Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

macbloke · Sep 17, 2003, 01:55 AM

my g4 dual 800mhz keeps crashing (newest version of osx installed)-first it starts to slow down (the little spinning thing comes up) then the screen goes grey with a white box in the middle teling me in a couple of languages how to restart.

any idea what could be causing it, and how it could be fixed?

thanks in advance,
macbloke

Link · Sep 17, 2003, 02:07 AM

It could very well be the hard drive.. sounds like it hits abad sector and the HD crashes.

macbloke · Sep 17, 2003, 02:32 AM

the hd has been formatted a couple of times before but still the same problem. how can i fix this 'bad sector', or would i need a new hd. if its not that could it be ram or periphal related

scottiB · Sep 17, 2003, 07:36 AM

What's happening is a kernel panic (the white box in multi-languages signifies this).

Unplug all peripherals (including any PCI cards), remove all third-party memory, and unplug from network; see what happens.

Did this just start happening? Have you changed the system in any way right before the occurance?

reader50 · Sep 17, 2003, 05:40 PM

Please post the kernel panic logfile. It is located at:

/Library/Logs/panic.log

flora · Sep 18, 2003, 11:01 AM

Hi, i'm a newbye, excuse me if i use
this thread but my problem is very similar to macbloke's.
my g4 dual 1GHz crashes expecially while i'm using final cut pro. sometimes it shows the white box, more often it only stops working (except for the spinning icon that keeps moving) and the only solution is to restart it from the start button.

i never formatted (it's still quite new).

thank you in advance,
flo

scottiB · Sep 18, 2003, 10:13 PM

Are you able to force quit FCP? (Choose force quit from the Apple menu or use the key combo: command+option+escape)

Unplug all peripherals and pull any third party memory. If you have any PCI cards, pull those, too.

macbloke · Sep 19, 2003, 01:48 AM

thanks, ill try this stuff and post the kernel panic logfile tomorrow (im on a diff comp atm)

flora · Sep 19, 2003, 05:21 AM

Originally posted by scottiB:
Are you able to force quit FCP? (Choose force quit from the Apple menu or use the key combo: command+option+escape)

no, i can't. in these cases my mac doesn't answer to any key combo nor to the dock options.

Unplug all peripherals and pull any third party memory. If you have any PCI cards, pull those, too.

thank you. i'll try. but the only one i have usually is the firewire. i work with 2 Apple DIMMs (both 256 Mb) and no third party memory.

scottiB · Sep 19, 2003, 09:44 AM

flora, are the freezes something that you can duplicate, or do they seem to appear randomly?

What version of FCP? What OS version?

lewdvig · Sep 19, 2003, 09:56 PM

A long shot, but easy enough to try if the other suggestions here do not bare fruit.

Try recreating the crash with one stick of RAM. Try each stick by itself. It might be bad RAM.

King_Rat · 10:05 AM

I used to have the same problem on my dual 800 quicksilver; it ultimately turned out to be a bad processor or motherboard. It had given me a few strange, random processor related errors a month or two after I got it. It seemed a little flakey until, after about 1.5 years, it suddenly started crashing in the above way all the time. Thankfully, I had gotten applecare due to the earlier errors (I figured that something was wrong with the motherboard or a processor, and applecare costs less than a new processor card). After I got apple to replace the bad and motherboard (the motherboards enet was bad) it started working. Unfortunately, I no longer have the panic logs form those problems, so we can't compare. However, if you post yours, someone may be able to tell you what is going on.
It may also be a bad HD or bad RAM; I have known them to cause all sorts of strange errors. You could see if Disk Utility comes up with anything. My only other thought is that something got messed up in the system. If so, a reinstall should fix it (but I doubt that this is the case). You could see if it will run awhile when you boot of the CD; mine would not when it was at its worst. BTW, do you have applecare? If so, I would bug them about it.

Link · Sep 19, 2003, 11:34 PM

my g4 has always crashed like that after a few days.. no matter how many times and how hard I've *****ed about it with apple they refuse to replace the processors.

Oh well. I'll just keep extending through other warranties for now I guess.

Hydra · Sep 20, 2003, 12:10 AM

You're not using an iSight are you? FCP sometimes has a cow if one is hooked up.

-Jerry C.

Link · Sep 20, 2003, 12:35 AM

No isight herre.. dunno about the other dude.