Constant panics

Ripcord

Ripcord

Senior Lurker
Hi group,

Hopefully someone can help me out with a serious problem I'm having.

Periodically, and relatively frequently, my system panics (grey screen, etc). Also I'm noticing spontaneous application crashes for no reason, and periodically the system will just freeze instead of crash. Sometimes if I'm compiling a big project with GCC it will throw out "bus error" or "invalid operation" errors, though if I start the same build process over it will pass just fine (and gcc will crash randomly somewhere else, claiming "internal" error or until the system panics)

It's happened on and off more frequently than I'd like over the past 5 months or so since I got the machine (one panic did some really nasty things to my hard drive), but they've gotten a LOT worse lately (up to 3-4 times a day instead of maybe once per week, if that.

There's never anything in the console or system logs when this happens, and I can't reproduce it reliably. It just seems to happen much more often when it's been under a heavy load for a while.

Here's what I've done so far:
  • Run extended Hardware Test. 3 times, never came up faulty
  • Reset PRAM
  • Took a blank hard drive, installed Panther on it, installed virtually no software (I downloaded "Fink" (http://fink.sourceforge.net) and started compiling something big and that took a long time). It crashed within 2 hours or so, though I didn't do a LOT of testing here (I'd like to actually USE my system!)
  • Took out after-market memory. Same problem. Replaced with ONLY two very nice 512MB DIMMs, same problem
  • Ran Disk Repair and Repair Permissions (found a very few things that seemed odd)
  • Detached all my peripherals except keyboard and mouse (including speakers)
  • Blocked ALL access to the system from the Internet (I'd been using it as a web server), turned off all sharing
  • Ran a temperature sensor to try to see if the CPU was getting too hot. Unfortunately it's a mirror-drive G4, and the core temperature sensor is disabled. The fan sensor does show temps going up to about 104 degrees farenheit periodically (including during one crash), but I've had the system crash when the temp was around 88-90 degrees
  • I've opened the system immediately after a crash (and powering off), everything seemed only somewhat warm (heatsinks on CPU, GPU, etc)
  • Reseated the heatsink (something I've never dared to do in my brand new system!), which as far as I can tell has good thermal grease and is making good contact with the CPU core.
  • Even tried lowering the temperature in the room =)

I think that's a pretty good list, but does anyone have any other ideas/suggestions on what I can do?

It seems like a hardware problem to me, but I'm a little nervous, especially since the hardware test passes.

My experience with Apple service hasn't been great so far - one phone call about what I thought were hardware problems with the G5 (it wouldn't turn on, I ended up just resetting PRAM and it came back), and the guy at the other end virtually berated me for not getting AppleCare (not my choice, work's) and told me it'd be a $49 diagnostic charge, etc.

I DON'T have Applecare (5 month old system, I was thinking about getting it a bit later), and don't really like the thought of having to lug this system in and out of a store over and over, format my system, pay them fees to test my memory, etc. Anyone have any experiences getting Apple to fix a difficult-to-diagnose hardware problem?
 
The one thing you didn't mention was RAM -- I'm betting that under Jaguar, you didn't experience any panics, but now under Panther, you're getting them much more frequently. Supposedly, Panther is a lot more picky abour RAM than Jaguar, and RAM that worked fine with Jaguar sometimes now causes crashes with Panther.

The first thing I would do is try a different brand of RAM in the machine, or, if you have already upgraded your RAM, try removing the Apple-supplied RAM and run with your newer RAM only. There have been a lot of people with RAM-problems and Panther, so that's the first place I would check.
 
My first guess would be the temperature. The max operating temp is 95º.
 
95 is in celcius, if it wasn't my machine (and a lot of other peoples) would have burnt up along time ago. :)

I have a MDD dual 1 GHz machine, that I converted using the verax fan kits. Before the installation my machine would hover in the 54+ celcius range, and after the kit it is usually in the 61 to 63 celcius range.

I contacted verax immediately to not sure I wasn't in danger of frying something. They replied that the maximum temp range was in the 90's and that my machine would shut down before it ever reached that range.

I am using temperature monitor with my machine, to keep an eye on the internal temperatures, right now I'm at 61.8 Celsius (143.24 Fahrenheit).

You did do quite a bit of trouble shooting there, which is good, but there are a couple of things that you didn't mention.

When you installed panther on the new hard drive, did you copy your user folder data over???

The reason I ask that, is I recently ran into an issue doing that with my brothers computer. I did a clean install of 10.3 on his machine, created a user account with the same name as before, replaced all the data with his previous account (off the old install). After rebooting, his finder would constantly crash and and very weird. I then deleted everything out of there expect his mail folders, music, bookmarks, etc..and let the system rewrite all the other things...and it worked fine again following a reboot.

What I'm getting at here, is perhaps there is something corrupted in your Users files that is creating a problem, maybe try creating a fresh test account and put your machine through the paces in that new account and see if your machine crashes....

Good luck
 
Thanks naodx, and thanks for the sanity check. I was starting to get a bit worried, I'd be very unhappy if my G4 couldn't take much more than room temperature. =)

When I did the testing with the "fresh" install, I didn't copy anything at all over. I did update to 10.3.3 right away, which I wish I hadn't since maybe it's something in the update that's doing me in (I did have ONE panic right before I upgraded to 10.3.3, and it's been panicking fairly consistantly under load since then)

Thinking of which, if the last part's true, how would I go about installing 10.3.2? Are the previous updates archived somewhere that I can download and install? Even MS keeps previous service packs around on their site in case someone needs them...

I noticed that some of my panic messages mentioned "com.apple.ATIRadeon8500" (one mentioned com.apple.iokit.IOUSBMassStorageClass), so I decided to try reseating my video card. I also tried using a different IDE bus for my hard drive, and disconnected my Combo drive. I've been through other memory, too, and I STILL can't get a hardware test to fail.

Is anyone aware of any other hardware tests that might be more exhaustive? Does anyone have any experience working with Apple in a situation like this? So far my experiences with them have been, well, not so good when it comes to repair (I called up service and they refused to talk to me, basically - the guy on the phone just wanted to sell me AppleCare, didn't even suggest taking it into the store, etc.)
 
Ripcord,

Here is a link to Apple's download site, you can pretty much get any updater you need from there. You will have to either do another fresh install and upgrade up from there, or do an archive and install and upgrade from there.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/

Do you have any 3rd party pci cards in your system??

Granted I'm no expert when it comes to reading crash logs, but the ATIRadeon8500 stands out pretty clearly. Is this a retail card?? I can't remember for 100% sure, but I thought the graphics card options for the MDD's were GeForce4 Mx (no longer), ATI 9000 pro, and the GeForce4 Ti.

If the card is a retail one, did you install ATI's drivers or leave it up to 10.3.3. I would assume that the 10.3.3 drivers would be more up-to-date, as the last ATI release was a few months or so back.

Not that this relates to your hardware, but I've seen reports on other sites where some 3rd parties drivers are causing minor problems with other 3rd party devices.

Just something to keep in mind, you might want to also check out:

www.xlr8yourmac.com - tons of reader reports everyday on installs and issues

www.macfixit.com - another great site for trouble shooting.

Good Luck
 
95 degrees Fahrenheit is the max operating temp according to Apple.

If you had a temp of 95 degrees Celsius, the machine would be cooked.
 
Well if that is true then my machine has been 'cooked' for a very long time, as my machine constantly runs around 61.x Celsius, which converts to 141.x Fahrenheit. Even before my mods (verax kit), my mac ran at 54.x Celsius, which is 129.x Fahrenheit.

I'm not sure what they mean by operating temp between 50 to 90 Fahrenheit on their website, by those specs my machine was shipped built out of spec then. Maybe they are referring to the working environment temp?
 
95 Farenheit is the max ambient operating temperature. All iBook users know the basic operating temperature is higher than that. :) Still 95 celcius doesn't ring exactly true either. That's hotter than my cuppa joe!

** boots calculator

203 Farenheit - that's hot!
 
bobw said:
My first guess would be the temperature. The max operating temp is 95º.
Click to expand...
Hmm.
It's been my experience that when the G4 over-heats it puts itself to sleep.

One of our users was upgraded to a Mirror Drive Door dual processor G4 last year. She called in a ticket shortly after complaining that is was simply too loud. The moron who was dispatched thought it would be a good idea to unplug the main fan that blows on the heat-sink :rolleyes:
Inevitably the next day the user called back stating that the machine was "shutting down and starting up on its own." We swapped her machine with a Quicksilver and I brought her box back to my office. Sure enough after about an hour or so of just running idle it would put itself to sleep. After a while (long enough for it cool down to within tolerances?) it would wake up, only to sleep again several minutes later. So I open the box and start checking cables and notice that the main fan cable wasn't plugged in. I plugged it back in, let the system sit for about an hour then started it up…

The machine has been running like a champ ever since (I actually ended up with it :D ).
 
bobw said:
95 degrees Fahrenheit is the max operating temp according to Apple.

If you had a temp of 95 degrees Celsius, the machine would be cooked.
Click to expand...

Max operating temperature for G4s is 105°C, according to Motorola. But I think they shut down at 68°C.
 
ksv said:
Max operating temperature for G4s is 105°C, according to Motorola. But I think they shut down at 68°C.
Click to expand...

Ive been to at least 63 Celsius, thats getting a little closer to the maximum than i feel conformable with. Mind you i have have the powerbook 12" Handwarmer ediiton, so i shouldn't be surprised.

I'm just grateful i got applecare.
 
Along with AppleCare, you should get a cool pad, or iCurve or something to get some air around it. Personally, I use a small pad that also helps in it swivels around. Less than $20 and well worth the money.
 
Well I can tell you from first hand experience mine didn't shutdown at 68 Celsius, and according to what the tech at verax told me they can sustain temps higher than that.

Now granted I don't like the idea of running hotter than what mine does right now (61.x average), and have looked into some ideas on additional cooling.

I found a link from a guy who installed 4 more verax fans in his case, two in front and two behind the heatsink to help with cooling. His setup is really slick, done very well and runs around 54 Celsius, with no extra noise.

http://www.bitsandpieces.info/

But none of this really helps Ripcord, as his mac isn't running any hotter than other reports I've seen from MDD user's.
 
Well, an interesting update.

I went back and installed OS X 10.3.0 (wanted to install 10.2.8, but found out that the piece of software I wanted to run to test, which requires X11, won't run because Apple has removed X11 beta software and will no longer allow it to run on anything but 10.3). Though I had quite a few application crashes (for example, after I booted once I launched iPhoto, then iMovie. iPhoto suddenly quit.), but I haven't been able to get the system to panic

This was a fresh install, but this was more like my system acted before the panics started (right about the time I installed 10.3.3).

Is it possible that I have a very minor hardware problem, but it's just more likely to be run into, and to cause a major system problem, with 10.3.3?

I get the feeling this is going to be a long, slow repair process =P
 
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