iMac Freezing

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I have a two year old iMac which has developed what seems like a major problem. With no warning, rows of small squares appear on the screen and the system freezes. When I try to restart a screen with a brown background appears with the message (in several languages) that I must press the power button until the system shuts down and then press it again to restart. However, when I do that I again get the same screen. I booted up in safe mode with no problem and ran a virus scan with Avast. I cleaned the system and it booted up fine, but then reverted to the screen with the squares and froze again.

Do any of you have any idea what's going on?
 

chscag

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Your Mac's Specs
2017 27" iMac, 10.5" iPad Pro, iPhone 8, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 Mini, Numerous iPods, Monterey
What you're experiencing is known as a "kernel panic" which is similar to the old blue screen of death that Windows is famous for.

Since you were able to startup in safe mode, that tells us that it may be software related. The first thing I would do is get rid of your AV software as it is not needed. There are no Mac viruses in the wild that can infect your machine, only some trojans and malware which can easily be avoided by staying away from torrents and porn sites.

Next, remove all your login items while in safe mode: System Preferences, Accounts, Login Items. Open the lock, select each item, press the small minus button at the bottom and then close the lock. Reboot into normal mode and see if that has helped.
 
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Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
And use the uninstaller to remove AVast, do not simply drag to the Trash.
 

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