Can any Mac specialist on here please shed some light on my problem?

I bought an iMac in Feb and have some issues with viewing images on Google image and Ebay. When I want to view images in Google, I see the first page full of images but the rest are just grey blanks, however, if I click on a grey blank it opens the picture I could not see.
I have phoned Apple and they walked me through things like updating the flash player ( I had the latest version though ) and clearing the caches and cookies etc. This made no difference.
Last night I reinstalled the OSX just to make sure it is not an software issue. Still the same trouble.

I think now that it has to be hardware related ( graphics card? ) as my internet connection is not to blame as my wife’s 3 year old laptop loads stuff fast as anything from the net .

Is this in Safari?

Have you tried another browser, such as Firefox or Chrome?

Try a different browser? Chrome is pretty good.

you sure you havent got your browser set to not load certain images?

I have used Firefox as well with the same results, and yes , using Safari.
I have not set any restrictions on the browser either.

Is it worth checking the speed of your internet connection? Those grey rectangles are images that are waiting to load.

ignore me…. if your wife’s lappy is working fine maybe the two computers aren’t getting a fair share of the connection

Incorrect cache/firewall settings on your mac or in your router?

pixelmix, when you say incorrect, what is correct?

I dont think Google image uses flash. Try updating Java or MS silverlight?

Do you have more than one user account on your iMac (I’m hoping you’re going to say ‘of course, I have the admin account I only use to install stuff, and the standard account I use every day’)? If so, do you get the same behaviour in both accounts?

Run software update, check it’s up to date. Do you have any extensions installed in your web browser? Do you see the same with different browsers? (and which ones).

What about logged in with someone else’s google account, in case it’s a settings issue.

The OP’s issue is with google and ebay, in Safari and Firefox, so it’s not as simple as google account settings (problem visible in ebay as well as google), or a Safari cache or browser settings issue (problem in Firefox as well as Safari).

Sorry, i was half asleep.

system preferences, network (select your connection), advanced, proxies – you got anything setup there?

Are you using any VPN software?

Admittedly the some-but-not all images is odd. Though I have seen it before – I get this behaviour in safari on my ipad – mostly noticeable with the new scroll-for-more-pics thing facebook has going on these days. Do you get the same behaviour there?

What’s your iMac (so we know your graphics card)? I have the late 2009 core i7 one and it runs them fine.

It is the basic 21″ iMac. NVIDEA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR SDRAM shared with main memory. 3.06GHz Intel Core2 Duo processor. 4GB of DDR3SDRAM.

-System software ip to date.
-Only one user account.
-Proxies : none of the “select a protocol to configure” boxes are ticked, and in the “Bypass proxy settings for these Hosts & Domains ” box it has this : *.local, 169.254/16 . At the bottom the box is ticked for “Use Passive FTP Mode”
-Dont know what VPN software is, so I guess the answer is ‘no’.

Try creating a brand new user account, and see if the problem persists – if it doesn’t, there’s something in your user preferences that’s messed up.

Nothing to do with this issue, but for security you should consider making the account you use every day a standard, not admin, account, only using an admin account to install software.

OK, just created a new user account and problem still persists.

I thought Macs were meant to “just work”

(sorry, couldn’t resist)

have you tried permissions repair/applejacking?

In recompense for my previous useless comment, this may not be a Mac problem per se. A couple of weeks ago I had the same when trying to view images on Picasa Web on an XP PC using Chrome. I can’t even remember what fixed it but it sounds awfully similar.

Yup, have tried permissions repair ad nauseum …

Running out of ideas – if it’s not the browser, not google settings and not user prefs, and all your software is up to date, it absolutely should just work (tbh, I’d expect both ebay and google to just work with any Mac fresh out of the box, without even worrying about software update).

If I scroll down real quick while google images loads, I get grey boxes too for a fraction of a second while the images load, so it may just be something to do with the internet connection – are the iMac and the laptop both connecting to the router the same way? If the iMac is connecting wirelessly, have you tried connecting it to the router with an ethernet cable instead?

Sounds like a loading issue, what internet bandwidth do you have?

You’re not checking the images for rude bits, like a filter? I’ve seen that slow down image loading on a PC running IE, so maybe completely useless.

I’m almost 100% sure it can’t be a hardware issue, as if it’s always the 2nd page on that don’t display and the others do fine that’d be odd indeed. GPU memory corruption/issues you’d expect to random, not reproducible the same way each time etc.

Yup, have tried permissions repair ad nauseum …

applejack it anyway. it’s free and does more than just repair permissions