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n8c

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 19, 2008
119
24
This morning, I opened up my sleeping MBP (Penryn 2.5 GHz, 15"), which was on battery power, and was immediately greeted by a kernel panic. I've had this computer since the day they were released, and have not yet had this happen.

Not much was running at the time: Firefox 2, Adobe Lightroom, iTunes, maybe some other small things like Stickies. Before putting the computer to sleep last night, I watched some streaming TV shows on fox.com.

The computer seems to be okay right now; it is running normally.

My question is whether I should be worried. Is a KP a big deal?

I did swap out the 2GB of RAM for 4GB of Geil RAM from Newegg, but that was more than 2 weeks ago, and I have not had any problems up until now. Do you think I can rule out RAM as having caused the KP?

Thanks everyone.
 

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Jul 16, 2002
17,909
1,496
Palookaville
You can't rule it out, but if this happens only the one time, I'd be less concerned. If the Mac kernel panics again, I'd swap out the RAM and see how it goes. You might also want to run Disk Utility from the startup disc or fsck in Single User Mode (if you know how) just to make sure your kernel panic hasn't caused disk directory damage.
 

n8c

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 19, 2008
119
24
You can't rule it out, but if this happens only the one time, I'd be less concerned. If the Mac kernel panics again, I'd swap out the RAM and see how it goes. You might also want to run Disk Utility from the startup disc or fsck in Single User Mode (if you know how) just to make sure your kernel panic hasn't caused disk directory damage.

IJ Reilly, thanks for the response. Can you or someone else explain more about the suggestions involving Disk Utility and Single User Mode? How do I do those things, and what do they do? What is fsck? Thanks!
 

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Jul 16, 2002
17,909
1,496
Palookaville
You can restart your Mac with the system restore disc, and select Disk Utility from the menu, or if you are a bit more adventuresome, try fsck:

Restart with the cmd-s keys held down, until you see a black screen with white characters. After the text stops scrolling, at the command prompt, type:

fsck -f [including the space, return]

If any repairs are reported, run fsck again until none are reported. Then, at the command prompt, type:

reboot [return]
 
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