System Error - What to do?

T

Triple_B

Registered
Hey Everyone,

I'm not sure if this is the right spot, but wanted to post this here...

Forewarning here: I'm a Windows guy, and basically don't know much about the mac platform. I've done some basic stuff with it (networking, mainly), and upgraded the memory on her IMAC to 1 gig, but that's about it.

Yesterday my wife and I were entertaining some friends and I heard a loud fan noise coming from our office. When I entered, I quickly realized that the MAC had locked up and it was the mac itself macking the noise. After turning it off, I left it off, as it seemed to be running abnormally hot (which I thought may have been the cause of this).

Well, today my wife was actually working on it, and it locked up on her 3 times in 10 minutes (after about 2 hours of working on it). The third time, the screen displayed a strange error, and then almost immediately after, the fans on the unit kicked into overdrive similar to what happened last night.

This was after I tried finding a utility that would allow me to see what temp the system was operating at. I found the system monitor, which allowed me to see what resources were running, but all of that seemed normal.

We turned off the machine after I took this picture. I have not turned it back on yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Nick

--See the screenshot of the error on the attached file.
 

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You would not try to run any other electrical applicance that has a fault cooling fan. You should not run your Mac until you get the fan repaired. Before you do additional damage, please take your computer to a Mac technician for repairs.
 
So are you saying it's a faulty fan? When the computer is running normally, and by normally I mean that it's not locked up with the error you see on the picture that I posted above, the fans are not loud, and they don't seem 'unhealthy'.

On top of that, even when the fans are running loud, they seem like they are running loud because they are running at high rpm's, not because of bad bearings.

So, you're just saying take it into a tech, and pay someone else gobs of money to figure it out?? I would prefer that if someone were able to help me determine the issue here, I could resolve it myself. The warranty has already expired, so it doesn't matter if I work on it or if a certified mac tech does.

Thanks again.
 
It doesn't sound like a cooling fan fault -- the fans seem to be operating normally. The speed of them is software-controlled, so the operating system will determine what speed to spin them at. However, your picture depics a "kernel panic" of sorts, and when this happens, the operating system is basically kaput and not controlling the hardware anymore. It's truly locked up. Therefore, the fans will spin at maximum speed because the unit is powered up, but no software is telling the fans to spin slow, so they're spinning at maximum speed as a precaution.

Some causes of kernel panics are bad RAM (some people experience them when they upgrade their RAM), a faulty operating system install, incompatible add-on hardware, or a big, non-user-serviceable hardwre problem with some part of the machine.

First thing I would do is to remove any added-on RAM. Return the machine to an "as-stock-as-possible" configuration and see if the kernel panics continue (by the way, I see no harm in turning the machine on again. This is assuming that you do have the mandatory backup of all your important stuff -- if not, then any data corruption that results from turning the machine on again is in your hands).

Failing that, remove USB devices -- they're notorious (especially USB hubs) for causing problems with kernel panics and sleep mode.

If you've returned the machine to a stock configuration and are still experiencing kernel panics, I would next suspect the operating system. Since you do regular backups, wiping the drive and starting fresh should be no problem -- pop in the Mac OS X Install CD/DVD and format and reinstall OS X, afterward using Software Update to update the operating system and software to the latest versions.

If kernel panics continue at this point, something most likely out of your hands is happening and would probably require an Apple Authorized Repair Center. One thing you can do to try and narrow down the problem is to run the Apple Hardware Diagnostics CD... when you do run the tests, run them in a loop (one after another, over and over) -- major hardware problems are usually not found the first pass through the diagnostic. Jot any pertinent information down, and if a piece of hardware comes up faulty, you can present this information to the repair tech.
 
Thanks Diablo...

I will try everything you mentioned and see where it gets me.

My wife has been working with this new memory for about 3 months, so it's hard to believe it's that, but who knows!


Thanks again...
 
It could very likely be the RAM -- it's quite possible to have a stick work for months (or even years), and then suddenly fail.

Also, you may want to try creating a new user account on the machine, then doing the same stuff you'd usually do when it locks up. That way, if the kernel panics don't happen under that new user account, you can narrow the problem down to, 1) being software-related, and 2) being user-account related.
 
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