iMac 24" broken down again

[GlynJones]

Hi All,
Need to vent some steam as my 2 year old iMacs has broken down again for the 3rd time in two months.

A few months ago I had the graphic glitches which steadily got worse and worse resulting in the machine hanging and unable to play any games on it. I'm not even a heavy gamer. I have the BTO version with the nvidia 7600gs graphics.

6 weeks ago I took it in for repair as I have extended applecare on it. Got it back a few days later with a new logic board and new graphics board.

Last week the machine hung and when booting had a corrupted spinning wheel which resulted in the machine crashing again. Another logic board and graphics board was replaced and I got the machine back yeaterday.

24 hours later the machine crashes again and when it boots I get a corrupt apple logo followed by a blue screen. It does not get to the login screen but the mouse pointer does move around the screen.

Managed to boot the diagnostics and running the test so I'll see what happens. The graphics seem ok on this so maybe not the graphics this time but it did pass the extended tests with no issues found.

Tried to boot into the leopard install disk and again stops at the blue screen and hangs. I hear superdrive activity but nothing happens on screen.

So am I looking at a 3rd logic board and maybe graphics board? I'm really fed up with it now as I use this machine for work and is pretty unreliable at the moment.

I'm looking for advice to where to go from here. So far I've taken two days off this year taking this machine in. Luckily I can pick it up after work but I can't keep taking time off for this machine.

What should I do? I just want a working machine but I've lost all failth on this one.

Help and advice please before I ring Apple up to see what they are going to do about it.

Thanks.

Glyn.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

At first, I was thinking it may be a messed up OS X installation, but then you said that you got crashes when trying to boot from the system DVD.

Bad RAM is a possibility, though may not be likely if it wasn't picked up by the hardware test. RAM problems can be intermittent.

Try zapping PRAM. Doubt that will do anything, though.

You should be able to get Apple to give you a new iMac, assuming it's under AppleCare.

 

[GlynJones]

After rebooting a few times it managed to fire up without any glitches.

I went to bed and still working in the morning so I'll have to see how it goes.

In the UK we don't have the lemon law but if we did would I be able to claim in this instance or would I have to get it repaired again?

Thanks for any advice given.

Glyn

Ps Zapping the PRAM did no good at the time but thanks for the advice.

 

[DELTAsnake]

Lemon laws cover new items, not items that are years old and happen to break.

 

[peskaa]

You may want to try asking for a replacement machine - multiple repairs for the same issue (and not resolving it) is normally enough to get one.

Firstly be polite at all times, never pushy or rude. Simply state you're unhappy with the reliability of your expensive computer and would like it replaced.