Need help....PLEASE!!! (kernel panic)

[Pilgrims Pro]

A good friend of mine has a 12" Powerbook G4 1Ghz processor with 512mb of ram. The PB has worked beautifully for him for the last year and a half, but today the computer froze and he was not able to do so (he only had safari and iChat open). So he held down the power button waited a few minutes and tried to restart the computer. During the boot process he received an error in four different languages that he need to restart the computer.

Any ideas on what the problem might be? Kernal Panics? Any help would be great appreciated.

 

[asherman13]

A good friend of mine has a 12" Powerbook G4 1Ghz processor with 512mb of ram. The PB has worked beautifully for him for the last year and a half, but today the computer froze and he was not able to do so (he only had safari and iChat open). So he held down the power button waited a few minutes and tried to restart the computer. During the boot process he received an error in four different languages that he need to restart the computer.

Any ideas on what the problem might be? Kernal Panics? Any help would be great appreciated.

did he ctrl-apple-powerbutton restart? i'm assuming yes...

anyways, try a safe mode reboot. you do that by turning it on, and RIGHT AFTER you hear the chime sound, start to hold down the shift button. release it after you see the start-up screen with the gray background with the apple logo and the spinning circle. that will disengage all non-apple startup items...correct me if i'm wrong; i'm not an expert...

 

[Pilgrims Pro]

did he ctrl-apple-powerbutton restart? i'm assuming yes...

anyways, try a safe mode reboot. you do that by turning it on, and RIGHT AFTER you hear the chime sound, start to hold down the shift button. release it after you see the start-up screen with the gray background with the apple logo and the spinning circle. that will disengage all non-apple startup items...correct me if i'm wrong; i'm not an expert...

He is not able to boot it into safe mode. It just goes right in to this screen:

 

[.Andy]

He is not able to boot it into safe mode. It just goes right in to this screen:

That is indeed a kernel panic screen. Will it boot up/avoid a panic if you try from his Tiger install CDs?

They haven't installed new RAM lately?

 

[Pilgrims Pro]

That is indeed a kernel panic screen. Will it boot up/avoid a panic if you try from his Tiger install CDs?

They haven't installed new RAM lately?

No new RAM. It freezes when the CDs are installed. He can select english and then click continue one and then it freezes.

Cannot get to Disk Utility or anything.

When booted in to single-user mode he gets to the command prompt but get this message Panic: we are hanging here

 

[.Andy]

No new RAM. It freezes when the CDs are installed. He can select english and then click continue one and then it freezes.

Cannot get to Disk Utility or anything.

When booted in to single-user mode he gets to the command prompt but get this message Panic: we are hanging here

Might still be worth swapping out the RAM. If it's two 256s can he try one at a time?

I've had RAM cause Kernels before - although I could be barking up the wrong tree totally as far as your problem is concerned .


Will it even work as far as target firewire disk mode goes? Might be worth copying off what you can in case things go downhill trying to fix it up....

 

[Pilgrims Pro]

Might still be worth swapping out the RAM. If it's two 256s can he try one at a time?

I've had RAM cause Kernels before - although I could be barking up the wrong tree totally as far as your problem is concerned .

Well after about 5 tries he finally got it in to the Disk Utility. So we will see what happens.

 

[.Andy]

Well after about 5 tries he finally got it in to the Disk Utility. So we will see what happens.

Hey good news. If everything goes well it still might be worth backing up the first chance you get. If he hasn't done so already after seeing Doctor Q's thread....

 

[mikemodena]

The same thing happened with my mom's Mac Mini.. I would eventually repair permissions, but it wouldn't do much.. upon starting up I had a no smoking sign thingy in place of the Apple. It turned out to be the ram, and I'm pretty sure that's your problem. Did he happen to buy it on ebay? That's where we got it from and I've heard accounts of it crapping out.

 

[Pilgrims Pro]

The same thing happened with my mom's Mac Mini.. I would eventually repair permissions, but it wouldn't do much.. upon starting up I had a no smoking sign thingy in place of the Apple. It turned out to be the ram, and I'm pretty sure that's your problem. Did he happen to buy it on ebay? That's where we got it from and I've heard accounts of it crapping out.

I misquoted the ram above. He has 256 from Apple, and 512MB from crucial. He has had the Crucial ram since he purchased the PB.