24" white imac won't boot up "wavy blue and pink lines"

U

umschatb@hotmai

Registered
white 24" iMac purchased in the fall of 2006 2Gb RAM 500Gb HD

First sign of trouble:

While watching trailers at apple.com I noticed some pixels on the screen were pink and blue. Not in lines but just in random spots. They would disappear now and then when you moused over them.

Tried some restarts and eventually it would sometimes freeze at the blue screen with the mouse usable.

I did a safe-boot and everything was fine and normal. No pixels, almost seemed normal. After a few more restarts and resetting Pram, Safe mode began showing pixels as well.

I was getting concerned for the data on it at this point and hooked up a firewire cable and booted it up in transfer mode and got all my data off.

Now I wanted to try and to a clean install of Leopard 10.5.

Second sign of trouble:

Now the computer won't get past the grey screen with the apple and progress wheel. It will be just about to go to the blue screens when the wheel will freeze and thats it.

Should mention the grey screen is now covered in pink and blue pixels everywhere.

Safe-boot won't get in.. Resetting Pram doesn't change anything.

Command Option O F doesn't work.

Tried booting from the install disc, holding 'c' down it almost works then the message of "You must restart your computer" in like 10 different languages comes up.

Holding down option lets me choose b/w the hard drive and OS install disc but still gets the restart message.


I am pretty much resigned to "looks at watch" submit the official time of death on it. Ever since the original iMac in 97 this is the first Mac that has ever died on me.. Kinda shocked and disappointed.

Any confirmations or suggestions on how or why it died would be helpful.
Was it a hardware or software breakdown. My guess is hardware. /shrug

Or just maybe there is a fix still out there

Thanks
 
At least you saved your data. :) There also some wonderful Macs out there. The question is whether or not fixing the problem is worth it to you compared to just getting a new/newer-used Mac.

Anyways, a Guru can diagnose your problem better than I can, but you may have a problem with RAM. This: "Tried booting from the install disc, holding 'c' down it almost works then the message of 'You must restart your computer' in like 10 different languages comes up." reads like a kernal panic. You can try removing one RAM and seeing if it boots . . . then trying the other. If that is the problem, RAM is a relatively cheap fix.

--J.D.
 
Well maybe you hard drive went south. Do you still have your install disk one of them has "Hardware Test" written in small letters on it. You can boot with that and run the test on your Mac to see if something hardware went south.
 
One way to tell if it's hardware-based or not is to boot from the OS X Install CD/DVD, and muck around in there for a while. Launch Disk Utility and Terminal. Play around without actually installing OS X...

...or, install OS X fresh and clean on an external drive and boot from the external drive, then play around a bit.

If you do either of these, do you experience the screen anomalies still? If so, the problem is likely hardware-based.

If you have AppleCare and it's still active, it shouldn't take more than a trip down to the Apple Store or an Apple-authorized repair center and have them take a look under warranty. Take pictures of the screen when it does it for reference in case the techs cannot reproduce the problem.

If the problems do not occur when booted from an alternate system drive as described above, then likely the problem is with some extension or currently-running program or preference file (however your description of the problem leads me to believe this is unlikely). Create a new user account, log in under that new account, and play around... do the anomalies persist? If not, the problem could be something specific to your user account. If so, but they do not appear when trying the alternate boot method, then likely the problem is with your general OS X installation, or some global preference, extension or application.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top