Macbook Pro must be restarted?

[dstein]

Every once in a while I get a transparent black screen scroll down over whatever I am doing with a message that says something along the lines of "Your macbook pro must be restarted, please hold the power button down until it turns off" there doesnt seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, it just happened while I quit safari. i couldnt find any info on why its doing this, does anyone have any answers? the computer is a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo running 10.5.1 with 3 GB of RAM. thanks.

 

[0007776]

It is called a kernal panic. How often is this happening, and has there been anything that you did right before it happens that is the same every time?

 

[EricNau]

That's called a Kernel Panic.

Also read this Apple article: Link

Have you installed any hardware or software recently (right before this started happening)? ...Unfortunately, these can be somewhat hard to pin down, but using some of the tips provided in that Apple article linked to above may help.

 

[stealthninja]

That's not good
It sounds like a kernel panic to me, maybe running a permission/disk repair will fix it.

 

[Osarkon]

It's commonly known as a Kernel Panic.

If it's happening regularly it's normally indicative of a problem, although I can't recall whether it's software or hardware.

I've had 2 over the space of 18 months on my macbook.

 

[tracetritt]

Im going to guess that it's the ram. seeing as its 3GB i assume that you upgraded? If it started to happen after words then thats most likely the problem.