iMac kernel panicing

[lightsout]

Hey all,

Need some help with something.

I've had my 2.16GHz 20" iMac for 15 months now and it has been fine. In all this time, I've had one kernel panic about a month after I got. 6 months in, I upgraded the RAM to 2GB with 2 * 1GB from Crucial. About 2 weeks ago, I upgraded to Leopard and all was well until yesterday.

I had a kernel panic, got the pretty Mac screen saying "you need to hold down the power button". Then when booting into bootcamp + XP I had two BSOD, looked to be in the USB driver for the second BSOD. Today, I have had about 5 kernel panics doing nothing in particular (web browsing, idling, etc).

Using system profiler, the SMART status of the HD looks good. No apparent indication of problems in the console. In XP, there are no indications of fundamental problems.

Any ideas how I can trouble shoot this further? Diagnostic tools would be good, or just an idea of where to start.

No, I didn't get extended support with Apple - wish I had now!

Thanks!

 

[lightsout]

Couple more points:

1. When I installed Leopard, I did an archive & reinstall.
2. I have upgraded Bootcamp using the Leopard install DVD.
3. After a kernel panic, I have trouble getting the machine to turn boot again. It boots, but I never get the startup chime.

 

[Shadow]

Sounds like a hardware issue. Try downgrading the RAM to what you had, that might fix it.

 

[lightsout]

............. sorry I was stuck looking at the hynpotoad!

I was way ahead of you - I couldn't get the system to chime at all. I removed one stick of memory and it came back to life. AHT was fine in this configuration with multiple extended tests. Put the other piece back in, failed first time.

In the panic logs, I was seeing this:

panic(cpu 0 caller 0x00BD387C): "AppleAHCI@ 2 HBA trouble accessing main memory = 0x20000000"@AppleAHCIPort.cpp:1574
Backtrace, Format - Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)

So memory seems like (I hope!).

So even though my machine is 15 months old - can I still get extended Applecare for it?

 

[Sun Baked]

So even though my machine is 15 months old - can I still get extended Applecare for it?

Nope, only before the last day of month 12.

Call Crucial, they should send you out a new SO-DIMM.

Of course they are not too expensive at the moment to just upgrade to a 2GB dimm also.