Let me throw this one out there: my PowerBook was a mass of kernel panics and application failures until the bad third-party memory with which my machine had been "upgraded" at purchase was replaced with more stable RAM. The Avant modules with which it arrived were faulty to the point of catastrophic; the Viking modules I was sent as replacements didn't work much better. Prior to discovering that, however, I had run every utility available, repaired permissions, and finally wiped the drive three times without success. (It took over a year and a complaint to the Better Business Bureau where the retailer was located to get the situation resolved, during which time Apple was of no assistance in helping me to either resolve the problem with the retailer, who had kept the original equipment RAM, or in restoring the machine to working order, other than to take the machine in under warranty and return it with a note blaming the third-party chips - but that's another rant.) It hasn't failed once since then.
On Friday, May 13, 2005, at 02:35 PM, Lee Larson wrote: > On May 12, 2005, at 10:01 PM, Greg Schoettmer lamented: > >> ?????I have absolutely NOTHING attached to my Mac. Not even a >> printer. Not a wireless network card. Nada! I pulled out the Mac book >> last night and it gave me the same explanation that you have. >> Unfortunately it?s having a kernel fit every time I try to shut down. >> ?I?ve only had this computer a couple of months so I?m going to call >> Apple tonight and see what?s up. > > My suspicion is that most kernel panics can be traced to something > messed up on a hard drive. For example, often, a kernel panic results > when the operating system cannot read or write to a swap file. A > kernel panic on shutdown could be caused by one of files needed to > properly shut the system down being damaged, having the wrong > permissions, or gone missing entirely. > > Kernel panics are quite rare, and I don't think they're often caused > by bad peripherals. They might be caused by bad or mismatched drivers > for those peripherals, but even that is more likely to freeze up the > machine than cause a kernel panic. This is because a kernel panic is > usually caused when the Darwin kernel receives an instruction with the > wrong format, or tries to write information to a memory address that > isn't there, such as in a damaged swap file. > > The only kernel panic I can recall with Mac OS X came when a power > failure messed up my hard drive. > > My advice is to throw a disk utility or two at the hard drive and > check it for bad blocks, permission problems and messed up > directories. If this doesn't help, wipe the drive and reinstall the > operating system because this will certainly replace a damaged file, > and, if the drive has a problem, it'll likely show up when you try to > move around a few thousand files during an operating system install. > > > > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will > | be May 24. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. > | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> > | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup> > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be May 24. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
