Dual 2.5 G5 Problem--Help!

[hotwire132002]

Well, my Dual 2.5Ghz G5 has given me the "Gray screen of death" ("You must restart your computer...") twice in the last 4 days. This is much more unstable than my iMac was (I got the "Gray screen of death" about 3 times in the 2 years I used it). Has anyone else had similar problems? What should I do? HELP!

--

Oh, and please no "Well, you're an early adopter..." critisism!

 

[jsw]

Call Apple - seriously. Before you call, disconnect anything not "stock", as they'll tell you to do that and then call then back. When done with the call, be sure you have a case number so the next time you call you'll get escalated faster.

A grey screen every other day is certainly atypical - at least on other Macs. Hopefully it's not a "feature" of the 2.5's.

 

[SilentPanda]

Oh, and please no "Well, you're an early adopter..." critisism!

It's certainly not your fault (probably) and I would hope people wouldn't criticize you for that. I'd try a reinstall of the OS, update it, then run it without any hacks and such for a few weeks and see if it still happens. Of course repairing permissions... yeah.

Or you can send it to me and I'll test it out for a few years and send it back to you when I deem it stable...

 

[Veldek]

Did you order your RAM directly from Apple or from a third party? Because it could be a bad RAM chip. OR did you add any other components?

 

[hotwire132002]

Before you call, disconnect anything not "stock", as they'll tell you to do that and then call then back.

I notice most of the issues occur when I'm using my eyeTV (USB version)-- I wonder if there's a compatability issue?

For instance, today immediately after I started the eyeTV program, the system crashed. Hmm...

 

[hotwire132002]

Did you order your RAM directly from Apple or from a third party? Because it could be a bad RAM chip. OR did you add any other components?

RAM was from Apple. I didn't add any other internal componants, though I did hook up external devices (eyeTV, 2x LaCie HDD, iPod...)

 

[jane doe]

Before calling you can also run the hardware test disk. Remove all devices (as suggested above) boot to the CD and run the hardware test thru atlest 3 loops. If it gives you an error code write it down and give it to Apple when you call.

 

[jsw]

Before calling you can also run the hardware test disk. Remove all devices (as suggested above) boot to the CD and run the hardware test thru atlest 3 loops. If it gives you an error code write it down and give it to Apple when you call.

Excellent suggestion. Apple will just make you do it when you call otherwise (and maybe anyway - given them a chance to keep reading/watching TV while it runs).

 

[jane doe]

To be fair to Apple techsupport, give them as much information as possible. You will find most of them to be very on top of things.

Being armed with the most information you can get will help them help you and reduce the amount of time on the phone and shorten any downtime.

 

[hotwire132002]

Excellent suggestion. Apple will just make you do it when you call otherwise (and maybe anyway - given them a chance to keep reading/watching TV while it runs).

As long as their eyeTV doesn't crash their mac

 

[wdlove]

Very sad to hear about your G5. It should be of no real concern, there are always some bad ones that get through the testing. There could also have been some damage in shipping. I agree, call AppleCare. Have always sound them to be very helpful. Hopefully you have purchased AppleCare so that the phone support will continue for a full three years. If not the phone support ends after 90 days. As mentioned getting a Case number is very important. It will help if you have continued problems.

 

[hotwire132002]

I know this is sort of a dead thread--but I thought I'd mention that I checked with Apple (a few weeks ago, actually ), and after working with them I found that my eyeTV was indeed causing the problem . So, I ended up hooking it up to my iBook instead of G5--no more problem .

Just thought I'd update you all on the status of the situation.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Nice to know you found out what is was, and it's very decent of you for sharing that info.

 

[hotwire132002]

Nice to know you found out what is was, and it's very decent of you for sharing that info.

No problem--sorry it took so long! I've been busy.

 

[Sun Baked]

Hopefully you aren't using the 3rd party Hardware Monitor utility program...

The guy that wrote the program says it caused more frequent freezes than a machine without it, something about ...

"memory management problem in the way the kernel driver for the Apple Fan Controller Unit interacts with the cooling control of Power Macintosh G5 systems. This error is detected by the kernel which in turn halts the system with a Kernel Panic message. The problem is limited to Power Macintosh G5 systems, 2003 or 2004 models, running Mac OS X 10.3.3, 10.3.4, or 10.3.5. Other OS versions prior to 10.3.3 are not affected".

Dual 2.5 GHz G5 Kernel Panics

 

[hotwire132002]

Hopefully you aren't using the 3rd party Hardware Monitor utility program...

The guy that wrote the program says it caused more frequent freezes than a machine without it, something about ...

"memory management problem in the way the kernel driver for the Apple Fan Controller Unit interacts with the cooling control of Power Macintosh G5 systems. This error is detected by the kernel which in turn halts the system with a Kernel Panic message. The problem is limited to Power Macintosh G5 systems, 2003 or 2004 models, running Mac OS X 10.3.3, 10.3.4, or 10.3.5. Other OS versions prior to 10.3.3 are not affected".

Dual 2.5 GHz G5 Kernel Panics

Not using a hardware monitor. It seems that my eyeTV USB caused the problem.