Screen greys out and says I have to restart, need help!

osxosx
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
When i'm using my computer it will all of a sudden freeze and a transparent layer will come over and then say "You need to restart your computer". Does anybody know how to fix this or what is wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    rara Posts: 623member
    That's a kernel panic. We need more info to figure out what's wrong. What computer? How much RAM? Did you just install new RAM? What OS version? Anything new you've done to it lately?
  • Reply 2 of 10
    osxosx Posts: 34member
    Its a 667 PowerBook G4. I bought it just about a month ago and installed all my usual applications. I have 768mb of RAM and 60gb HD. It had happened to me starting last week so I re-installed Panther today and after about an hour of use it did it again. Any ideas? Thanks alot for answering so quick.
  • Reply 3 of 10
    osxosx Posts: 34member
    Oh ya, the person I bought it from installed a stick of 512 mb right before he shipped it to me. thanks
  • Reply 4 of 10
    rara Posts: 623member
    It's well known that faulty RAM can cause kernel panics. Since it was just installed this is what I'd guess. Go here: http://versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17156 and download Memtest; it should be able to find if it's faulty or not.
  • Reply 5 of 10
    osxosx Posts: 34member
    It said it all passed. I haven't had any problems and I've been running about 5 hours or so but I don't know. Any last ideas? If it happens again I think I will just call up Haddock (apple specialists) and see what they think, might just take it in. Im not very good at all the technical stuff. Thanks alot for the help and if you got any last ideas it would be help. -Connor
  • Reply 6 of 10
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    if you don't mind my asking, how much did you pay? and is it the DVI or VGA version?
  • Reply 7 of 10
    jbljbl Posts: 555member
    Kernel panics happen when something goes wrong at a very low level in the system. Because OSX doesn't allow most common applications to do anything at this low level, faulty applications are usually not the problem. However, some applications need to do deal with low level things. Those applications install "kernel extensions". Typically these are drivers for particular pieces of hardware (scanners for instance). Faulty drivers often cause kernel panics. If you have installed any drivers, try uninstalling them. The second thing that can cause kernel panics is bugs in the kernel iteself. 10.3.5 is pretty bug free, but when Apple first released Panther, several of us got a rash of kernel panics. Make sure you are running the most up to date version of the operating system. Finally, as Ra already pointed out you can have a hardware problem. Usually this is faulty ram because ram is so cheap people don't really bother to test it. I hope that helps.
  • Reply 8 of 10
    osxosx Posts: 34member
    I payed 965 total for it and its the VGA one. I only have 10.3 installed, so i might need to update to 10.3.5 . If it still happens after I install 10.3.5 then its probaly my memory like you guys said cause he put it in at the very last right before he shipped it, 512mb, because he forgot to tell me about a couple of scratches on the top so he said that he sent the ram for to make up for that. I know quite abit about macs but i dont know much on the hardware side, just do alot of design and things on my PowerBook so was wondering if I can take out the 512mb myself? Thanks alot for the help. -Connor
  • Reply 9 of 10
    ic1maleic1male Posts: 121member
    Ah. This would be a good opportunity for me to stick my post in from across the way...



    I have a G5 Power Mac 1.8DP machine sitting on a bench next to me. Just underneath the bench is a Sony Hifi which I use for sound output. The two are connected together by an optical TOSlink cable.



    Last night, when I switched the hifi on using the remote, the Power Mac crashed and had a kernel panic. Talk about spooky! I don't think it's a power issue as I've turned the hifi on/off before with the computer running.



    It's a brand new system. I've had two kernel panics in the 1 week I've been using it. Admittedly I have put loads of programs on just to see which I like. They may be causing some instability. Norton Antivirus has been installed and uninstalled. Virtual PC has been installed and uninstalled. You get the picture.



    Anyway, is there a log anywhere that details what was happening at the time of the kernel panic? For example in the Windows Blue Screen Of Death, you get a kind of indication as to what's happened because of the STOP error with a filename. I've checked the console.log and it shows nothing between midnight and 8.30am (kernel panic was about 3am and I just powered it down until 8.30am).



    The machine has had 1Gb of memory added (Kingston KTA-G5400/1G) but I don't think that's a problem. I'm running Panther 10.3.5.



    TIA,

    Dave.
  • Reply 10 of 10
    charliehorsecharliehorse Posts: 67member
    hi my dad has a 17" powerbook and he installed 512 kingston RAM to bring it up to 1 GB of RAM, and he kept getting kernel panics the memtest passed, but out of curiosity he took out th new RAM and it didn't kernel panic. So maybe you should try that
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