G5 Quad frequent kernel panic

[jigen08]

I recently upgraded to OS 10.5 on two desktops. The PowerMac Intel works fine. The G5 Quad seems to be having weekly kernel panics and frequent software crashes (an example yesterday: Word and Safari were open. After a few minutes of no keyboard input whilst reading a webpage, Word crashed, followed by Safari).

Running Maya seems to cause the kernel panics. It did so, once in a while, on OX 10.4, but with 10.5 it's become a frequent occurrence. Calling Apple (still on Applecare) doesn't help. They run some diagnostics and can't pinpoint anything. Clearly if they don't recognize the problem, they can't fix it. (I also run Maya on the PowerMac Intel with no problems, so Maya isn't the problem.)

Realplayer, streaming, has been playing during some of these occurrences — is this a known culprit?

Any suggestions? Was the G5 Quad just a bad model? Can I turn off whatever causes the kernel panic alerts that freeze my computer? Should I be demanding more out of Applecare — is there anything I should expect them to replace? Should I downgrade to OS 10.4? If so, how do I do this? Many questions I know...

Thanks in advance....

 

[Musicmasta]

Check out this page: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/kernelpanics.html

 

[jigen08]

still trouble

Thanks for the above link. After hardware tests ad nauseam (everything passes) and several calls to Apple Care (more tests, no answers), the problem still persists, quite often more than one in a day. I used to use this computer for rendering, and could trust it to be good overnight. Now I don't trust it when I leave the room...

Does anyone know about these? Is there a known and confirmed problem with OS 10.5 running on G5 Quads?

The Apple Care people are really nice, but they never seem to ask for the panic logs or seem interested in that. It sounds more like they're reading from some manual (why can't I have the manual?). Surely the panic logs are meant to reveal the reason for the panic? To me, it's a bizarre list of letters and numbers, but doesn't it make sense to someone who can decipher it?

Any clue, anyone? The lesson I come away with is never upgrade your OS. The next time you buy a computer, you'll be up to date...

 

[IJ Reilly]

The vast majority of frequent kernel panics are hardware related, more often than not, bad RAM. I presume Apple has walked you through some of the diagnostic steps for determining where the problem lives (beyond running tests). If you could, be more specific about what has been tried already.