Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Graphics Firmware Update Messed Up My iMac

N

NoDetrel

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I never had a problem with my 20" iMac until the other day when I installed the graphics firmware update. Since then my computer has had all sorts of problems. When using my mouse for instance, it will sometimes randomly jump across the screen or suddenly bring up the dashboard without me clicking on anything. Sometimes my dock won't even respond when I pass my mouse over it. I will click on programs and they will boot but it won't move. Also, my hot corners don't work some of the time. The only way I have found to temporarily fix it is to shut down my mac and start it up again.

I thought this update was supposed to help, but it's made things much much worse for me.

Does anyone have any suggestions?
 
NoDetrel said:
I never had a problem with my 20" iMac until the other day when I installed the graphics firmware update. Since then my computer has had all sorts of problems. When using my mouse for instance, it will sometimes randomly jump across the screen or suddenly bring up the dashboard without me clicking on anything. Sometimes my dock won't even respond when I pass my mouse over it. I will click on programs and they will boot but it won't move. Also, my hot corners don't work some of the time. The only way I have found to temporarily fix it is to shut down my mac and start it up again.

I thought this update was supposed to help, but it's made things much much worse for me.

Does anyone have any suggestions?
Click to expand...

What You can do is to reinstall the OS,or better..
Drop Your Install disk into the drive,Open a finder window,if not opened by itself.
Then,you'll find a system folder there and inside that system folder there should be an install folder with packages.
Download(if You don't have it yet,Pacifist and open the package called OsInstall.
(There's a shorter way but I haven't a system in front of me so I can not check,I think baseinstall is another package which holds them)
It will take a while to open.
Next,in Pacifist you can find an extension folder with all kexts(kernel extensions),find the Graphic extensions which You need(Ati I guess.
Highlight them all and click the button to install them in place.
It will install them in the right place.
If you are in root You can also drag them to the extension folder inside your current system,has to be root!
This way You can go back to your old Graphic drivers and if You didn't have any other issues before with them You would not have them now.
You later can login to root and copy them into a folder for later usage,i.g.when You upgrade your system and get problems again.
My Powerbook died on me a few weeks ago and I am pretty sure that I am right about the above but I can not check the exact names of folders and so because I am writing this on a ****** windows PC🙁
Like to hear if You succeeded
Cheers Perry
 
Usually, looking at the system log to see if anything odd is happening is a good start.

Almost sounds like something is slowly grabbing more resources as you play with the system.

---

So combining doing the above and looking at the Activity monitor might pinpoint a problem app or process. Something being a hog, or crashing like mad.
 
So, I reinstalled the graphics files and it was all fine. Then I turned off my computer, turned it on again and, uh oh... it stopped at the blue screen and wouldn't go further. The mouse was there and it moved, but there's nothing else. Is my best bet to get someone with another mac to let me boot my hard drive so I can back up all my info and then completely reinstall OS-X? Help?
 
The firmware gets installed to a chip on the video card, not on the hard disk so reinstalling original bits of the OS off the install disk won't even touch it. It's likely you'll have even more problems from now having versions of different bits of software that aren't compatible.

Besides which, none of the things you describe sound like they would be caused by a video firmware update. My guess is that something else went wrong at around the same time that you applied that update, and the firmware is actually unrelated.

I'd say you'll have to reinstall, preferably with an erase and reinstall but otherwise archive and install should do it. If you still get problems, try replacing the mouse - I can imagine a mouse fault causing most of the things you've seen, even if it does sound unlikely (I learned that the hard way, after spending nearly a day trying to fix a freezing imac. My wife said at the start it was the mouse, and I said that a mouse couldn't cause the whole system to freeze for a few seconds - it did! 🙂
 
So, what should I do considering i can't even see my screen in order to archive and install? At this point I've realized that I should use the firewire to firewire transfer option to get get my files safe on my external. I've never had a problem like this before and I was wondering whether there is a interface similar to the PC DOS system where I could try to fix whatever I did without loading Tiger?
 
Try to start up in safe mode...

NoDetrel said:
So, what should I do considering i can't even see my screen in order to archive and install? At this point I've realized that I should use the firewire to firewire transfer option to get get my files safe on my external. I've never had a problem like this before and I was wondering whether there is a interface similar to the PC DOS system where I could try to fix whatever I did without loading Tiger?
Click to expand...

And see if your can get to your screen. Do you have OnyX? or do safe mode with the LeoDVD in the drive. if you get your screen, repair and varify permissions!

Just some suggestions.
 
DesignerOnMac said:
And see if your can get to your screen. Do you have OnyX? or do safe mode with the LeoDVD in the drive. if you get your screen, repair and varify permissions!

Just some suggestions.
Click to expand...

I've never used either of those programs, I need some more direction as far as how I repair and varify permissions and also what exactly that is doing for me.
 
Hurray! I fixed my mac! I couldn't remember the boot keys so I looked them up and then found that that if I held "shift" during startup it would open it up in safe mode. Well, it worked and then I just did a software update and now it's working again. Yippee. So far, in the last 5 minutes it's been working, I haven't even experienced the same problems again. Of course only time will tell I suppose. Thanks for all the help.
 
justperry said:
What You can do is to reinstall the OS,or better..
Drop Your Install disk into the drive,Open a finder window,if not opened by itself.
Then,you'll find a system folder there and inside that system folder there should be an install folder with packages.
Download(if You don't have it yet,Pacifist and open the package called OsInstall.
(There's a shorter way but I haven't a system in front of me so I can not check,I think baseinstall is another package which holds them)
It will take a while to open.
Next,in Pacifist you can find an extension folder with all kexts(kernel extensions),find the Graphic extensions which You need(Ati I guess.
Highlight them all and click the button to install them in place.
It will install them in the right place.
If you are in root You can also drag them to the extension folder inside your current system,has to be root!
This way You can go back to your old Graphic drivers and if You didn't have any other issues before with them You would not have them now.
You later can login to root and copy them into a folder for later usage,i.g.when You upgrade your system and get problems again.
My Powerbook died on me a few weeks ago and I am pretty sure that I am right about the above but I can not check the exact names of folders and so because I am writing this on a ****** windows PC🙁
Like to hear if You succeeded
Cheers Perry
Click to expand...

Why are users supposed to do that? Are you saying the graphics driver that Apple issued through a software update is not to be trusted?

The process you outlined is worse than having to run registry editor and go to HKEY\Local Machine.... and various nonsense to edit some key. Geez, Apple stuff is so user friendly indeed 🙄
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back