iMac Problems (2006 Model) - Cannot understand what's wrong

[Nym]

Hi guys!

It's been a while since I posted here on the "troubleshooting" section but I'm having a problem with my iMac which I seriously struggling with.

The hardware:

iMac Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16 Ghz, 3GB RAM , Nvidia 7300 GT 128MB, purchased in October 2006.

Note that the iMac came with 1GB of RAM which I upgraded in January as an attempt to solve the problem.

The problem:

I started having weird graphic bugs after I upgraded to Leopard. Whenever I clicked on a Stack or used Spaces (graphics intensive stuff) some weird lines (purple, cyan, yellow) would remain on screen flickering (drove me mad when watching a movie) or sometimes the whole OS would just freeze and beachball for 10 minutes (or simply going into Kernel Panic).

I figure that the lines are software-based because they do show up when I take a screenshot. I've already went back to Tiger and also found the system very unstable and occasionally it still gives me the colored lines and graphical bugs (and I can't install iLife 09 which sucks).

I just re-installed Leopard last night (from Tiger, again) and with a clean install, after installing all the updates (10.5.8 and etc) the first time I boot into the OS Safari locks up and everything freezes. I had to manually turn off the iMac.

I ran the hardware test last night (extended mode) and it says that all the hardware is fine.

Can anyone point me in any direction? There's no explanation for the system crashing all the time with a fresh install of the most recent Apple OS unless it is a hardware issue.

I'm losing my mind with this, my MacBook is behaving just fine (haven't had one app crash on me with Leopard) but the iMac is seriously giving me headaches...

If you have any suggestions... I'm all ears

Thanks in advance and sorry for the mess I made trying to explain the problem but I did the the best I could.

 

[geoffreak]

Sounds like the Leopard upgrade coincided with a graphics card failure.

Have you tried reinstalling Tiger?

 

[Nym]

Yes, I've already went back to Tiger but the system was still unusable.

Beachballed all the time simply browsing folders (especially from external hard drives) or switching between Firefox, iPhoto and Mail.app.

I just don't know what else to do especially because in my country (Portugal) there isn't one single official Apple Store, only authorized resellers.

Like I said, I just installed Leopard yesterday and I've already seen some bugs starting to appear (the software update panel had a line just like I described above). I'm afraid something is wrong with the GPU but isn't the Hardware Test suppose to catch that kinda stuff?

 

[indg]

it's a logic board issue caused by prolonged exposure to heat. happens with a lot of 2006 intel imacs (also affects ATI Radeon X1600 GPU soldered onto logic board) as well. you can try replacing the nvidia graphics card, but the problem may still persist.

a temporary workaround would be to increase internal fan speeds with this app:
http://www.derman.com/iMac-Fan-Control

monitor your gpu temp with this:
http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatpro/

here's some more info on the defect that apple refuses to acknowledge:
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/imacrecall
http://www.petitiononline.com/fiximac/petition.html

one of the longest apple discussion threads is about this problem:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1467276

Screenshots of graphical anomalies:
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/8527/picture1xk3.png
http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/3607/picture6nke.png
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/6916/picture9eem.png
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=107737
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=107736
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=107739
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=107738
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=107740
http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/3332/imacline1.png
http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/8794/imacline2.png

 

[Nym]

it's a logic board issue caused by prolonged exposure to heat. happens with a lot of 2006 intel imacs (also affects ATI Radeon X1600 GPU soldered onto logic board) as well. you can try replacing the nvidia graphics card, but the problem may still persist.

a temporary workaround would be to increase internal fan speeds with this app:
http://www.derman.com/iMac-Fan-Control

monitor your gpu temp with this:
http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatpro/

here's some more info on the defect that apple refuses to acknowledge:
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/imacrecall
http://www.petitiononline.com/fiximac/petition.html

one of the longest apple discussion threads is about this problem:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1467276

Screenshots of graphical anomalies:
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/8527/picture1xk3.png
http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/3607/picture6nke.png
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/6916/picture9eem.png
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=107737
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=107736
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=107739
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=107738
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=107740
http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/3332/imacline1.png
http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/8794/imacline2.png

Thank you! That's exactly the problem I'm having! I can only imagine what it would cost me to get it repaired since it's a logic board issue.

Anyway, thread closed I guess

I have no other option than to just wait for the iMac to melt itself then

I'll look around those links then. Safari crashed the iMac again, had to force reboot by holding the power key... Safari was the only running app...

 

[zmttoxics]

Ya, that sucks man, hardware failure for sure. It might just be the graphics card, which can be replaced (there is another thread on here about that).

 

[donuttakedonuts]

sounds like an occasional problem i have with my 2007 imac, where it shows (what looks like) old screen images over the current image, twisted and rendered in some weird way, with different colors. I thought it might be a vram problem. Has anyone else had this?

 

[Ismelito]

They removed my message at the Apple Community Discussion Forums so let's spread this around here:

http://wh.gov/IoBJ

A new petition. I'm tired of fighting via telephone with Apple to try to solve this problem. Let's see if this time they do something right.

 

[mjvlego]

Cool story, bro.

But seriously, its a 6 year old computer. What do you expect Obama to do if apple won't do anything?

 

[G-Mo]

they removed my message at the apple community discussion forums so let's spread this around here:

http://wh.gov/iobj

a new petition. I'm tired of fighting via telephone with apple to try to solve this problem. Let's see if this time they do something right.

lmfao!!!