Hi Brothers,

well, my Machine is doing scary stuff recently. It started on Tuesday. When i come home from work the standard procedure is start up my own Mac.
So, Machine booted like every day. Then after a few minutes of use (surfing, mails) for example Safari quit without warning, then Eudora killed itself. Shortly after that the Machine freezed, showed gray screen of death or kernal panic (never had this before, NEVER).
Never mind i thought, restart and try again. But this behaviour was still there, after a few restarts i also had weird patterns on the screen. So, i switched the Mac off completely and cut the power line for a few seconds. After that it worked. The whole night. Without crash. <scratches head>

So, this behaviour is still more or less the same every day. Startup works most of the time, then crashes, grey screen of death or freezes. Or something like this:

(This was yesterday evening)
But after a while it runs without a hitch. So the startup is like an rusty old car somehow. It stutters, it stutters, it fails, but when it works it's running.
Like today, i also had one gray screen of death after startup. Now it's running fine, see i can post here...

To me it seems to be like a bad electrical connection somewhere, that fails when the Mac is cold but works when it warmed up due to the heat inside the case.

A friend suggested swapping the battery, but the internal clock is always working.
The HD is working, no problems there.
I disconnected my firewire-chain, doesn't do anything.

It's so strange, maybe somebody has a clue?

My first guess would be a memory module that's gone flakey or the start-up hard disk may be failing.

I favor the hard disk failure theory simply because it is an electro-mechanical device and since it is enclosed it changes temperature fast and relatively drastically. Try starting from another hard disk with a different copy of the system software. If you don't have another hard disk maybe you can use a firewire drive.

In any case while it's booted up from a second drive you should run some memory testing software to test and exercise the memory modules to see what's what. Maybe Rico could recommend a good program. If you run the memory testing software from your present hard drive you may get an odd failure and still not know if it was the hard drive or the memory that caused it. Also test your hard disk with some hard disk testing software.

For now, without knowing anything more about the problem or symptoms, my guess is the hard disk. Hard disks fail. That's the simple fact of the matter.

By the way, just a reminder, if you haven't backed up lately this would be a good time for a back up session.

I think HH's first-first guess is probably it. An unaligned stack is usually a RAM issue. The way the backtrace failed backs that up, as does the fact that the computer sort of righted itself for a while. Memory sometimes fails intermittently at first, before totally giving up.
Here's all the typical stuff you can do to resolve a kernel panic.
Here's how to read the mumbo-jumbo of a panic


The best thing is to have some kind of a hardware testing program handy. Something that can test your RAM. I use TechTool Pro.

quote:

Originally posted by thalo:
Memory sometimes fails intermittently at first, before totally giving up.

That's certainly true. Memory, like any IC chip, is likely to fail when cold and recover when warm. This is so common that people who repair circuit boards have as part of their regular toolkit a can of cold spray to cool chips down one-by-one to get an intermittent chip to fail so it can be identified and replaced.

Also, it's good practice with any plug-in circuit board, which is what memory modules are, to pull them and reseat them to ensure they are properly seated and also to clean any corrosion that might have grown on the connector fingers.

I haven't used it lately, but thalo is right, TechTool Pro is a great tool for these problems. It has an entire suite of tests that you can run. If I remember correctly it also has a test for the hard disk along with separate tests for everything from the microprocessor to the graphic card.

Smithz try starting up holding down the s key. This will start you up in single user mode.

At the command-line prompt, type /sbin/fsck -fy.

You will see the instructions just above the prompt.

Here is another page for start up problems.

I had similar problems a few weeks ago. Running the /sbin/fsck -fy command cleared it up. My machine was also shutting down really slowly this has been cleared up too.

I think the problems for me originated with a bad shut down were I just forced the machine to shutdown holding the power button in because it would not fully power down.

Thanks for your replies.
Well, today i powered on my mac, then went to shower. When i came back the Mac had gray screen of death. Restart the fucker, now it runs...
So i will start to check out your links now. I also favor its a ram thing. The HD is the newest part of the machine, the RAM is as old as the machine approx. 2002.
Next step is removing the RAM-Modules, clean up the Machine, remove Dust everywhere. Insert RAM again...
I don't know much about the Processor-Board and how it is connected to the Motherboard. This will be step two.

Err, and yes, i need to back up my files.

Smithz I would start by running the command line /sbin/fsck -fy in single user mode. I am 99% sure that it should clear your problem.

Consider the power supply as well. That's definitely something that can fucktuate and cause intermittant problems.

Since the last Mac Updates, my powerbook has gotten really really slow. It's still Panther. I have no idea what's up. Just twice the beachballing it usually has. For everything I do. Checking email, web surfing (wirelessly), even just twiddling the finder. Slow as molasses.

Thalo try running the fsck routine in Single user mode by holding down the s key on start up.

Thanks, Rico, didn't even think of that. Repaired permissions, did fsck... cleared up whatever it was. I also thought it might have to do with the disk getting full. There's only about 20 gigs left on it.

Yeah I don't know what is causing those problems either but running the fsck routine clears them out. I have found the fsck routine works better than anything else including Diskwarrior and Techtool.

It should work for smithz too.

By the way, TechTool did nothing in that last problem. Nor did it find anything wrong.

I hope smithz' machine didn't blow up or catch fire.

I have found Techtool and Diskwarrior not doing anything lately. It might be that you have to upgrade to the most recent version. Techtool has the buy the current version and you will get the next release free hook in place.

My machine and the machines in the office when problems like you have described come up running the fsck command has fixed what ever was causing the problems. Even under Tiger which we run in the office.

No, the machine still crashes like crazy. I'm too busy recently and after work i'm simply exhausted and not interested in fixing this crap (This machine is my private one, which is not used for my job) ... It's so annoying.
So, i also had a severe HD-failure, which Diskwarrior managed to fix.
I changed the DIMMs, but this helped nothing.

Now i will try that fsck thing, i hope it helps.
My "new" solution for the problem is let the machine run 24/7, this works. Sleep modes kills it again. Ahh, fucko.
Thanks for your replies anyway.
Good news is, i finally backupped everything. If the HD blows up, i don't care anymore.

... Well, now i tried the fsck thing. It reported that my disk seems to be OK. No errors or anything. Grrrr...

quote:

Originally posted by BN:
Consider the power supply as well. That's definitely something that can fucktuate and cause intermittant problems.

Yeah, that's true. But how can i check the powersupply? Buy a new one and see what happens? ... Hmm. :-/

Not sure if you have one of those $200.00 power supplies like my MDD G4 requires, smithz. If it's just $40.00 or so, you could roll the dice and gamble...that is if it's easily replaceable on your own.

Crazy news from that faulty (?) G4 Mac: Symptoms stopped a few days ago. Now there are no more crashes after booting up. I don't really understand why.

Possible reason: I deplugged my 20" Screen to hook it to the MBP. After that (on the next day or so) i plugged it into the G4 again. I think after that the G4 worked flawless again. Oh, and i shut the Tower-Door, after i used it in "Open" state for months...

Very strange, but not in a negative way.

Strange, because i did all these stuff before, removing RAM, removing Graphics-Card, Monitor, PCI-Cards... etc. etc... Anyway, there must be some holy Spirit inside now who wants me to keep the good old OS9 Machine. :-)

Well that is splendid news smithz.

Sounds like something is loose. Tighten all those screws down.