Late 2007 iMac 20" Freezes completely random.

Count Blah said:

Anyone brave enough to try Mavericks to see if Apple gave two ****s about our albatrosses enough to fix the issue?

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Count Blah,

I just posted this on the Apple discussion boards, but thought it might be appropriate here. Just to clarify: I don't have the 2400 card; I have the 6970 in a mid-2011 iMac. That said, I was running into the exact same issues as most folks here: total system freezes, with the exception of the cursor which I could move but do nothing else with. I had to hard reboot daily. My post:

Hi everyone,

I have a mid-2011 iMac i7 3.4 with the 6970 card on OS X Lion v10.7.5, and was experiencing freezes left and right -- the computer would lock up and become unresponsive, but I could still move the cursor around. This would mostly happen after the computer had already been asleep once, and I was editing RAW photographs, but it could happen within 10 minutes of a reboot, too. It would happen every day, and the only cure was a reboot.

After finding this thread, I resigned myself to packing the thing up and taking it back to Apple to get the 6970 replaced, but what made the whole thing stange was that this never happened before Apple upgraded the video drivers back in 10.7.3. I found it so strange that this was a hardware error -- it worked perfectly before that!

Well, when Mavericks came out last week, I figured what did I have to lose? I backed up my files and upgraded the machine from 10.7.5 to 10.9, and guess what? The computer hasn't locked up since! It use to crash every single day. Now, nothing!

I've tried everything: editing tons of RAW images, putting the computer to sleep again and again, and playing videos, but the thing has worked smooth as butter -- it's astounding.

Will this fix everyone's problems? I have no idea. I'm perpetually in fear that the freeze will happen again, and that I've just been lucky. That said, my suggestion:

If you can, try upgrading to Mavericks and see if this solves your problem. Before doing so, please please please back up your files. Test your iMac for a week, and report back. Maybe this was a software issue after all?

tl;dr: upgraded to Mavericks, freezing gone

The 6970 problem may look to be the same, but it's very different and not comparable in any way. This thread and the problems causing it are strictly limited to the iMac7,1 and iMac8,1 with the ATI 2400/2600 cards.

I have this same iMac. I haven't had any problems with mine. I LOVE this computer!

Post your Mac OS X version and the Graphics/Displays section of System Profiler.

Please help

I have been having this issue for years with mid 2007 20"iMac with 2.0ghz intel, and the ATI card mentioned though out the thread. I have replaced hard drive, done fan control added additional ram, same issue. every time there is an OSX i[date I pray its addressed but it never is. many times rebooting won't fix it and I end up rebooting several times just to get it to boot. I found a link a couple years ago with a kext installer program (no longer have the instructions or link but this seemed to work for a while. but every time OS would be updated I wounded to run kext helper again. this didn't totally resolve issue but it allowed me to run the computer for more than a few seconds or minutes without it freezing and many times I could run for several days. I seems that I am generally better off, if it doesn't crash in the first 10 minutes of logging in, for me to just let the computer run until it does crash vs my normal routine of shutting down every night. What can I do? what other options does anyone suggest.

Since earlier this year my 7.1 iMac running 10.7.5 with the ATI Radeon HD2400 through some update has drivers versioned 7.32.12 (most dated 01-06-13)

Very stable with this combination.

It looks like there was a "Mac OS X Update Combined" installed on that date. Perhaps Apple pushed that, or i downloaded a complete combo installer (which is always a good idea instead of always applying delta updates).

Anyway this combination exhibits none of the earlier problems.

Hope that works for you.

Intell said:

Post your Mac OS X version and the Graphics/Displays section of System Profiler.

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Is this the same issue with ATI radeon HD 5750? Mine is an iMac mid 2010 with snow leopard 10.7 which constantly freeze, dont´know what to do...

Tian2014 said:

Is this the same issue with ATI radeon HD 5750? Mine is an iMac mid 2010 with snow leopard 10.7 which constantly freeze, dont´know what to do...

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No, this problem only affects the ATI 2400/2600 cards in iMac models 7,1 and 8,1.

Intell said:

No, this problem only affects the ATI 2400/2600 cards in iMac models 7,1 and 8,1.

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Thanks! Do you know any issue related this video cards?

Same freezing problem but don´t know the solution yet! The Genius Bar simply reset the software, apparently no hardware problems were found.

I do not know of any with that video card.

Did Mavericks solve this issue?

Hexley said:

Did Mavericks solve this issue?

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No.

This problem started to appear recently on my iMac 8,1. I installed Mavericks from scratch. It is not the first time tough : the problem was gone for a year of two (back to Lion days) disappeared for whatever reason, update after update, and reappeared since one or two weeks for no reason either.

Disappointing.

Have you done Repair Disk or Repair Disk Permissions?

I've been loosely following this thread for awhile, since I have a 2007 iMac running Mavericks. I bought it brand new in Aug. 2007, and it started randomly shutting off not long after that, then with the random freezes starting a year ago or so. I've been keeping a crash log in Notes of every time either one happens.

I have to say that ever since 10.9.2 came out February 25th I think? Yeah, I haven't had either one happen to me. Maybe it's a coincidence, or maybe Apple did something to fix it. Who knows, but I'm wondering if anyone's gotten similar results.

Upgraded also to 10.9.2 and had our secretary use Excel for the past few weeks.

No freezing thus far. Also streamed 720p mkv files and no problem either.

Question

hey, i've been following this post for along time now, waiting for the miracle fix for this problem.... "Intell" you seem to know the most about this problem have you tried Mavericks? any idea if that would work?

I have not tried 10.9, I'm still on 10.8 due to a hardware device not yet being updated for 10.9. Still crashing, though they seem to come in periods of freezing. It'll go for a few weeks of not freezing, then it'll freeze for a few hours in one day then be fine again for another month or two. I really should start to take a log of the freezes to see if there is a pattern.

i just don't get it, i got my iMac sometime in the summer of 2007, my brother got the same Imac for Xmas of the same year..... Both Macs match up the same... the only difference was mine came with Tiger and his came with Leopard. I get the freezes after the snow leopard updates and he's sitting pretty with no problems after installing every new OS - Snow Leopard, lion, Mountain Lion and now Mavericks.

There are at least three different ROM revisions for the ATI 2400/2600 cards. One version had problems early on and was fixed via an update in late-2007. The second has freezing problems starting with 10.6.3/.7. The last does not have any freezing problems. I could also be slightly mistaken in that there are only two ROM revisions and that Apple fixed one of them in late-2007 and that one doesn't freeze while the other that was not applicable for the late-2007 freezes.

Mavericks?

Forgive me if I missed something...I do try to read through and gather info.

So, any verdict on whether Mavericks fixes the problem with the 2400 card? If it doesn't fix it, can you upgrade to Mavericks and install the 10.6.2 kexts to run normally?

I'm still running on Lion with the 10.6.2 and no more crashes, but it would be nice to get all my machines on the same platform.

Thanks!

Roger

As per my previous post, I'm still stuck on 10.8 due to a hardware vendor not updating its drivers yet. I'm not sure if the ATI 2400/2600 kexts in 10.6.2 are 64-bit or not. If you're running Lion with those kexts, you can check by looking in the Extensions part of System Profilers. I'm hoping that 10.10 finally fixes these problems, but it probably won't.

running mavericks, still freezes

I have never tried the kext fix, but I have tried everything else. Still get freezes, sometimes with videos, sometimes waking from sleep, sometimes, just because. Thinking of erasing the disk and starting over...
iMac7,1
Chipset Model: ATI,RadeonHD2400

What version of Mac OS X are you currently running?

Version 10.9.4

The kext replacing may not work on 10.9.4. Do at your own risk.