Multiple Kernel Panic's in 10.4.3

[MrSugar]

Well I am pretty pissed.

I updated to 10.4.3 on my Powerbook about a day after it showed up on Apple's software update. After the long restart (expected) things worked great for about 20 minutes and then, BANG, Kernel panic while in Safari.

I restarted and everything was running well for the last day and a half or two. Until just now, about 3 minutes ago I just had another Kernel Panic while in Safari! 10.4.2 was running perfectly, what the hell happened? I was really excited about 10.4.3 too, image pre-loading is a lot faster in icon mode, and things seemed pretty good. But those benefits are not worth the expense of system reliability!

My experience with kernel panics almost always points to faulty hardware. But this time I just don't see how that's possible. Everything has been beautiful with my Powerbook recently.

Well I am pretty pissed right now. I hate feeling like I have to look over my shoulder every time I am using my computer. That's a feeling I thought I eliminated with Windows. I mean, I can handle applications quitting, or small little things, that's inevitable. But having my entire system crash is absolutely unacceptable.

I even took all the proper steps. I repaired permissions before my install. I then installed from the combo update which I downloaded. Then after the install I repaired permissions again!

Is anyone else having problems, or does anyone have an recommendations as to what I should do?

*tries to take a deep breath*

 

[russed]

have you got any 'hacks' such as clear dock or things like that installed? they can sometimes be the root of the problem.

i havent had a single kernel panic in tiger.

 

[MrSugar]

have you got any 'hacks' such as clear dock or things like that installed? they can sometimes be the root of the problem.

i havent had a single kernel panic in tiger.

Nope nothing like that. About the most hacked thing I use is "Gmail Status" for the menu bar.

 

[russed]

well i have that running and i havent had any problems. thats a real pain! have you tried reseating the ram etc? probably wont help but its worth a try!!!

 

[yenko]

Run Disk Utility and verify your OS X volume. It won't repair it but at least it will show you if you have disk/directory problems. If it returns an error, you can run fsck -f in single user mode.

 

[mad jew]

Yeah the 10.4.3 update seems to have been pretty harsh on hardware. It's made RAM and hard drives that were previously acceptable and unnoticeably damaged completely fail.

 

[MrSugar]

Run Disk Utility and verify your OS X volume. It won't repair it but at least it will show you if you have disk/directory problems. If it returns an error, you can run fsck -f in single user mode.

Yenko, thanks for the tip!

I ran the Verify test on my OS X boot volume. It returned an error so I backed up some important things, booted off the Tiger DVD, and ran the repair disk function. It quickly caught and fixed the error on my OS volume.

I re-verified my drive (both partitions) and then booted into OS X. Hopefully this should take care of the problem. Although, I do find it a bit odd that every time a Panic has happened it has been while in Safari.

I hate to turn away from Safari as it's my favorite browser, but perhaps I will have to get better acquainted with FireFox 1.5 RC if this happens again.

Another possibility could be something you mentioned Madjew, which is the fact I am using some 3rd party RAM. Although this RAM was reviewed by tons of Mac users when I bought it and everyone had positive things to say, there is a chance it could be incompatible here on out. In which case I guess I would have to go to 10.4.2 from now on.

But, all that aside, let's hope it was just the error with my OS X boot volume and that everything will work perfect from here. If anything happens again you can be sure I will post it here in hopes of consoling my anger and getting more help.

 

[mad jew]

Another possibility could be something you mentioned Madjew, which is the fact I am using some 3rd party RAM. Although this RAM was reviewed by tons of Mac users when I bought it and everyone had positive things to say, there is a chance it could be incompatible here on out. In which case I guess I would have to go to 10.4.2 from now on.

I don't think it's that simple. For one, even the most reputable RAM brands produce defective chips. Secondly, the phenomenon I'm talking about is kind of like a trigger for bad RAM in which case reverting to 10.4.2 would be a waste of time (and quite a bit of time at that).

Hopefully I'm wrong though (and I usually am ) in which case fsck will probably fix it.

 

[MrSugar]

I don't think it's that simple. For one, even the most reputable RAM brands produce defective chips. Secondly, the phenomenon I'm talking about is kind of like a trigger for bad RAM in which case reverting to 10.4.2 would be a waste of time (and quite a bit of time at that).

Hopefully I'm wrong though (and I usually am ) in which case fsck will probably fix it.

Ah, I see what you are saying there. Well, I sure hope my RAM is okay then.

Also.. I have no idea what fsck is. I did a bit of Forum searching and couldn't really find anything on exactly what it does or how to run it. Is there a good place to see an explanation of what it is?

Edit: A bit of googling turned this up --
http://macs.about.com/od/osx/a/running_fsck.htm

Edit 2: Also, wikipedia had a nice in depth explanation of what it does.

 

[mad jew]

From your link, this probably best sums it up:

[fsck] will search for file system errors and make the corrections needed.