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is my HD dying?

S

stef25

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 8, 2008
8
0
Yesterday I came home to find the screen of my mac frozen on the default screensaver, with a message in a gray box saying I had to restart my computer; The message was clearly from the OS (in several languages) but I've never seen it before. I restarted and it appeared again quite quickly. Rebooted, it happened again.

This seems quite worrying. Does it mean my HD is dying? I wasn't able to run any diagnostic tests on it, the computer just freezes.
 
It's a kernel panic, it can have a lot of different causes probably not your HD though. Here's a link to apple support that might be helpful. Also even though it probably isn't your HD if you don't already have a backup now would be a good time to make one.
 
Ok so it's definitely a kernel panic, that's is the error message I'm seeing. The iMac is running Leopard and I can not seem to find a panic.log file in Library > Logs. There are various logs but nothing mentioning Panic. The folder CrashReporter contains only logs of external applications and the last log is from months ago.

Now that I've unplugged my router, I've been using my computer for about 30 min without any errors. How can I confirm it's the router that is causing the crashes?

It's a piece of ***** Sagem that my ISP is forcing me to use ever since they switched to VDSL ...

The only software update pending on my system is a security update 2011-004. I usually let updates install whenever the system prompts me to.
 
I had this problem on my 2009 iMac. It got bad, happening as often a once a day. The system would lock, a darkened screen would slowly come down and in several languages and tell me to restart my computer. It seemed to occur when I opened or worked with certain programs.

I called Apple a few times and they had me reload my Operating system. That didn't help and then I had to wipe the hard drive and reload everything.

I think it had something to do with somewhat I loaded or a bad file. It was a royal pain but it was not the hard drive.
 
Thanks for the info. I'm unable to do anything for more than 5 - 10 min, even with the router unplugged.

Royal pain.
 
stef25 said:
Thanks for the info. I'm unable to do anything for more than 5 - 10 min, even with the router unplugged.

Royal pain.
Click to expand...

You can try reloading the OS and see if that works, otherwise another common reason for kernel panics is bad ram, for that you might want to take it into Apple if it's still under warranty and have them fix it.
 
My DVD drive died within weeks of buying the computer. Same happened with my work computer.

I do have Snow Leopard on a USB stick. Should I be able to boot from that and upgrade the entire OS while I'm at it?
 
stef25 said:
My DVD drive died within weeks of buying the computer. Same happened with my work computer.

I do have Snow Leopard on a USB stick. Should I be able to boot from that and upgrade the entire OS while I'm at it?
Click to expand...

If your DVD drive died then take it into apple unless it died from you damaging it it is covered by warranty. If you take it in they will fix your DVD drive, plus find out what is causing your kernel panics and fix that as well.
 
otherwise another common reason for kernel panics is bad ram

If you have bad ram you can check by removing one of the sticks, (then I think you may need to do a PRAM reset?), and then try running. If the problem persists repeat with the other stick. If it does not occur, the repeat anyway to see if that stick is going bad. If so then replace. I had bad purchased bad RAM from OWC in December, different symptoms like screen just randomly going crazy, and they had me test by running on one stick at a time. Replaced RAM and all is well.
 
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