IMac ruined ? black ashes and burning scent!

Hi ya'll.
Seems a bit rude to just barge in here with my problem but anyway
About 2 years ago I bought a 17"iMac at the Switch-Store in Antwerp. It's run smoothly and has been a great computer and creative tool for me up till now.
This morning when I turned it on,I heard a loud popping noise and smelled like something got burned also there were ashes coming out of every opening (speakers,vent,etc)...it's completely dead. Now I'm anything but a pro but I know that can't be a good thing.
I've already been to the local Mac shop in town and they don't think it's anything that might be reparable but I can bring it in to have it checked out anyway if I want to.
Sooo,has this happened to anyone else or does someone have any idea what the ****'s happened, PLEASE help me out.

As I said, I've been surprised by the results of a power supply failure - you just never know. If the only thing wrong is a blow-out of ash and new power supply the cost will be far less than a new or refurb computer. Of course if the logic board or other component also died a new computer begins to make more sense. If you have a local reseller try dealing first - ask for a diagnostic and estimate with the understanding that the diagnostic fee will be waived if you decide to buy a new computer from them instead.

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Riddle me this Apple...
A few months ago, my 2008 Aluminium 24inch Imac locked up and exhibited space invader style pixels all over the screen.
After rebooting, it was fine for a while and then it would freeze again and I'd get the same Atari style pixels appearing, and everything would be frozen.
Then, most reboots after that, I would get vertical lines in groups of three, alternating black and white squares as in the photo.
I called Apple here in South Australia, and they said "it's your graphics card, and it will cost $400 to fix and we need it for a week".
Not wanting to do that, I bought a $15 firewire cable, booted the Imac in T mode and used my PC laptop running macdrivepro to save all my files onto a 500gig backup drive, and then proceeded to fix the corrupted kext files and most importantly delete the recent flash player update which I believe was causing the problem.
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So I re-installed the Leopard operating system from the original disks, and that fixed it. $15 is better than $400.
Now, a few months have passed, and the problem had come back again, now that I have added more stuff on my computer.
This time however, I chose to wipe the drive completely and do a fresh install of Leopard, and then upgrade to Snow Leopard.
The problem is that it won't boot from the CD drive anymore, won't boot from a thumb drive, won't boot in any mode except T mode, but then it has these lines on the screen again and eventually I get the kernel panic happenning and it wants to be shut down.
Every time I start the computer, these lines IMMEDIATELY appear. I've tried resetting the Pram, tried changing memory and have now resorted to surgery.
I've taken apart the Imac, yes I hear you Apple...you guys thought that we mortals wouldn't delve into the depths of your finely machined systems, however, some of us do own micro torx head tools to remove those pesky screws, and yes, a razor blade does lift up the magnetically attached screen glass without having to use suction pads.
So once inside the temple of doom, I removed the hard drive, and dropped it into a hard drive dock.
After days of messing around with it via four other MAC computers, running Tiger, Leopard and Lion, we have still not been able to install an operating system back onto this drive.
Does anyone have any insight into what these lines actually are? Every one I speak to says a different thing...
"It's the graphics card", "It's the hard drive", "It's the cable that connects the LCD screen", "It's the motherboard", It's the screen itself", "It's a corrupted bios" etc etc..
But if it's any of those things...then why did it run perfectly after I fixed it the first time?
Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Hi BDAqua,
I appreciate you taking the time to reply, and for the suggestions.
My spider sense was tingling, as were my eager fingers to login and read your reply, in fact I was almost salivating at the thought of crushing those Apple reps with a swift blow from one of my megalithic old 4gig internal drives, or better still, perhaps shooting my old DX266 sporting a massive 256k HD and 4mb of ram, fully loaded with Encarta and Windows 3.11 out of a cannon and straight into Steve Jobs bedroom window, with a note saying..."How'd ya like them apples..".
But alas, my Aquatic friend, I am in need of a functioning operating system to be able to do any of those magical tricks you suggested (insert frown face here)..and yes, when I finally opened up the Imac and peered inside, a moment not unlike Indiana Jones peering down into the depths of the Well of Souls, I suddenly realised that an Imac might look impervious to heat vision and thermonuclear devices on the outside, but inside they can still gather as much dust as my infinately useless ZIP drive that I bought back in the late 90's, thinking it was the best thing since the invention of microsoft paint...awesome program by the way guys..
Getting back to the problem at hand, the issue really is that I have, perhaps stupedly, reformatted the 500gig WD drive via a hard drive dock, which is really a lot like one of those early 1950's cassette drives you find in vintage cars..
And upon returning the drive to the Imac and re-assembling it WITH REAL SCREWS, not titanium-alloy fingerprint encoded ones like you would expect to find in Iron Man's suit, I could only boot the poor thing into T mode. No other modes were available, and believe me, I tried all of the alphabet...even the "C" button, which if you ever watched an episode of Knight Rider called Knight of the Juggernaught, did not turn my computer into a convertable..
By now you're probably sensing that the irony of all of this is that I am typing this message on my Windows 7 upgraded HP laptop, which sounds not unlike a jumbo jet taking off at times, the fans are so loud, and among other things, it keeps telling me it is not genuine, even though I paid good money for a proper copy to free me from the painful experience which was Vista, and so in a sense, microsoft is playing a small part in the desperate rescue of it's far superior, yet broken down and busted arch enemy...I bet somewhere in it's RAM, it is smiling in little ones and zeroes, while it hides behind a free copy of AVAST, hoping one of a billion nasty viruses don't come knocking on the kernel door..
The next round of drinks goes to the man, woman, child or droid that has any other suggestions that could allow me to participate in some of the ideas put forward by our very knowledgable watery friend..as alas, I do not have any of those options available to me.
Today's assignment is.. how do we install an operating system on a formatted external drive. Sounds easy doesn't it...I've read many articles, but in practice it's proved as elusive as Bigfoot.
I just cannot make this hard drive understand that there is no spoon...
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I repeatedly get "error during rendering/encoding of menus/slideshow" message. This process is the same on my iMac, MacBook and another iMac. I have been burning dvd's int he same way for the past 12 months using the exact same steps successfully.

I keep getting "error during rendering/encoding of menus/slideshows" message. I have been burning DVD's in exactly the same way for the past 12 months and mostly on my MacBook which is 3 years old. Obviously I'm using iDVD. I purchased an iMac about a year ago and moved to use this for dvd burning without problem. A few months ago (approximately) I started to experience problems with burning with the error message above. I tried everything including starting the whole process from scratch right down to capturing the movie clips from my video recorder into iMovie, then using them in iDVD. Still the same message came up. I lost count of how many times I repeated the process with different clips and variations and the same thing happened. This was also the case with my MacBook and my husband's iMac.
After taking both of mymac's tothe service centre, having new optical thingys put it and even a new hard drive on my iMac along with a new DVD burner the same thing happened. They told me it must be the process that I am using that is incorrect!
I took my 27" iMac to an apple shop and asked them to assist me while I use the same technique as I always had. The same message came up so they tried using my clips in one of their mac's. The same message. They tried it with different clips and the same message. The only way we could get theirs to work was with a magic DVD which did not produce what I needed and was limited with only one page.
I now cannot use any of my Mac's for the intended purpose that I bought them for - to produce good media for my work! It was suggested that I purchase some non Mac software to burn DVDs which defeats the object of having a mac with iDVD in my opinion. I have a book on iDVD which is very informative and have followed the process to the letter and checked all the trouble shooting and still no remedy. It was mentioned that an up-date may have caused the problem on all my macs.
I feel that this issue should be addressed by Apple as a matter of correctness.
I now find that on the net there are many posts in forums and such like with exactly the same (almost word for word) problems. Please Apple, keep/regain your good name and sort this out.
Jayne Connelly

Thanks Bengt W for your attention to this matter. So much appreciated. And thanks for putting me right on the aim of forums (new to this). Although, you may regret asking for more information. I've added everything I can below.
The process I used is as follows:
Import recorded clips of between 5 and 15minutes each from my video recorder into i
Edit the clips (remove unwanted start and endng)
Add title to front of clips
‘Share’ them to ‘movie’ (export using QuickTime)folder in .mov format individually
Open iDVD and ‘create new project’
Select ‘favourite’ theme that I have set up forall my work dvd’s (this has been used successfully many times and I’ve triedwithout using the favourite them).
Add 2 submenus for each group of clips
Select submenu - drag and drop between 3 – 6 clips in each of the twosubmenus
Change title colours on clips
Dragand drop image into drop zones where required
In‘map’ view I check for any yellow warnings before burning to disc
In an attempt to remedy the problems I’ve tried the following:
Try new DVD discs
Try different themes (favourites and standardones)
Change images in drop zones
Start whole process again even from importingfrom camera again
Two other completely different computers (iMacand MacBook) with iDVD
Go to apple shop and use their computers to doin iDVD
Try with one clip and no menu pages added
Use a clip that I already have that did notoriginate from my camera
Turn computer off and restart
New hard drive
New optical lense (thing)
New DVD burner
Saving to disc image rather than dvd disc
Other points:
I also have a ‘flip’ and ‘iPhone’ whereI’ve imported footage camera which, although limited, records and makes videoclips and burns them to DVD through iDVD without problem.
For example, I have just gone through steps 5 - 11 using some clips that were already imported from my iphone to iPhoto and dragged across. I used a theme that I've used before which has failed and added one sub menu page where the clip went. It burned to disc image successfully.
The startup disc, I believe will have no space issues asit’s a new hard drive with no use apart from this. That could have been an issue before (I didn’t check it) butnot now.
Other technical stuff that I don't understand but you may:
I have…… Mac OS X Version 10.6.7 with all updates onit. Processor 2.8 GHz Intel Corei7. Memory 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3.
iDVD version 7.1.1
HardwareOverview:
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac11,1
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 4GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s
Boot ROM Version: IM111.0034.B02
SMC Version (system):            1.54f36
OPTIARCDVD RW AD-5680H:
Firmware Revision:     3AHB
Interconnect:    ATAPI
Burn Support:   Yes (AppleShipping Drive)
Cache:    2048KB
Reads DVD:    Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write:   -R, -R DL,-RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
Write Strategies: CD-TAO,CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO
Media: Toshow the available burn speeds, insert a disc and choose View > Refresh
If you can solve this you are better than the 'apple geeks' in the shop and the service technicians in the service centre (and of course me but that's no achievement).
Eagerly awaiting your reply.
Jayne

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oKAY So I use my iMac everyday... and need this fix asap like everybody else that experience this problem I guess...
One morning I just start my computer like usual and nothing happen to it during the night and I had use it without any trouble the day before..
But this morning the screen stay black... Even If I tried to restart it to unplug and replug it... to restart the pma and put try with the restart install cd nothing seems to work... the strange part is that I can sometimes hear the starting process and if its on I can press play on my keyboard and hear my music and change song and control the volume... but nothing change my black non-working screen..
I've read a lot on blogs trying every tricks but nothing seems to work...
Anybody with the same problem found a solution except bringing it to a repair shop?!?!?!
It's so annoying as my 1 year warranty just but just expired...
Help!
Thank you in advance for taking the time to read/ answer
peace.
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Hi,
Sorry, I'm new to the community, so apologies if I'm repeating myself.
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Solved it. Thank you very much for that!

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Hi MacGruff69
That has all the classic signs of unseated, improperly seated or bad RAM.
Laying the iMac face down on a soft towel and reseat the module(s) by pressing real hard on each one with both thumbs, then closing the ejector clips and replacing the cover.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1432
Them if the iMac still has the same symptoms, try one module at a time or replace the module(s) with new one(s).
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/iMac/IntelCore_2Duo
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my imac screen is glowing neon colors works fine just has black backround and glowing icons so i can see anything in regular color

Check Universal system preferences --> seeing --> display

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Well, you won't be doing 3D with Final Cut Express! (With FCE you could edit 2D filmed with your camcorder @ 1080i60 but not 3D.)
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Java
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Shockwave Flash
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If you bought the computer at an Apple Store return it. Let them know you aren't happy about your start in the Mac world. If you bought the computer online and have an Apple Store nearby you can take it there even though you didn't buy it there. Note: if going to an Apple store go online and make an appt with the Genius. Stores tend to be busy so this will give you a time to know you can walk in and pretty quickly get attention. Just walking in with a dead computer you may have to wait a while.
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I bough a new imac, this haven't dvd burner, i bought a external dvd burner but the imac havent a idvd and i need this program, no other one, how to download this and install?

i bough a new imac, this haven't dvd burner, i bought a external dvd burner but the imac havent a idvd and i need this program, no other one, how to download this and install?

Hi
how to download this and install?
There are no free DownLoads !
There are no legal DownLoads at all !
If there is no iDVD on Your Mac (and it's not on newer Macs as Apple discarded it) then You need a program that can do this.
Your Mac can burn CDs and DVDs - BUT DVD as Data-DVDs not as Video-DVDs - they need a program to be encoded and STRUCTURED as such.
• iDVD is part of the boxed version of iLife'11 and can only be bought outside Apple as on Amazon and e-bay
• DVD Studio pro - Part of FinalCut Studio Pro bundle - this to has expired and can only be bought second handed. (High price and tough learning Curve - but best ever done.)
• Roxio Toast™ - Not as elegant as iDVD - but has many other positive additions (I like it as 10-Pro incl BD-component) (now version 11)
• Burn - only free alternative I know of on internet. Very simple - Just for doing a plain Video-DVD
Burn http://www.digital-digest.com/software/Burn.html
only You can buy from Apple is
• FinalCut Pro-X which also can burn to DVD but without any nice themes.
AppleMan1958
You can also buy Compressor from Apple for $50 US. It will also create DVD and BluRay but without the nice themes.
Yours Bengt W

IMac ruined ? black ashes and burning scent!

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