Mac OS X quits unexpectedly.

[vedanta5]

I have OS X Tiger upgraded to 10.4.11 on my 1GHz Dual Processor G4 Desktop (1.5 gigs ram) and the screen randomly turns gray over whatever I'm working on with a window stating "You must restart your computer. Hold down the power button for several seconds until computer shuts down or press restart button". When computer restarts a window states that OS X had unexpectedly quit and there is a "report button" and "OK" button.

Please tell me what I must do to stop this problem. I have used "disk utility" to check or repair the two hard drives I have in my G4 --- they both didn't need any repair. I also went through the verifications and that is OK too. The problem still occurs every now and then. Last night it happened three times in a 15 min period. This morning I've been on computer for an hour so far with no problem yet. So it varies and IS continuing. What should I do?

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

That's called a "kernel panic," and it can happen for a number of reasons, both in hardware and software.

Have you recently made any changes to the computer (adding RAM, a new hard drive, etc.)? Does it happen in one program more than another, or is itseemingly random?

You can try the following in hopes of narrowing down the problem:

1) Make a new user, and log in under that new user. Use the computer for a while (days, perhaps) under that new user and see if things improve. If so, the panic is most likely software-related, perhaps user account-related.

2) If you have another internal drive, or an external FireWire drive, try installing a fresh copy of Tiger on it and run from the freshly installed Tiger for a while. If things improve this way, the panics may be software related, perhaps at the system level.

Can you post the text of the panic? You should be able to get it by opening the application "Console" and selecting the "Panic Reporter" logs.