scary os10.2 screen of death

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Milamber

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for the past few days i've been burning the candle really late into the night and I've have come across this WEIRD error several times.

Heres what happens:

A semi-transparent black cover rolls down over the screen (like a garage door closing) so that everything is sorta put to the background. And then a message box type dialog comes up. In the background is a huge picture of my power button (faded out) and the text reads, "You need to restart. Please hold down the Power key, or press the restart button." And then the error box has room to repeat the error in 4 other languages, and then finally centered at the bottom is "FF:FF:FF:FF:FF" The system completely locks up and I can do nothing but restart.


Is this legit? Is it a maen practivle joke/virus? I mean, all i can think of to make the system do this is that it's been on for a little while and it's possible it's getting to hot in the processor and it needs a cool off....yet when it happened a minute ago the cooling fan wasn't even on.


I'm stumped. Any help would be appreciated since this error is kinda scaring me!

:confused: :confused: :confused:
 
Yet to happen to me. Never come across this. I leave the Mac on since the day I used it and have been left powered on... and not once I come across this error.

Anyone has any light to shed on this? Weird...
 
I think this is a Kernal Panic. They did away with the ugly stack trace that would appear in latter versions of OS X.

I have yet, to see this either (knock on wood).
 
Hey, does it look like this? I got this error once an snapped a pic. It only happened once, though...
 

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Originally posted by Dave N
Hey, does it look like this? I got this error once an snapped a pic. It only happened once, though...
Click to expand...


Bingo.


So could this be the new kernal panic? I actually preferred the old "odd text over screen" effect.
 
I'm thinking that is the new kernel panic as well (oddly enough, it has only happened to me when running Virtual PC :p). Although the other day I did get a standard kernel panic as well (also when using Virtual PC), so apparently it doesn't always work, if the crash is bad enough or something.
 
That is a kernel panic. Apple just put some clever coding into the system so that if your machine doesn't kernel panic TOO hard, that screen shows up. You can still get all the UNIX coding for the crash under the console logs, if you like.

If you kernel panic REALLY badly, though, you'll still get the old, garbled UNIX screen. I've seen both so far on my machine, but neither since I reformatted and clean-installed Jaguar. Rock on!
 
The trick now is for you to track down the cause of the kernel panic. What program(s) were you using at the time, what utilities, etc. Were you connected to a network volume such as SMB/CIFS (MS Windows network protocol)?

SMB sometimes causes problems for me. Once I got a kernel panic because I unplugged a USB floppy. I've heard about troubles with Firewire devices too. Find out what's causing it and don't do it again! :)
 
I got one of these "friendly" (for lack of a better term) kernel panics when I unplugged my iMic adapter while my PowerBook was asleep. It woke up and did the panic thing. It made me sad.
 
Originally posted by Milamber
for the past few days i've been burning the candle really late into the night and I've have come across this WEIRD error several times.

Heres what happens:

A semi-transparent black cover rolls down over the screen (like a garage door closing) so that everything is sorta put to the background. And then a message box type dialog comes up. In the background is a huge picture of my power button (faded out) and the text reads, "You need to restart. Please hold down the Power key, or press the restart button." And then the error box has room to repeat the error in 4 other languages, and then finally centered at the bottom is "FF:FF:FF:FF:FF" The system completely locks up and I can do nothing but restart.
Click to expand...

Happened only once to me when pluggin gin a second monitor. haven't been able to reproduce it.
 
Twice here. :) Once I was doing a simple UNIX command to test something that someone mentioned on the boards, and the other time I was...

Gee, I don't even remember what I was doing when the second one happened. :p But I used to have them about once every two weeks before Jaguar was installed.
 
I've seen this too, and Apple has told me it was a kernel panic.

Check this out from the support pages:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106227

I bought a new 12" TiBook on Saturday 2/8 at the Shaumburg, IL Apple Store, and on 2/12 I got a panic. Running the hardware diagnosic CD showed nothing.

- I also tried connecting to the computer through FireWire Target Disk mode (hold "T" when booting).
- I tried clearing the PRAM (hold option-P-R when booting)
- I tried reseting the Power Management Unit (hold the left shift-option-control when booting)

All with no results. I also tried booting from the Software Restore CD (hold "C" when booting), but got the same kernel panic screen.

Apple wants me to bring it in, so I guess that's the next step. A new computer, and I get to send it away for warranty repair within a week. Yahoo.
 
I've got that a couple of times, the last time it was for Safari.

Go to Library / Logs / and see panic.log.
That file tells why it crashed. E.g. mine last one looks like this:

Sun Jan 12 21:59:21 2003

panic(cpu 0): zalloc
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x000856CC 0x00085AFC 0x000287A8 0x00042610 0x00030674 0x00092A38 0xFFBAB9B9
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x0CA7E500)
PC=0x90014188; MSR=0x0000F030; DAR=0x0260D7C6; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x901615A8; R1=0xBFFFD5F0; XCP=0x00000030 (0xC00 - System call)

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 6.3:
Sat Dec 14 03:11:25 PST 2002; root:xnu/xnu-344.23.obj~4/RELEASE_PPC

I haven't found a good deciphering instruction - paste your panic.log here hoping someone finds the deciphering info (for those numbers). Those at Apple sure can decipher it. :)
 
Nah, VPC should emulate the blue screens, not give you kernel panics, right? ;)

I mean, to emulate well Windows it should emulate also its crashes and blue screens...
 
I spoke with Apple tech support again, and we went through a few diagnostics that might be helpful to other people.

First, we tried holding down Option when booting. This should allow you to choose what filesystem to boot from. In my case I was trying to boot from CD, but even if I chose it, it didn't boot.

Then we tried holding Command-S when booting. This puts you into Single User Mode (a unix thing). Once the boot sequence is complete -- this is when stuff stops appearing on the screen -- run a file system check by typing "fsck -y". Again in my case, everything checked out.

Next we attempted to rest the open firmware. by pressing Command-Option-O-F when booting (you'll need two hands for this). Then, after the boot has completed, type "reset-all". Again, no change for me.

Finally we booted into Safe Mode by holding the Left Shift while booting. This is similar to the old MacOS booting with no extensions. Finally, we booted, and then looked at /Library/Logs/panic.log

While there was a lot of junk in the log, there is a section mentioning what the kernel was hanging on when it panicked. In my case it was the Airport Extreme Card.

So, I powered down the machine, removed the Airport Card and rebooted, holding the Option-Control-Shift keys while booting. This will reset the Power Management Unit, which keeps track of all the devices in the machine. You will not hear a chime when you try this. Do the reset, then wait about five seconds, then reboot normally. The PMU should now be reset.

Then after booting normally, I powered down, put back in the Airport Card, then rebooted again. All works fine. Happy ending.
 
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