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Seabird

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I have a relatively new macbook (bought in Nov 2007). It is fantastic in almost every way ... except for when it wants to restart every single time I try to do a Time Machine backup. It did the initial backup perfectly but it hasn't done one since (over a month). TM starts fine but in the middle of the backup, I get the screen saying "you need to restart your computer." It also does this every single time I put in a dvd and idvd starts. Any thoughts? I've been living with it so far but I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have to ... especially since I absolutely HAVE to have a backup of my HD (or I'll lose my entire dissertation) so TM not working is kind of a problem.
 
Learn from others... get three, at least, thumb drives and backup what ever you think is critical to them.

Do not count on TM as your only backup solution.

As for your other problem, I have no idea, I would create a new user and see if the results are repeated with that user. Or do a Archive and Install, I do that all the time but I am not a well person.
 
I definitely use usb memory sticks for backup also ... I like having more than one backup just in case. I'm still concerned about the fact that it is crashing/restarting just in general though, not just that it's happening with time maching/idvd. Seems to be symptomatic of a larger problem to me.
 
I definitely use usb memory sticks for backup also ... I like having more than one backup just in case. I'm still concerned about the fact that it is crashing/restarting just in general though, not just that it's happening with time maching/idvd. Seems to be symptomatic of a larger problem to me.

Back up all your data and reinstall the OS. If the problem resurfaces, then I would look to a hardware issue (RAM issue would be likely).
 
imac 24 - jan 2008 crashes during time machine backup

For the first 2 weeks Time machine worked great. In the past month i have logged at least a dozen reports to Apple because time machine always crashes midway through the backup with the Imac "screen of death"
The folks at Apple ought to get their act together and fix this fast.
 
I've actually got 4GB RAM so there's no reason I can think of that Time Machine should be having a kernel panic when it's the only program running and is backing up something like 1.9GB. And it's not a problem that comes up sometimes - every single time Time Machine tries to back up, I get the screen of death about halfway through. So it never considers it a backup and it just takes up space. Can I delete and reinstall the Time Machine program from the Leopard cd?
 
Do I need to backup everything before reinstalling? Because that's a problem at the moment. 🙂 (I've reinstalled operating systems with PC's but not Macs before.) i.e. will reinstalling Leopard erase everything on the harddrive?
 
Same crash with latest 10.5.4/ MacBook / time machine

Hello Seabird,
I've just find somebody with the same problem of crashing on macbook! I never had the chance to do a first backup of 85,53 Go. It crashes at around 10 Go. I patch the latest 10.5.4 in july...still the same.
Do you still have the same trouble or did you find the magic trick ?
 
Yeah it's funny ... I got a new external harddrive (the old one was several years old and the computer guy where I work said it was kind of busted) and the crashing during the Time Machine backup has stopped. HOWEVER, it still crashes every single time when I put a dvd in. Every time. Even if nothing is open. Then after it restarts, no problem. I've got 4gb RAM so I really have no idea what it is. From my research, it appears that these kernel panics sometimes happens in the macbooks with lots of RAM and I can't find anything that says what to do about it. I'd love to hear if anything has come up recently to fix this! Thanks!
 
p.s.

I've also installed all the updates and reinstalled Leopard a couple of times, totally doesn't fix any of the crashing.
 
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