Help; Late 2010 13" Air (2gb 128GB) keeps having kernel panics

[will0407]

My girlfriend has a late 2010 Macbook Air 13, base stock model.

On average, about 1 and a half times a day (i.e she'd get it twice in 3 days) she gets a kernel panic (the grey screen with the power button logo in the centre saying you need to restart)

The macbook air updates have been installed- I've downloaded them direct from apple and when I try and run them it says it's not supported. The first thing I did when she opened it was to do an update. It's about a month and a half old.

I'm pretty sure this sort of behaviour isn't normal. Is there anything that we can do to solve it? Or is it worth taking it to the genius bar?

On a side note, her 15" MBP (2.4ghz i5) used to do the same, not as frequently though. Could there be something in her system that's causing it? I resotred from time machine when we set her new air up.

 

[hfg]

First, I would create a "new user" and boot into that user's environment and see if it continues to show instability. If not, then there is something in the original user's environment that is a problem.

I would then find a good memory test program and let it run for awhile. Also run the diagnostics program, but I would be surprised if it showed anything unusual.

If that doesn't work, I would first backup all the user's personal data, then I would totally start over. I would zero-erase the disk, re-partition and format, and re-install the OS and applications from scratch. If all seemed to be working well, I would reload the user data and continue testing.

Then ... I would give up and take it to Apple and pay them to troubleshoot it.


Note: it is entirely possible that restoring from a TM backup of the old machine may have created the same problem on the new machine ... thus the "clean and fresh install".

 

[will0407]

Thanks for the reply. I might try a clean install at the weekend when I have time in the day to do it.

 

[hfg]

Try the "new user" first, that will only take a few moments and will hopefully rule out a system problem.