KERNAL PANICS - Xapplimatic

STEPS TO RESOLVE KERNAL PANICS:

• 1. Reinstall Tiger using the "ARCHIVE AND INSTALL" option. This ensures the installation is as clean as a fresh wiped drive, with no lingering files from Jaguar or Panther remaining intermingled. All previous system files are separated into an archive in its own very well identified folder so you can retrieve things out at will if you find you need any of the old stuff (but beware about manually installing things, many things have dependencies that aren't clear). The great thing about reinstalling the entire OS as opposed to the questionably-stable upgrade process is that you get to see (and hear) the cool startup welcome animation! ;)
• 2. Shut down and remove all USB, FireWire, and add-on PCI cards if so equipped. Then restart.
• 3. Shut down and make sure that any recent add-on RAM is removed if steps 1 and 2 didn't work for you, then start up the system again and see if panics continue.. This ensures that you can eliminate bad expansion RAM off your list as the cause of panics.
• 4. I'm not gonna tell you to redo permissions.. It's never the cause of kernal panics. Anything the OS wants access to, it will have access to anyways because it is ROOT.. so this one won't help.
• 5. If you experience kernal panic at startup, is it because it's an unsupported system? Some older (G3 beige) Power Macs for example will always kernal panic at startup unless specially modified startup sequences are in place and the user must manually boot it into single user mode in addition some times. Obviously if it's a PowerBook, this is not the case in your case, so refer back to numbers 1-3.

Worst case scenario (apart from any bizarre hardware failures), I've never seen a Mac where the drive has been wiped and the OS installed anew, and the system was anything but completely stable under OS X Panther or Tiger. Try that as your last, but surest step to resolving the problem, but don't forget to back up your personal files first... ;)

Reply to This

Thursday, June 23 2005 @ 10:58 AM PDT