Black Screen of Death

[c2kvette]

I have had this happen to me twice since upgrading to Panther. Everything will be running fine and then the computer just freezes, with a black message box that says to restart the computer and displays a power button graphic, it says this in several languages. Any ideas why this is happening - I never had any problems with Jaguar. I performed a clean install when I upgraded to Panther.

When I restart the computer I get a flashing question mark. My manual says to restart the computer holding down the option key and then select the hard drive icon and then the right arrow icon. I get the arrow icon but no hard drive icon. The first time this happened I restarted the computer holding down the option + D key, but this last time it didn't work. HELP!!!

[patrick0brien]

-c2kvette

Well, the first one is a Kernel Panic - a real, honest-to-goodness crash of OS X.

Not good.

The second sounds like the cause of the panic, and could be that your drive has gone bad. Unfortunately, I cannot help you with that.

[Sun Baked]

Originally posted by patrick0brien
The second sounds like the cause of the panic, and could be that your drive has gone bad. Unfortunately, I cannot help you with that. You get the flashing question mark when the OS can't find a valid OS to boot from, could be a messed up parameter in the PRAM, bad boot block, or a error on the drive that needs to be repaired (could be caused by the crashes).

Of course people have been having trouble with some of the OS modification utilities and stuff like Norton (anything) and Toast.

[7on]

Boot from the CD and run Disk Utility then, Repair Disk. Not repair permissions (though doing that won't hurt anything). If that won't work hold down command+S on boot chime ;) and run fsck. I do believe journaled need an extra flag to the -y one, but it escapes me as to what.

[c2kvette]

UPDATE:
Well, I came home from work today and my computer started right up. Go figure!

[Remus]

I still think it might be prudent to do as 7on said:

Boot from the CD and run Disk Utility then, Repair Disk. Not repair permissions (though doing that won't hurt anything). If that won't work hold down command+S on boot chime and run fsck.

[Frohickey]

OS Anxiety attack... aka Kernel Panic. :p

[c2kvette]

Originally posted by Remus
I still think it might be prudent to do as 7on said:

I did.

[Nermal]

Originally posted by 7on
I do believe journaled need an extra flag to the -y one, but it escapes me as to what.

I think I read somewhere that you shouldn't run fsck on a journalled drive because it might corrupt the journal. I'm not certain, but there must be a reason why you need to force a check on a journalled drive.

[Rower_CPU]

I ran an fsck -f (force check on journaled drive) on my Panther drive this morning after a KP due to some firewire issues.

Seemed to go fine.

[Macmaniac]

Just some advice your MLB could be on its way out, maybe take into an Authorized repair place and have them take a look at it. Better to be safe then sorry.

[Rezet]

Originally posted by Sun Baked


Of course people have been having trouble with some of the OS modification utilities and stuff like Norton (anything) and Toast.

What's up with all this Norton bashing?
I had Norton Internet Security 3.0 on Jaguar and it worked flawlessly. Fast and reliable.

Although dont install 3.0 on panther yet.... it's not compatible yet.