Very strange iMac problem

An elderly neighbor of mine who's a shut-in has a flat screen iMac; the 15" model. She
recently had her iMac's RAM upgraded to 756MB by the reseller who soldered the chip to the
iMac's CPU board and they did some work with her MIDI software which has been giving her
trouble for a while. The iMac arrived back home at my neighbor's only two days ago and she's
only had time to check email with it since it was returned to her.

Today, she installed the Mac OS X 10.2.8 update from a CD I burned for her. I have given her
many update CDs over hte past couple of years because my neighbor has a slow Internet
connection and I have broadband access. This time, after she updated (from 10.2.6), her iMac
ran into a severe problem.

Upon doing the restart after the update, the usual gray Apple logo appeared on the screen
while the system appears to boot up, then a black box appears on her monitor that takes up
about 60% of the monitor space.Little boxes of red and blue color appear as we move the mouse
across the screen. Pressing the CD eject button works. I can also hear the various USB
peripherals she has (some MIDI controllers, printer, scanner) start up and the modem starts to
dial and an Internet connection appears to be made, but the black box remains and the finder
window never shows up.

Before I got there to see what was happening, she ran the disk utility off the Jaguar system
disk. It found some problems, but failed to repair them. I booted off my Diskwarrior CD and it
too found problems and it did repair them. We then tried to reboot and the same thing happens;
a black box; no finder, but instead of little colored boxes now, the words "disk warrior"
appear on the screen. This even happens if we disconnect the power cable, then restart without
a CD in the tray. I tried Apple's disk repair utility again and it found no problems which
confirms that Diskwarrior did do the repairs, but the problem persists. We also tried
rebooting after disconnecting all the USB cables, but still no go.

My neighbor has Applecare so she's going to call up to ask for help tomorrow. I am wondering
if anyone on this newsgroup has any idea what's going on. My suspicion is that his problem is
coincidental with the OS 10.2.8 update and that one or more of her graphics device files are
still corrupt. I am hoping I am wrong, but it looks like a complete reformat of the hard drive
and a re-install of all her software is in order. The thing is that she has some very complex
midi software that took hours and hours to get properlty configured, including having to send
the Mac back to the vendor (for the past two weeks) in another state to have them check for
previous problems with her sound software so I really do not want to have to have her repeat
the software installation.

Any suggestions on an easy way to fix this will be appreciated.

In article <bncsuf$en8$>, <> wrote:

>An elderly neighbor of mine who's a shut-in has a flat screen iMac;
>the 15" model. She recently had her iMac's RAM upgraded to 756MB by
>the reseller who soldered the chip to the iMac's CPU board

That seems bizarre. Why solder it? But I digress...

>Today, she installed the Mac OS X 10.2.8 update from a CD I burned
>for her. I have given her many update CDs over hte past couple of
>years because my neighbor has a slow Internet connection and I have
>broadband access. This time, after she updated (from 10.2.6), her
>iMac ran into a severe problem.

I had problems with 10.2.8, my real-time clock stopped working, and
that is read VERY EARLY in the boot stage. Upgrading to Panther fix
that.

If booting utility disks from CD all work, then that would seem to
rule out a hardware problem. I hate to say it (since vendors say
upgrade to fix things all the time), but upgrading to Panther may give
you a way out. Boot Panther install from CD (CMD-S while I think) and
do the archive and install option (look for an options button during
one of the install screens).

Or ... just let Apple fix it, since she paid for that. I'm kind of
loathe to go that route unless there is no option since I'm very busy,
can't live without my Mac for a few days, and basically lazy. I'll do
everything in my power to solve something first. But for most people,
letting Apple deal with the problem is probably preferable, especially
fitting if their update is what trashed it in the first place...

--

Ken Weaverling (ken @ weaverling.org) WHOIS: KJW http://www.weaverling.org/

In article <bnde0u$pna$>,
(Ken Weaverling) wrote:

> In article <bncsuf$en8$>, <> wrote:
>
> >An elderly neighbor of mine who's a shut-in has a flat screen iMac;
> >the 15" model. She recently had her iMac's RAM upgraded to 756MB by
> >the reseller who soldered the chip to the iMac's CPU board
>
> That seems bizarre. Why solder it? But I digress...
>

It seems more than bizarre -- it seems totally insane. The iMac has no
RAM soldered to its mainboard. It has two RAM slots. One is accessible
to end users, while the other requires partial disassembly to get to.
The key thing about the disassembly is that one has to break the seal of
some fairly thick/solid thermal paste to separate two of the pieces
involved in the procedure. This thermal paste is very important, and if
it's not cleaned off and replaced with new, equally effective paste, the
computer can heat up very quickly and experience all kinds of problems.

From what you describe, it sounds like RAM and/or Video RAM problems.
That points to overheating as a possible problem, or a bad RAM module.

Now, I must say I very much doubt that this reseller actually soldered
the chip to the board. I'm guessing the reseller just upgraded the
"non-user-accessible" slot I mentioned above.

But either way, your neighbor should return to the reseller and demand
that the upgrade be performed properly.

It could just be a bad RAM chip; otherwise it's total negligence on the
part of the reseller.

Matt

Matt Ruben <> wrote:
> In article <bnde0u$pna$>,
> (Ken Weaverling) wrote:

>> In article <bncsuf$en8$>, <> wrote:
>>
>> >An elderly neighbor of mine who's a shut-in has a flat screen iMac;
>> >the 15" model. She recently had her iMac's RAM upgraded to 756MB by
>> >the reseller who soldered the chip to the iMac's CPU board
>>
>> That seems bizarre. Why solder it? But I digress...

Thanks Ken and Matt for your suggestions. My neighbor, more than likely
misunderstood what the tech person told her.

My neighbor who experienced this strange iMac problem got on the phone
this morning to Apple's tech support and she said they were very helpful
at explaining that what was wrong was exactly what I suspected. A critical
system file went corrupt and was not fixed properly. The Apple tech said
we should run DiskWarrior a second time, but my neighbor pointed out that
we already tried that trick and it failed. So, my neighbor had no choice
but to start from scratch. She formatted her hard drive, reinstalled OS 9
and Jaugar, and now she's in the process of installing all her sound apps
and data files ago. Fortunately, almost all the files she created were
backed up to CD so its just the matter of spending the time loading them
back in again. At least her Mac boots now, but she's going to be going
quite a while doing all the updates and stuff.

Ugh! Some people have the worst luck. In all my years of using Macs,
since about 1986, I never had a Mac OS give me problems of the severity
that my neighbor has had, and I use three different Macs every day.