a little.

I do hope this is not a job for Apple repair - is there anything which I may do to eliminate certain things?.

Many thanks!

[darrellishere]

your graphics card or motherboard has died. Its cheaper to fix the 24" as it has a removable card, but it could be the motherboard too. 1000's of people owning the white 2.16 imac have had the same
failure, mine happened 1 month after 12 month warranty run out.

People are clubbing together to try and get a law suit against apple, as the number of machines effected seems to be epidemic!

Here's a link

http://getsatisfaction.com/apple/topics/2006_imac_graphics_card_crash_freeze?utm_content=topic_link&utm_medium=email&utm_source=reply_notification


Try installing smc fan control as a temporary measure. run the fans at full speed as the crashes seem to be related to the temperature of the chips/board.