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michael@glowstars.demon. · Mar 18, 2006, 05:30 PM

Hi All,

My Dual 1.42G4 has just started crashing - but only when rendering something in FCP. Its not the project, its not the OS or FCP - just reinstalled both, hardware test says all OK and have swapped out in turn each one of the three 512Mb DIMM's. Only possible thought is that something got knocked during recent movement but everything seems fine.

Activity monitor registers 202% CPU usage and 14 threads - but I don't know if that's relevent.

I've tried all I can think of so please, any ideas anyone?

chris v · Mar 18, 2006, 08:28 PM

CPU's could be overheating. Check to make sure all the fans are working.

v56k · Mar 20, 2006, 10:30 AM

I just had a similar problem - Turned out to be the lower RAM Slot is faulty (J21?) - Only found this out after days of reinstalling, swapping out RAM etc. Left this slot empty and filled the others and no problems!!
Now have 1 x 1Gb RAM module (yes this works in a MDD but it will never see more than 2Gb total) and 2 x 512's to make up the max 2Gb.

michael@glowstars.demon. · Mar 20, 2006, 04:06 PM

Thanks guys - I'll check them both out when I have a moment. v56K did you run the hardware test and if so what did it reveal?

v56k · Mar 21, 2006, 01:55 AM

'fraid I dont have the hardware test CD any more so no I didn't run that.

rabidpenguin · Mar 21, 2006, 01:43 PM

This happened on my MDD Dual 1.25ghz. Is FCP closing or are you getting Kernel Panics? Whenever I would render a project on my MDD it gave me KPs. Otherwise the system performed rather normally. I took it into Apple and they couldn't figure it out at first, said that they fixed it and gave it back to me. It didn't fix anything. I took it in again and they replaced by CPUs and motherboard (thank god for applecare, that would've cost $1400 or something). It's fine now. I know this doesn't really help you, but if the problem persists take it in to Apple, because they should make their own program run on their product.

michael@glowstars.demon. · Mar 21, 2006, 04:14 PM

To be fair my machine has performed flawlesly for years and this has only started happening in the past two weeks - so I would guess the machine has developed the fault very recently.

Confusingly sometimes the machine crashes totally, sometimes it just FCP that freezes. Not quite sure how to tell if I'm getting a kernel panic - is that the wheel spinning round and round?

Hopefully tomorrow is a quieter day so I can look a bit more at the machine.

mountainash · Mar 26, 2006, 07:22 AM

The best thing to use to clean fans and heatsinks is compressed air. You can buy this in cans from Radio Shack and similar stores.

Dirty fans and heatsinks make everything hotter than it should be. Also check that your fans are still working. Sometimes they die. If they are very noisy, the bearings might be dying. They are easy to replace. There is a whole MDD cooling page on www.xlr8yourmac.com