iMac firmware

Me and my girfriend went to go buy her iMac today, and we are both amazed at how incredible it is. There are only two (minor) problems, which I'm hoping can be solved by you helpful people.

1) When we did the software updates, it all went fine, and it told us to restart the iMac. So, we did. But when it started up again, when we go to the desktop, the firmware thing said we needed to restart. So we did that again, but every time we restarted the firmware box would come up saying we needed to restart. We must have restarted 5 times before just cancelling. Are we doing anything wrong?

2) This is just a minor annoyance really, but she downloaded AIM, and it works fine, but it crashes randomly. It isn't a big deal, just pretty annoying. I told her it is probably just AIM's fault, and she should get an alternate program. Is this anything we can fix, or is she stuck with crashing AIM? If it's nothing that can be fixed, can someone recommend a good program to use instead of AIM? Thanks.

The iMac has impressed me so much, that I can't bear the wait until August for the Mac Pro, so I'm going out and buying a macbook to hold me over. I'll just pick some extra hours to offset the cost.

 

Yeah, we're not touching anything when the computer is booting. It's strange. I'll try it again tomorrow and see if it does the same thing.

Thanks, we'll be sure to try Adium.

 

Thank you. I'll try that out tomorrow when I go back over.

 

I removed it from the utilities folder, and the restart thing came up again. So I restart it, and when I got back, it told me to restart again. What's going on?

 

I took it out of the utilities folder, and clicked on it. I think I may have neglected to reinstall it. Ooops. I'll try it again tomorrow.

 

Okay, I reinstalled it this time, and it still isn't working.

Though, when the computer restarts, I hear 2 chimes instead of one. After the first one the screen goes black for a second, then loads up normally. But when I get back to the desktop the firmware box comes up telling me I need to restart. The box says something like "if this box comes up again, it was not succesful", but I really dont see how it isn't working after about 20 tries. Should I just call Apple about it and see if it is something they can walk me through over the phone?