No Idea What's Happening

[Aviana]

I have an iMac, 24". I bought it in June 2008 so I have no idea which edition it is. It's always worked fine until now.

I am a graphic designer so I pretty much run Illustrator and Photoshop all day. I shut my computer off for the night most of the time.

A few weeks ago I was doing the usual in Illustrator and my computer become unresponsive. I did not see the spinning wheel, I was able to move my mouse across my screen but everything else was frozen. After a few seconds it went back to normal but an hour later it happened again. This time it did not go back to normal and I had to shut my computer off.

I am able to use my computer fully functional up until 15-20 minutes of it being on. Then it becomes unresponsive and there's nothing I can do. I noticed that if the screen saved comes on sooner or if I watch a video in YouTube it usually "freezes" instantly. Once again, I have never seen the spinning wheel. I can move my mouse but my desktop is frozen.

I am scared the video card is dying. If it is, can it be replaced and does it cost more than a new computer? I have contacted Apple and they told me I did not have Apple care, I needed to buy that first before they could take a look at it.

 

[bobtomay]

A freeze like that would typically have nothing to do with your video card.

Sounds more like one of the following:
one of your apps has a memory leak
one of your apps is eating all of your memory
not enough memory
hard drive is too full - are you getting close to 15% or less free space
you haven't done any house cleaning since you bought your Mac - I use Onyx

 

[chas_m]

1. Either your computer is still under warranty (and thus you are eligible to buy AppleCare), or it isn't (and you aren't). Sorry you got a bad answer from them, but whoever you spoke to was confused (or confused you).

2. Your symptoms sound more like either bad ram or a dying hard drive to me. Time to make sure your backups are up-to-date!

Assuming you have a bootable cloned backup of your computer (and you should you know!), try booting off that, doing some work for more than 20 minutes and see if the problem reappears. Yes or No?

 

[bobtomay]

Yep, those also. A dying drive definitely will exhibit that symptom.
Just didn't want to get to worse case scenario yet.

The suggestion of a backup is a very good idea at this point if you don't already have one.

 

[Aviana]

A freeze like that would typically have nothing to do with your video card.

Sounds more like one of the following:
one of your apps has a memory leak
one of your apps is eating all of your memory
not enough memory
hard drive is too full - are you getting close to 15% or less free space
you haven't done any house cleaning since you bought your Mac - I use Onyx

I guess I should of mentioned that after it happened the very first time I did a format and fresh install of OS. There is absolutely nothing on my drive except whatever it came with on the DVD and Firefox.

 

[bobtomay]

Still not the video card. If you've done a clean install and the problem remains, from you're description, then chas_m likely has it right... I would lean toward bad RAM if as you say, you can use the computer for 15-20 minutes before it freezes.

You can experiment by removing and running your machine with first one and then the other stick of memory and see if your problem disappears.

 

[Aviana]

You can experiment by removing and running your machine with first one and then the other stick of memory and see if your problem disappears.

So I tried this with both sticks. Same thing happened.