iMac screen of death....HELP!

[will eth]

Hi all,
I just got the screen where everything goes grey, then you get a box that pops up saying you need to restart your computer in about 4 languages.
So i restarted it like it said and everything seems ok.


Does anyone know why my mac has done this, and do you if this screen means it has permanent damage?
The iMac is a 2.4ghz core 2 duo, 2008.

Thankyou for your time.

 

[taffers1966]

iMac screen of death

first thing to do is boot the mac off the dvd or an external drive. it is possible that a corrupt system will cause this. Next try reseating the ram modules, then replacing them with known good modules. it is always a good idea to reset the SMC just to cover all bases.

 

[outphase]

It's called a kernel panic, a not too distant and less ugly cousin to the Windows blue screen of death.

Unless you're getting them repeatedly, I wouldn't worry too much about one random one.

 

[Badger^2]

It's called a kernel panic, a not too distant and less ugly cousin to the Windows blue screen of death.

Unless you're getting them repeatedly, I wouldn't worry too much about one random one.

Yup. 99 times out of 100 its usually a hardware issue, but unless its happening regularly I would just dismiss it as a fluke.

have you added any hardware lately?

and you are doing regular backups, right?

 

[Detrius]

It's called a kernel panic, a not too distant and less ugly cousin to the Windows blue screen of death.

Unless you're getting them repeatedly, I wouldn't worry too much about one random one.

This. One kernel panic does not mean anything. If you're getting them once a month or more, that's a bad thing.

 

[Vylen]

Yup. 99 times out of 100 its usually a hardware issue, but unless its happening regularly I would just dismiss it as a fluke.

have you added any hardware lately?

and you are doing regular backups, right?

It doesn't have to be a hardware issue. Could be a poorly written driver.

The only way to know for certain is, that if the OP experiences it again, upon restart, when that little pop-up shows saying that OS X shut down due to an error they copy and paste here the additional information provided in that window.