Kernel Panic Galore! Really need help

[JLatte]

Hello,

I'm trying to fix a 12" 1.33 Powerbook. It currently has Leopard installed on it. Here's the scenario: It's my girlfriend's computer, she's been having problems as of late since she's installed Leopard. She only has 512 RAM and I've been pushing her to upgrade to a gig chip but she hasn't gotten to it yet. The main reason we put Leopard on her Powerbook was for Time Machine. She got an external hard drive and the during the first backup, her Powerbook went to sleep which caused it to hang and not turn back on in the morning. Naturally, having to force restart and what not, I believe the Time Machine backup became corrupted. Other than that, her computer worked fine the rest of the week.

Now fast forward to yesterday. She ran Time Machine the night before, and saw it complete, then turned off her computer. Yesterday in the morning, she turns on her computer and it doesn't get past the Apple logo startup screen. I reset PRAM, etc it didn't work. I booted off the Leopard disk and ran disk utility, did a repair disk on her main drive. It ended up allowing her to boot into OS X (albeit a much longer boot process than usual). Eventually I was testing out her OS to make sure everything was stable and she got a kernel panic (Restart black screen message). I restarted, now it crashes almost every time we load.

So I go back to load the Leopard disk and tried to restore from Time Machine. It does a kernel panic while running the restore program. I unplugged her external drive (no other peripherals) and then tried to just boot off the disk to run disk utility to at least get her computer running long enough so I can recover her important documents. Now every time I run disk util (off the Leopard CD) it kernel panics / crashes. Every time. I'm starting to get mildly frustrated here and could REALLY use some ideas. Pleeeeease Is there any possible way to reinstall Tiger or Leopard on her computer? Is it her hard drive? Why is it crashing all of a sudden over the past few days? Software wise, etc she hasn't changed anything. She only runs Safari, and Word. No jolts or anything unusual to the computer, hasn't been dropped, we haven't installed any new RAM, still the same Powerbook she's had for years. I'd at least like it to last long enough to Christmas so I can get her a new Macbook.

 

[IJ Reilly]

If you're getting kernel panics booting on the install disc, you have to know that this Mac has a hardware problem of some kind. Reinstalling OSX probably can't be accomplished, and would not help if you could. Can you connect this Mac to another with Target Disk Mode?

 

[JLatte]

If you're getting kernel panics booting on the install disc, you have to know that this Mac has a hardware problem of some kind. Reinstalling OSX probably can't be accomplished, and would not help if you could. Can you connect this Mac to another with Target Disk Mode?

I actually don't have a firewire cable. I have another Mac, but I don't have that firewire cable. I'm able to run the Installer, however as soon as I do anything relating to the disk such as disk utility, restore system from backup it's crashing. Without too much more knowledge, I'd say that the hard drive is pretty well done for? I suppose I can try to restore system from backup to an external drive? Would that supposedly work?

 

[trainguy77]

Dead hard drives should not cause a kernel panic. Something more is going on.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I actually don't have a firewire cable. I have another Mac, but I don't have that firewire cable. I'm able to run the Installer, however as soon as I do anything relating to the disk such as disk utility, restore system from backup it's crashing. Without too much more knowledge, I'd say that the hard drive is pretty well done for? I suppose I can try to restore system from backup to an external drive? Would that supposedly work?

Get yourself a Firewire cable -- should not cost you more than ten bucks, and alway a handy thing to have around. If you can mount the internal drive on the other Mac you'll know pretty quickly whether the drive is okay or fried. Of course from there you can back it up, assuming the drive mounts, and you still need to back up. IIRC, this model had 256 MB of RAM internally and the same in the bottom slow. You could try removing the RAM from the bottom slot. Also, if you can locate the hardware test CD you could try starting up on that disc and running the test.

 

[ltldrummerboy]

Edit: I had bad info.

 

[IJ Reilly]

The Firewire cable won't do you any good if the other Mac is Intel. Target disk mode only works from PPC to PPC and Intel to Intel.

Where did you get this piece of information? I was so surprised by this suggestion that I booted my G4 PowerBook in Target Disk Mode and hooked it to my Intel iMac. The PowerBook drive mounted on the iMac, just as it should.

 

[mathcolo]

The Firewire cable won't do you any good if the other Mac is Intel. Target disk mode only works from PPC to PPC and Intel to Intel.

I fixed some problematic files on my Intel MacBook with a PPC iMac.

This information ^ is wrong just like IJ Reilly stated.

 

[ltldrummerboy]

My apologies fellow Macrumorians. I've been told by people I thought were very computer savvy that it wouldn't work between PPC and Intel. I'm pleased to find I was wrong. Thank you for correcting me.

P.S. - For what my opinion is now worth, I agree that this sounds like a hardware problem.

 

[IJ Reilly]

My apologies fellow Macrumorians. I've been told by people I thought were very computer savvy that it wouldn't work between PPC and Intel. I'm pleased to find I was wrong. Thank you for correcting me.

You have our permission to beat your computer-savvy friends to within an inch of their lives with a wet noodle.