zsero Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 I have an aluminium iMac 24" on which I use clean XP SP3 via BootCamp with the newest BootCamp drivers. I have built PC's in the past years, but this EFI and BootCamp world is so strange for me, that I really don't know if I am facing software or hardware error. On a PC I would be 100% sure, that it's overheating and/or motherboard/RAM problem, but on a mac, I am not that sure. So the problem is the following: after a while, randomly the screen goes to rainbow color, with 50% opacity where you can barely see what's behind the rainbow overlay, but if you try hard you can move the mouse, with Alt + F4 you can close programs, the whole screen just gets a huge rainbow - overheating-overclocked like artifact. This is an issue since I got the computer, but after restarting it always got back to normal. I tried ATITool overclocking for one hour, but it didn't produce errors after restarting. Like it's happening one hour after I cold-start the computer every morning on about 2-3 days a week. But slowly it went worse and worse. Every day, I got stranger and stranger BSODs, always with some heavyweight XP kernel files, not small driver modules, memory errors, segmentation faults, etc. On a perfectly clean, untouched XP SP3 install, with nothing but Boot Camp 2.1 drivers installed. Now I try to reinstall XP, but I don't really hope it works. I will see what happens for a 48 hour memtest but I didn't have the time to do it. All the programs I use are on XP, and I simply cannot play all day in OS X to test if there is any problem or not. I did an EFI 1.3 update, maybe it helps something. Do you think such rainbow colored display problems (fixing with a restart) and segmentation fault BSOD could be software errors on a clean installed XP SP3 with BootCamp drivers, or I shouldn't even try reinstalling the XP, I should take it for a repair? Actually repair is not such a fun in my country, you have to pay for every part they need to test and sometimes you have to wait up to 2 months, thats why I am upset about taking it for a repair. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/139130-imac-24-rainbow-color-display-and-lots-of-kernel-errors/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
U.C. Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 Always have AppleCare. Sounds like a VRAM Error. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/139130-imac-24-rainbow-color-display-and-lots-of-kernel-errors/#findComment-984870 Share on other sites More sharing options...
zsero Posted December 2, 2008 Author Share Posted December 2, 2008 How do you test VRAM? Is there such a thing like Memtest86+ for VRAMs? Do you say the only option is to take it to a repair center? Owning a Mac in Eastern Europe is not such a fun as it could be in the USA... I will see what I can do, but it will be a long long time waiting for the repair. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/139130-imac-24-rainbow-color-display-and-lots-of-kernel-errors/#findComment-985132 Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpeedfreaK Posted December 18, 2008 Share Posted December 18, 2008 try resetting the vram by pressing p and r and alt and command on the startup chime (just google the combination, because i'm not sure of it) Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/139130-imac-24-rainbow-color-display-and-lots-of-kernel-errors/#findComment-1004987 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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