24" IMac Error

johnnystork

Hi,

My 24" IMac 3.06 is the 2008 model and had been running without any faults for the last 2 years. I noticed a few days a go the screen went a bit crazy and moving the mouse cursor made it worse like a GFX problem so I restarted it and it was fine.
Saturday morning I checked the IMac and the screen saver had frozen during the night and it wasn't responding, so I restarted it. On the grey start up screen before the apple logo was lots of little yellow wiggles, like vvvv or wwww all over the screen. On restart the apple logo appears you hear the bing noise etc, but after a while it gives me the multi language warning saying my mac needs to be restarted. (Kernel Panic?) So I did this lots of times but it keeps giving this error.
I found my Apple Hardware Test DVD and restarted the mac holding the "D" key on the keyboard but it won't start the AHT. I've tried it lots of times, Pressing either "D" or "C" but nothing happens it just continues on to the multi language error.
I removed my 2x2gb ram and tried them one at a time, but that made no difference. I also tried unplugging the mac and holding the power button down for 5 secs but still it shows this error screen.

Any ideas what I should try next? I am on Snow Leopard

Cheers!

Sad Professor

It doesn't sound good. I don't know what else to recommend except to leave it in to an Apple service provider and see what they say. If it's the logic board, replacing it will be very costly.

Where did you buy it from?

johnnystork

Thanks for the quick reply,

Got it from Galmac in Galway, For "Assesment Charges" they are quoting €42.35 for the first half hour on there website :eek: So if I'm forced to bring it in I'd like to have some clue whats wrong. Really can't understand why the AHT won't start.

Yeah I've read on a few sites that out of warranty replacement parts from Apple will be crazy money. I would attempt to ebay and replace the parts myself if I could be sure whats broke.

Cheers

Sad Professor

It's almost certainly a hardware failure, probably requiring a logic board replacement - which is prohibitively expensive. The manufacturer's warranty is up, but under Irish law you are perfectly within your rights to demand a free repair from the seller (in this case Galmac).

Unfortunately it somestimes takes a bit of a fight or lodging an appeal with the small claims court to get them to cough up. Bring it to them, making clear that you bought it from them (do you have proof?), get them to diagnose the problem, then quote the sales of goods act to them. You need to be very clear about it. Irish retailers are very good at running rings around consumers who come back to them with a problem outside of the manufacturer's warranty. But they are legally on the hook to you whether they like it or not.

johnnystork

They will be required to stand over it? Even though it worked perfectly for the last 2 years? God I hope so, as its totally unresponsive to all the things Apple troubleshooting suggested.

:eek: