Is It Worth Repairing a 2017 iMac With Frequent, Irritating and Undiagnosable Kernel Panics?

[macguru9999]

The spare T5 that I have is 1TB, so certainly large enough.

The T5 now has bootable Monterey on it. I can use Migration Assistance to move everything from a CCC clone of the data volume.

But, I thought the point of this exercise was to boot from a drive that had nothing extra installed and only a single virgin user?

if its a software problem, you will move it across, if they are on the same system, but if its a (disk) hardware problem, then you are leaving it behind, although the internal drive is still there and might cause issues, but maybe not, if you dont use it, or unmount it while booted from the ssd.

 

[Buadhai]

if its a software problem, you will move it across, if they are on the same system, but if its a hardware problem, then you are leaving it behind, although the internal drive is still there and might cause issues, but maybe not, if you dont use it, or unmount it while booted from the ssd.

I can use fstab to keep it from mounting.

 

[Buadhai]

Still going strong!

Kernel-2022-07-10-080308.panic
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[macguru9999]

are you still running off the internal hard disk ?

 

[Buadhai]

Yes, still running of the internal disk. I decided that the project to run off of an external drive would be valid only if the external drive contained a pristine system and a virgin user with nothing additional installed. I'd have to run it that way for at least two weeks to be reasonably certain about the outcome.

Unfortunately, I can't go without a computer for two weeks, so I've been spending a lot of time putting together stuff on my wife's M1 iMac so I could use that while running the old iMac on the pristine installation.

Turns out that setting myself up on my wife's machine is more time consuming than I thought. For example, I have a bunch of shell scripts that need binaries available via MacPorts. But, to install MacPorts you need to install Xcode and the Xcode command line tools. Then I need to install all the necessary binaries ver MacPorts.

Also, I needed an SMTP client. Because of an early mistake on my part, that took several days to install, configure and get working.

Right now I'm in the midst of installing a Plex Media Server on the machine.

To be honest, I remain unconvinced that this test will prove anything very useful, so I haven't devoted a lot of time to my wife's machine. And, we were on a dive boat for six days and spent another week at our condo; so no work at all during that period.

I did have to use the spare T5 as a media drive for Plex, so I'll have to find something else to boot the old iMac from.

I'll get there.

In the mean time, I'm having a good time with the Kernel Panics.

Now, whenever the machine boots after a panic there is no Menu Bar, the Dock is only partially functional and the UI sometimes doesn't handle keystrokes or window clicks. In those cases I need to log in remotely (usually from my iPad) and issue the following command:

sudo killall -KILL WindowServer

That brings the Menu Bar back, returns the Dock to full functionality and makes keystroke appear where wanted. I think what I've learned from that is that the Kernel Panics may have something to do with the WindowServer process. Perhaps when I'm able to install MacOS Ventura that problem will disappear.

I'm in no hurry. (I guess that must be obvious.)

 

[Buadhai]

I finally got around to setting up my wife's M1 iMac so I could use it as my main machine; perhaps spurred on by the fact that this old iMac is now having kernel panics 25+ times per day.

I created an external boot drive with Monterey and a virgin user. I migrated nothing from the existing internal drive.

There were three panics overnight and one when I sat down to type this.

I guess that proves that the panics are not cause by the internal SSD or by any software I installed.

So, must be a different hardware problem. Not worth fixing, so time for a new machine.

 

[Buadhai]

BTW, I'm now running the Ventura public beta on the old iMac. That made the odd WindowServer error go away. No need to kill that process to get the machine functioning.

 

[macguru9999]

I finally got around to setting up my wife's M1 iMac so I could use it as my main machine; perhaps spurred on by the fact that this old iMac is now having kernel panics 25+ times per day.

I created an external boot drive with Monterey and a virgin user. I migrated nothing from the existing internal drive.

There were three panics overnight and one when I sat down to type this.

I guess that proves that the panics are not cause by the internal SSD or by any software I installed.

So, must be a different hardware problem. Not worth fixing, so time for a new machine.

Its great that you know its a motherboard/cpu issue by the sound of it so not worth fixing when you have another machine .... you would need to be pretty serious about hardware to change the cpu, and it might not fix it anyways. I did one a few months ago, and got lucky (it works) but I think you are doing the right thing ....

 

[Buadhai]

Sharing the one machine is not too bad. My wife is at her office all day weekdays, so the M1 is mine. Weekends is a bit harder so I have a 2010 MBA running Screen Sharing on an ancient Samsung monitor. It's ugly, but it works.

 

[Buadhai]

Since the last post I've made a rather odd discovery. I've posted about it here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...prevent-kernel-panics-on-my-old-imac.2368037/

Just by chance I downloaded Rember, the GUI for the memory testing utility memtest. I set Rember to test all memory and do 255 loops, the maximum. There were no kernel panics while Rember was running memtest.

After lots of experimenting I've found that if I keep Rember running constantly, the machine never panics.

The downside is that memtest consumes lots of CPU. I can mitigate that somewhat by using renice to set the nice level to 20 (the max). I really don't notice any machine sluggishness, even when editing photos.

So, now I have a machine that no longer panics. I just have to remember to keep Rember running.

Oddly, running memtest from the command line doesn't have the same effect. The machine still panics now and then if I run memtest directly.

I don't really understand any of this.

Anyway, it is now November 27th and I haven't had a panic since starting Rember up on November 23rd. After four days it is on test loop number 201 out of 255.

Here are the last panics before running Rember:

Kernel-2022-11-21-102123.panic
Kernel-2022-11-22-135602.panic
Kernel-2022-11-22-140004.panic
Kernel-2022-11-22-141123.panic
Kernel-2022-11-22-141602.panic
Kernel-2022-11-22-164929.panic
Kernel-2022-11-23-104343.panic
Kernel-2022-11-23-135139.panic
Kernel-2022-11-23-164137.panic
Kernel-2022-11-23-164324.panic
Kernel-2022-11-23-164844.panic
Kernel-2022-11-23-165430.panic

 

[Buadhai]

I took the iMac to the only shop in this city (Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand) willing to look at it. When I dropped it off there were several other iMacs on their workbench in various states of repair. So, I guess they do attempt to repair Mac computers.

At first they thought it was either the SSD or power supply. It was neither. Now they've had it a week and seem to have no idea what's wrong.

Time for a new machine, I guess.

 

[macguru9999]

I took the iMac to the only shop in this city (Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand) willing to look at it. When I dropped it off there were several other iMacs on their workbench in various states of repair. So, I guess they do attempt to repair Mac computers.

At first they thought it was either the SSD or power supply. It was neither. Now they've had it a week and seem to have no idea what's wrong.

Time for a new machine, I guess.

good idea

 

[Buadhai]

After having the machine for over six weeks they finally called to say that they are unable to repair it. I guess that's it.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Does it worth to spend 300$ to convert it to a 5k monitor?

 

[Buadhai]

Does it worth to spend 300$ to convert it to a 5k monitor?

You asked me this before and I asked how is it possible to convert a 21" Retina 4K display into 5K monitor. Please explain.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

You asked me this before and I asked how is it possible to convert a 21" Retina 4K display into 5K monitor. Please explain.

Sorry, already forgot it. 21.5in monitor is not worth converting, is it?

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