mac os x quits unexpectedly

[louiseyes]

This keeps happening? Once restarted there is the message 'the computer was restarted after mac os x quit unexpectedly - click report to see more details or send a report to apple'. When I click report or ok nothing happens just goes back to normal or until the next crash.
All I am doing is working in excel while listening to music in itunes and downloading music.
Sometimes its worse and the screen goes black with a message to restart the computer. I have tried a disk repair but its still happening. Help would be v much appreciated as each time I loose the work I've done (now I am pushing save after every line!) Thanks

 

[louiseyes]

hi ric,
I am hoping this is a grab of the message. If you have time if you could explain how I can take a grab without the background thanks Mary

 

[Ric]

Hi Mary,

Can you got to this folder and send me all the contents... ([email protected])

Users-->YourUserName-->Library-->Logs-->CrashReporter

These are your "Crash Logs" they will help me to see whats happening...

regards

Ric

 

[Ric]

hi ric,
I am hoping this is a grab of the message. If you have time if you could explain how I can take a grab without the background thanks Mary

Hi Mary,

To take a picture of 'just' the message box...

Hold down Command+Shift and then press 4

The cursor should now change to a cursor...

Now press the space bar...

the cursor should change to a camera...

Now move the cursor over the window or dialog box you want to take a picture of and then click it...

hope that helps

Regards

Ric

 

[Tim]

This is happening to my Powerbook G4 as well..... the message comes up that I have to restart the computer.....when reopened, it says to report, etc.....then nothing.....

Can you help? this is getting to be a real problem.

Tim

 

[zeyhra]

Have you added RAM to your PowerBook? OS X can be really sensitive to RAM problems that OS 9 didn't care about.

 

[Tim]

No....I have not added anything to my powerbook. I had no problems until I picked up my last OS X update in late June or July.....then things started happening such as my Safari pages would not load....then recently the computer started quitting.

 

[Ric]

Hi Tim and welcome,

what version of OS X are you running ?

Have you tried a "Repair Permissions" ?

regards

Ric

 

[BioDieselPBGuy15]

This sounds much like the same problem Im having with my PowerBook G4 running OS 10.4.7. It seems like ever since I bought my computer (November 2004) it has been doing this. I'll just be downloading music, writing in word, listening to music, or any combination of those and I will get a Kernel panic or it will just freeze. It seems like whenever Im doing something that takes up a lot of memory is when things start to get on ice. When I bought it, another 256MB memory was added to the factory 512MB. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to this madness. I hope someone can help me on this...

 

[Ric]

Hi there and welcome !

Do you know what make RAM was fitted ? Was this fitted at Apple or by a dealer ?

Have you ever repaired permissions, repair disk via disk utility ?

regards

Ric

 

[BioDieselPBGuy15]

I have yet to find out the make of the ram, at least until I find my really tiny screwdrivers. I do know that it was fitted at the retailer (CompUSA) at the time of sale.

I did repair permissions and there was one small error but it is fixed now. I have done this in the past, but it hasn't had much of an effect on panics or 'freezing.'

As of now I have an uptime of 21hrs and 18mins.

 

[Ric]

Hi there,

certainly sounds like the RAM. One thing I would also note is that 512MB Ram is a little on the sparse side.

I would probably take out the 256MB that Comp usa put in and stick in a 'good' 1GB chip.

If you want send me your logs and we'll see if there are any clues in them.

regards

Ric

 

[macnewbie87]

Hi there, I have a similar problem, when I leave my mac idle for a while it goes to sleep and will sometimes not respond no matter what I do, so I have to turn it off manually and when I turn it back on, the same dialog box you guys were talking about shows up. Now, Ive had this macbook for a little less than a month and so far there have been 3 incidents. I upgraded the ram myself from 512MB to 2GB the day it arrived. This has been puzzling me for weeks, I would appreciate any help

 

[Kyomii]

Hi there macnewbie,

Try going to system preferences and under energy saver, set the "put the computer to sleep when been inactive for" to NEVER.

Then, you can set the screen to sleep if you like at whatever time you want.

Then UNTICK "put the hard disk to sleep whenever possible."

See if that solves your issue, and then go back to system prefs and you can change the "put the computer to sleep when been inactive for" to a time, but always keep your hard disk option unticked.

 

[BioDieselPBGuy15]

When my 15” PowerBook was getting the kernel panics, they seemed to happen when I using apps that took a vast amount of memory or a lot of times when it was not sleeping but just when the screen was off. I took out my 512mb memory stick and vualà it worked, never got a kernel panic, just ran super slow. So I bought a new factory quality 1gig stick from OWC, put that in and it worked without any panics. Tried putting the 512mb in with the 1gig and they came back, so it was definitely the 512 that was causing the problem. Now I am the one who controls how long my uptimes are. Feels good to solve the problem that was causing the kernel panics for over 3 years!

 

[macnewbie87]

Thank you very much for the help Kyomii, but why is it that I have to keep the "put hard disk to sleep whenever possible" option unticked? If this option causes problems like mine why is it in there in the first place? Just a thought

 

[Kyomii]

See if it works first. From experience, sometimes, when the hard disks are put to sleep, it is hard to wake them up again, which is why I made the suggestion.

It doesn't happen to every system - just the odd few, and it may not solve your problem, but it also could do. Diagnosing is a process of eliminatiion. If this doesn't work then maybe trying something else will.

Remember nothing is perfect, getting things to workd 100 per cent at a rate of 100 per cent of the time is impossible.

 

[macnewbie87]

Ive just had a kernel panic! (uptime: 15 min), I would very much like to know why that was, and no, it wasn't like the other problem (where it went to sleep and didn't wake up). I was running itunes and firefox, and it suddenly quit on me. As said, I upgraded the memory myself the same day my macbook arrived (as that always seems to be the problem for other people). I will gladly send the crash logs to an admin, maybe they can tell me what the problem is.

 

[Kyomii]

Take out the memory stick that you put in and then run the system - it sounds very much like it could be memory.

 

[macnewbie87]

I ran the disk utility and found out there was some problems with the disk permissions, fixed it and haven't had any further problems. Thanks a lot for all the advice and whatnot. Will keep you guys posted.