How many ways can you find to troubleshoot a Mac OS X kernel panic

[PBT]

Hello,
This may sound a little weird, but I am trying to find all possible ways to troubleshoot a Mac OS X kernel panic.
I really need as many as I can, so I hope someone can help and chip in with some more ways

Thank you!!

Tara

So far I have these:
- Bring your mac to the Genius people at the Apple store

- Restart your Mac and see if it happens again

- If you get a message such as "your computer was restarted because of a problem", you can start by clicking on "more info"

- If you had to shut down your computer, open all applications one by one, until you find the one that caused the KP. Uninstall / update that application.

- Restart in Safe Boot Mode, (when you see the Apple logo, hold down the shift key), temporarily disable all your login items (System Preferences> Users and Groups > select your user > Login Items tab > select all the items and click on the ‘minus’ sign). Also remove all those apps that start automatically with the OS (Library/startupitems). Restart your mac. If it works, the culprit of the KP is one of your start up items.

- Make sure your startup disk has enough free space (at least 10GB), if it doesn't, delete some files. Run Disk utility (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility), select the HD in the left column and just click on Repair Disk

- Shut down the computer and disconnect all peripherals (keep just your keyboard, mouse, and monitor). If the problem is fixed, reconnect all the devices one by one and test your mac after connecting each peripheral. If the problem appears when you connect a particular piece of hardware, that may be the issue.

- Check your RAM. If you added extra RAM, remove it. If the problem stops after you remove any added RAM, it may be defective.

- Update your software (Mac OS or any applications you may have installed), and their drivers.

- Also update your firmware (check for available updates at http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1237)

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

It looks like you have covered most of them.

-Is there a particular issue you are having?

C

 

[honestone]

I'd like to add a couple of comments.

1. For using Disk Utility to repair your internal drive (and especially your start-up partition), you'll need to run it in an "isolated" manner. To do that, you'll need to boot to the (hidden) Recovery HD partition. This link explains how to boot to it, and what it can do:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

Hopefully, you can do it the first way, by holding down the Command and R keys while your Mac is starting up. Note the 4th option on that screen, Disk Utility. You would select that to do the repairs. Of course, you need to insure that you have a backup first.

2. Perform disk cleanup, maintenance, and repairs on a "periodic" basis. Myself, I am doing disk cleanup every day, and more extensive disk cleanup, maintenance, and repairs once a week. There are some excellent freeware and commercial tools to help you with that.