Mac Forum / General / Hardware / March 2005

We have an iMac G4 that we got in 11/02.  Since getting it, we have had
several bouts of crashing and freezing.  One of those is taking place
right now.  The two symptoms are: graphics will come up with lowered
resolution, with part or all of the graphic replaced with blue dots.
Sometimes, usually when I open a new program (most frequently Eudora)
nonsense graphics will appear, and these may or may not go away as I
use the mouse.  The other, more frequent problem, is that the computer
will tell us it needs to be rebooted.  This happens most often after
the computer comes out of sleep mode, and I open a new program.  It's
happening about 50% of the time now.  I took out the extra RAM chip,
and it still happened.

I've noticed that crash frequency increases and decreases immediately
after an Apple update to Panther is installed.  But, this problem has
been recurrent on the computer throughout our ownership, through hard
drive reinstallations, etc.  I suspect a hardware issue, but don't know
what.

Any advice/ideas would be appreciated,
Steven