iMac keeps freezing and airport extreme q'tion

zynizen

Registered
hi,

my iMac keeps freezing on me randomly. I don't know what to do. sometimes it also just drops me from my wireless network and I have my macbook pro beside me, and its never froze/crashed once.

I cant do anything at all when it freezes, except turn it off and restart it. Sounds like a memory problem, but everything seems to be ok. I repaired disk permissions on the hard drive, I cleaned up as much stuff as possible, that could be creating a problem, even cleared most of the startup items.

any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

ALSO, my airport extreme 802.11n router, I bought it this year, but it said just recently update firmware for (Fast Ethernet) edition, I thought for sure It was gigabit.. anyway to tell specifically? I thought they only come in gigabit editions?

THANKS
 
Does it freeze totally? So all that helps is only restarting the Mac?
Can you look at Console what happens when it freezes? (Applications/Utilities folder) - it should contain some indication of what occurs.
 
yes it freezes totally to the point where I can't do anything except turn the power off, I don't know what i'm looking for in the crash reporter, but apparently on apple discussion boards, over 1000 people are having this issue.

has something to do with video drivers, on the iMac update 1.1 ?
just finding a solution now to resolve slightly.. otherwise I am going to return this *** thing. It's about 1 month old.
 
Repair permissions and boot in Single User Mode to repair. (See sig below).

You could also run a Hardware Test from that cd (with your install discs for OS X) to check the RAM and hard drive.
 
how do you repair the permissions once you have booted to single user mode?

whats the command line?
 
about the extreme - the first revisions shipped were 10/100, with b/g/n wireless. I would look on the extreme for hints of what you have. A model number, perhaps?
 
how do you repair the permissions once you have booted to single user mode?

whats the command line?

If you read my link to single user mode, you type in "fsck -f" (no quotes) and then reboot in the command line once that procedure is finished.
 
I just read some threads in the apple support forums (and digg.com) about people complaining about frequent freezes in the *new* aluminum iMac's. Speculation is that it's related to either the hard drive (Western Digital), which I doubt, or the video drivers, which seems more likely.

If you have a new iMac, I'd search their forums for the thread. There's no solution yet, though people have been recommending un-doing a recent video update.
 
Sorry...I see you already did check the forums and are aware of the issue. For what it's worth, I received my new 20"/2 gig RAM/500 gig HD iMac in early Sept -- bought through the Apple online store, and it shipped from China. I don't have the problem that others are complaining about.

Maybe doing a return and re-ordering online would "fix" the problem.
 
I heard something about problems with iMac firmware upgrade 1.1 ... did you do that before this behavior?
 
well since I've posted, I reformatted/installed Tiger.. did all the updates without the iMac 1.1 update. seemed perfectly fine for a couple hrs, then instead of it freezing all the time, my wifi connection would drop every 10 mins, or hang, and crap out. after realizing I have 10+ networks around me in my condo, I changed the router to 802.11n 5Ghz mode ONLY. this worked well for again, another hour or so.

after getting ready to throw this iMac out the 12th floor balcony, I decided to do the unthinkable.. install the iMac update 1.1.

it worked. I have a solid connection to the router no problem, and apparently in the full day of use after doing that, no freezing issues.

before all this happened though I checked the receipts folder, and this iMac had done the iMac 1.0 update before doing the 1.1 update.

it is possible that this is only caused from updating from 1.0 to 1.1.
Instead, after reformatting/and just doing the 1.1 update.
 
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