How to troubleshoot?? - iMac wont wake from sleep

[fuzzai]

Folks,

I've been using PC all my life, and we recently went all mac in the house for ease of NO issues Never looked back since! However in the troubleshooting game, im a tad off....

So my Wife's iMac, a few days ago, wouldn't wake up from sleep, I had to hold the power down on it, and restart it.
Everything came up fine.

Last night, we got home, and u know when ur watching a video, and it freezes but keeps replaying like .01second of sound blasting really loud? It was doing that, was frozen, and wouldn't wake from sleep.

How can i troubleshoot this?
I found the log files, in the /var/log folder...i seen when i restarted the computer, a bunch of stuff came in the 2 log files i looked into. but provided no info as to what app, or if hardware failed.

I did recently see a KB article, http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5167?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US that advised of video issues, but i have the 21.5" iMac.....

If anything like a PC, when in sleep, i don't think an application would cause such issue, would it?

Thanks for any help u can provide!

 

[fuzzai]

Folks,

Not sure if this helps, but apparently its not from sleep the issue, it just freezes.

I turned the sleep option to 1.5 hrs, and it froze even before the screen went dimm.

HDD test, shows its not failing.

Nothing was installed other then the updates from Apple....any idea what else i can try?

 

[Brian33]

Do you have another computer available, preferably a Mac of any type? If so, you can open a Secure Shell (ssh) session to the problem Mac, and that would give a clue as to whether the whole OS is locked up or "just" the user interface.

On your wife's iMac, open System Preferences-->Sharing and enable Remote Login. Then on another networked computer you can use the ssh command (from Terminal, if it's a Mac) and should be able to remotely log into the problem iMac.

I've often had my ageing iMac's screen "freeze" or "hang," but I'm always able to remotely log in and poke around (command line only, though). I even use "sudo shutdown -h now" to shut it down instead of removing power.

(My 2008 iMac has a problem related to the graphics drivers and graphics card -- I don't think yours is the same problem if your wife's iMac is newer.)