Random iMac Restarts! Help Please!

[ktbubster]

Ok... so a friend of mine is having problems with their 2.16 20inch Core 2 Duo iMac...

The computer chimes on and stays on for a while. Has been doing this for the last few weeks, they had Tiger on it. They were able to load Leopard 10.5 on it (thinking a reinstall might help, and they were going to upgrade anyway), but it still restarts after a short time randomly. Sometimes it will run for an hour or so even but still randomly restart, it doesn't shut down, just restarts.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this and what might be wrong? It runs ok when it's on, but will just randomly restart, and it's not always the same time frame or same action that does it. Completely random it seems.

Should there be something changed in the system itself? Logic board? (hope not!) pram issues?

Any help is appreciated. A step by step process for something would be good too so I can just pass it along to my friend who isn't super well versed in macs yet

Thanks in advance!

 

[ktbubster]

anyone at all have any ideas?

 

[Nym]

Ok... so a friend of mine is having problems with their 2.16 20inch Core 2 Duo iMac...

The computer chimes on and stays on for a while. Has been doing this for the last few weeks, they had Tiger on it. They were able to load Leopard 10.5 on it (thinking a reinstall might help, and they were going to upgrade anyway), but it still restarts after a short time randomly. Sometimes it will run for an hour or so even but still randomly restart, it doesn't shut down, just restarts.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this and what might be wrong? It runs ok when it's on, but will just randomly restart, and it's not always the same time frame or same action that does it. Completely random it seems.

Should there be something changed in the system itself? Logic board? (hope not!) pram issues?

Any help is appreciated. A step by step process for something would be good too so I can just pass it along to my friend who isn't super well versed in macs yet

Thanks in advance!

Does it give you a nasty message before it happens or does it simply reboots randomly?

Nasty Message aka Kernel Panic:
http://myhaven.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/kernel_panic-1p0f.png

If it is hardware related, do you have an Apple Store nearby where you can take the computer for them to check it for you?

You can reset the PRAM, although I doubt it will make a difference, anyway, you can check the Apple page on how to do that (just in case):

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

By the way, by the looks of it.. unfortunately, it looks like it's probably hardware related.

 

[ktbubster]

hmmmmm that's no good.

It's not under warranty anymore, but I supposed they could at least diagnose the problem.

The harddrive has been replaced, so I sure hope it isn't a bad logic board. It seems like a really weird problem, because it works fine when it is on...

They will not be happy to hear about the possible hardware problem.