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2 Crashes in 2 Days

E

Elbeano

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 21, 2004
131
0
PA
Both last night and just a little while ago I received the "You need to restart your computer..." message. I haven't made any changes recently in hardware or software, so I'm not quite sure what could be causing it. I have the text of the report it made, and I was wondering if anyone knows where I can have it evaluated.

Thanks
 
Might be helpful if you let us know what kind of Mac it is, how old it is, how much RAM, what program you are using when it happens, which version of OS X you are running...
 
The situation has become bad enough that I now have to post from a PC.

The mac in question is a 1.33ghz 12" PB bought in april of '04.

It has 768 meg of ram, with a 512 Crucial chip that has been installed for over a year.

It is running 10.4.7, and I just updated it with the combo update an hour or so ago since that was suggested to someone else with similar problems in another thread.

The first time the problem happened, I believe I had iChat open but not logged on, iTunes open, and Safari. All subsequent crashes have occured when only Safari was open. Interestingly enough, none of the crashes have occured while I was using the computer, but within 30 seconds to a few minutes of me setting down the computer and wandering off to do something else.

Now it seems it is happening more rapidly each time, the past reboot bought me only a few minutes. I was in the middle of typing this reply, and had to take a phone call.
 
Elbeano said:
do I hold that combo while it's restarting?
Click to expand...

Yes, it will bong once, and after the second time, again.

I'd actually recommend holding down CMD-OPT-O-F during startup, and then enter reset-nvram and then reset-all after that. That will do your PRAM and your firmware. Make sure you have a proper backup.

Have you repaired permissions and run maintenance scripts at all?
 
yeah, I've done the permissions and all. I'll make a backup, and then get on that other stuff. I'll let you know how it goes.
 
One time I put the Velvet Revolver "Contraband" album into my mac, and that same error came up... maybe you had a CD in the drive while this happened?
 
nah, there was nothing in the drive any of the times. I did all of the junk iGary said, and so far she's runnin' alright
 
Do you have TechTool Pro? Run a test on the hard disk. It might be that your hard drive is spooling down too much/slow and the computer basically 'skips' like a CD and can't recover.

I'd be very cautious and backup data in case it's something serious like that. Try turning off the option 'Shut down Harddisks whenever possible'.
 
bradc said:
Do you have TechTool Pro? Run a test on the hard disk. It might be that your hard drive is spooling down too much/slow and the computer basically 'skips' like a CD and can't recover.

I'd be very cautious and backup data in case it's something serious like that. Try turning off the option 'Shut down Harddisks whenever possible'.
Click to expand...

OK, I tried all of that, and she's still crashing on a fairly regular basis... any more suggestions?
 
mad jew said:
Maybe take out the third party RAM for a while, and see if that helps. :)
Click to expand...

Might also take out the first-party RAM :mad: (Flashback) When I had RAM problems, it was my supreme good luck to have the @#$% hit on the motherboard-integrated RAM, which of course can't be removed.

I don't know anything about OS X's virtual memory system, but if it happens just a few seconds after you set the machine down, I wouldn't be surprised if the OS is at that moment writing memory contents to swap. Memory and hard drive would be my targets.

Check the console (in /Applications/Utilities) against the times of the panics. That might yield something helpful. Of course, the fault might trigger a crash so quickly that the system couldn't log it....

Check your free space on your hard drive. Check the hard drive in Disk Utility and see if any warnings come up (doubtful, but worth a shot). If you have the hard drive space on another machine, back it up or do an archive & install (they're nifty).

Boot it up using an Ubuntu LiveCD. I'm assuming that you're using a wireless internet connection, which won't work with Ubuntu (unless they've gotten that broadcom 43xx driver into general populace), but either way it should help narrow it down between the memory and the hard drive, as a LiveCD will cheerfully fill up all your memory but not touch the hard drive.

Another thing: how long is your screensaver set for? Nah, it shouldn't be graphics, since you said that this was happening quicker and quicker....

Try ripping out the airport card too. I dunno how there'd be anything wrong with it, but in general removing anything that can possibly be removed is a good idea when troubleshooting.
 
My Intel Mac Mini (1.5 GHz Core Solo) has been having problems relating to USB lately. I ejected my iPod and unplugged it and the second I took out the USB cord the "You Need To Restart Your Computer" message (KERNEL PANIC :(). This is not the first time it's done this as every single time I plug something into the specific USB port it eventually crashes.
 
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