[pknoll]

Twice now, my 15" PowerBook has panicked when I've plugged in the power adapter.

It doesn't do it every time, but I think I've mostly plugged it back in while it's asleep.

Our iBook 466 SE does not do this. Has anyone else had anything like this happen?

[HouseSold]

I have wake from sleep kernel panic freezes occurring more often than not.

Apple suggested clean install (eliminate 10.2.8 and revert to 10.2.7) and tried to blame additional memory. Problem was happening before 512mb added but not before 10.2.8 installed.

This is on a 17"1.33 Book.

Someone else said shutdown every time.

I said it's not a PC.

[pknoll]

I suppose I should have mentioned - I'm on a clean install of 10.2.7, and the only times this happens is when I plug in while the machine is awake.

I've not had any trouble waking from sleep.

I -did- have many problems with freezes or panics the first day I used the machine, but traced that to a bad RAM module. Since replacing it, I've only had the power-plug panics occur.

[KP*]

I've had one KP so far on my new Al 15" running 10.2.7, and it was after I accidentally put the machine to sleep and then immediately tried to wake it. I kind of take the blame for that one, I guess I should have given it a few more seconds to put itself to sleep fully before waking it. This doesn't sound like exactly the same problem, since it only happened once, and may have been because of something I did, but it did involve a wake from sleep. I'm not using any additional RAM either.

[John G. Stillmank]

I have had two messages upon wakeup that said something like "You need to restart your computer. Hold down the power button for several seconds or press the restart button." This message was given in four languages in a white box in the center of the screen. The rest of the screen was my normal desktop picture but dimmed.

Both of these happened upon wakeup. I am not conscious of having done anything with the power as described in this forum. I looked in the panic log and sure enough, both of these incidents were described there as "unresolved kernel trap" and then a lot of description of backtrace, various numbers, a documentation of the version and date of the Darwin kernel, etc.

I haven't seen this message before (I used to use an iBook and never had a kernel panic on it). In fact I don't think I've seen a kernel panic (the old style black screen full of gibberish) since the very early days of OS X on my Wallstreet - maybe the Public Beta.

Needless to say this is unnerving on a brand new computer using 10.2.7. This just started happening and I have had the computer for about five days.

Any suggestions?

[LfGrdMike]

Have you tried resetting the power manager system?

[John G. Stillmank]

I have reset the power manager and the kernel panic happened again this evening. It has happened once each day over the last three days, each time upon waking from sleep.

[KP*]

I thought my KP problem might have been from changing power sources while the 'book is asleep, but today I had my third one, and this time I'm sure I did nothing while the 'book was asleep. I shut the lid, and a few hours later opened it. Didn't plug anything in or out in the meantime. I hope this is a problem that can be fixed with an OS update or something, because otherwise my PB is rock solid, and I want to be able to trust it.

BTW, this happened with 10.2.7, and just now with the new version of 10.2.8.

[John G. Stillmank]

I erased the hard drive and reinstalled everything about three days ago and have not had any problems since. Go figure.

[HouseSold]

I also erased and reinstalled 10.2.7 three days ago and was KP free after a week or so of hell. Seems when I restored the data from the backup when it (17"1.33) was fresh out of the box, I moved over a second system it didn't like. The original 10.2.8 really frosted things, so after KP's galore I erased and reinstalled and took my time. Everything worked great after updating to the most recent 10.2.8

Until today........

Wake from sleep KP.

Repair permissions KP (twice in the middle of running repair permissions).

Ran 2 successive /sbin/fsck -y's and finally stable for the moment. It'll be like New Year's Eve....no going to sleep or else KP...maybe

My documented activity log is longer than a terminally ill hospital patient's medical chart.

Apple says they want it back, if it continues to KP

[Daniel Bayer]

I just had a KP on wake up, unplugged the machine and brought it over to get on the net and when I woke it up, it froze.

Let's keep bumping this up to see what it is.

I am running 10.2.8 and have a ramjet 512 module in the reverse slot.

This did not happen until 10.2.8.

I get the decending grey screen with a hold button down restart command.

.....Comments.

[HouseSold]

The only way I solved what you are experiencing (happened exactly the same to me for 10 days-was getting like trick or treat-what next? sort of), was to:

1. Restart; hold down command (apple key) and 's' key. When the desk top comes up in command mode type /sbin/fsck -y (space -y) when it finishes back at prompt, type exit. After you get to OSX desktop, run repair permissions from application/disk utilty/repair permissions. If this was too much detail sorry. you probably knew this already.

2. Run the install disk DVD and Install OSX (10.2.7) choosing to archive and install. I chose to skip all foreign fonts and only chose printer drivers for printers I use and own. Took 9 mins on 17"1.33 Book.

4. I then chose to install 10.2.8 combo (disk image) from Apple's site and not from Software Update (I burned the 10.2.8 disk image to its' own CD - 97 mb). This is what ended a week of Kernel Panics more plentiful than a bag of popcorn kernels. It was the only process that worked completely without further incident.
I have been panic free for over 24 hours (knock, knock, knock on wood). Also did my flat panel iMac without further ado as well.

Your mileage may vary. I hope this helps you. It is a sick feeling when everyone else's Book is working fine, and yours isn't. I still think Apple dropped the ball big time leaving out level 3 cache and have yet to hear a plausible excuse err.. reason why.

[KP*]

I have not yet had the time to try all of the above poster's suggestions (though I did just do an OS reinstall a few days ago when my 10.2.8 update crashed while installing). However, I've noticed something else about this problem (or my variant of it, at least): it's always happened while on battery power. It's become more noticable in the last few days because I've been in rehearsal 7 hrs a day away from an outlet, so I have to keep it on batteries, and I put it to sleep often to save power. I'd say there's about a 1-in-4 chance that on waking it will KP. It happened 3 times today, by the end of the day I was getting really fed up. I repaired permissions after the second time to see if that would help, but no luck.

When I get home tonight I'll try some of the other steps, but I wanted to contribute my observation about the battery. I hope together we can figure out a solution, or Apple comes out with a fix, because this is starting to drive me nuts!

[HouseSold]

After speaking at length today with AppleCare, I was told that the kernel panic calls are few enough to warrant any major action. The tech acknowledged the possibility of memory problems, even among Apple's installed RAM.

This evening I will be running an extended memory test (6 hrs or more) in the loop memory test accessed from the supplied DVD. (start up with DVD installed, hold option key to bring up internal menu to run hardware test, then press cmd L choosing the loop test)

It was explained to me that Apple techs run something similar to expose memory that may randomly or intermittently fail contributing to kernel panics. I thought memory was either good or bad, not intermittent....Guess not.

Another idea from the conversation today, was to zero all data on the hard drive within OSX Disk First Aid (after backing up data) then reinstalling OSX

I was familiar with this from doing this with prior Powerbooks, but thought it was OS9 only. Not so says the Apple Tech.

Oh well, it's this or a round trip plane ride to Houston.

No chocolate for this Powerbook!

[Daniel Bayer]

How long have you had your powerbook before this happened?

Did the intall of 10.2.8 goof it up? Even after you did a clean install and such?

I am running third party 512MB chip, might pull it out to see if it changes. Then I might pull out the Apple ram to see if that changes anything.

Just spent a few hours going back to 10.2.7...and it did it again.

db

[Daniel Bayer]

BINGO!

I shut down, swapped the ram into different slots and when I did the drill, startup, repair permissions, I did ran a few apps, shut them down and put it to sleep.

I then unplugged it and went to wake it back up and poof! The screen just went black and it shut down.

So I took out the ramjet stick and put the Apple Samsung one back in the rear slot.

Did the drill (see above) and tried everything to crash it and no dice.

Bad ram.

I will try to bonk it over the next few days to see if it does it but I think that is what it was.

So....sorry for the 10.2.8 flame.

db

[Daniel Bayer]

So here's a question.

Could the power system related update of 10.2.7 to 10.2.8 be frying 3rd party ram??

Why would ram work on 10.2.7 and then steadily get worse on 10.2.8??

[HouseSold]

It was explained to me that once software gets corrupted or 'tainted' because of a hardware issue (bad ram) it has symptoms that may or may not be evident or always reproducible, yet keep happening under similar usage circumstances.

Ever notice while you're running fsck, comments coming up like 'repaired orphan node' or 'corrected catalog tree' and volume bit map incorrect, should be ....'.

If bad ram in one edition or revision of OS acts a certain way doesn't mean the behavior will be similar in another revision. It's happened before.

I just wish Apple's testing on the DVD was more conclusive, especially how long it takes the extended test to run, revealing nothing.

I ran more than 22 loops taking over 6 hours yet it KP'd several minutes after finishing the test.'

10.2.8 may place more emphasis on network and sleep related and power independent jobs where borderline ram below spec may fail its' error checking ability. An AppleCare tech said he thought there is a small separate power unit board in the new Powerbooks.

[bgordon]

Comforting -- or not -- to see I'm not alone.

The setup: New 1 Ghz PB 15, one additional 512MB stick from Transintl.com installed.

Upgraded to 10.2.8 immediately after receiving it. Machine ran really hot at times, both on bottom (especially) and also beginning to get uncomfortably warm on left wrist pad.

Had one kernel panic (grey screen, message "you must restart your computer now") 2 days ago when waking from sleep unplugged. Got another one yesterday (black overlay with terminal-looking text) after waking from sleep plugged in.

Last night, I wiped HD clean and reinstalled 10.2.7 from install CD. 'Book seemed to run a little cooler in general when it is plugged in (up to 50 deg. C, vs. a high of 57 with 10.2.8) -- AND the left wristpad area seemed to stay cooler.

I'll keep you posted.

[xdfk]

i just hat 2 KPs within 2 days.
at my store i was told to return the powerbook and they will look if there is a hardware problem. (bought 512 meg extra ram at the same store)
i also had some resume from sleep problems. no kernel panics but a totally messed up screen.

it will be my 3rd repair and i hope any problems will be gone. otherwise i will try to return the powerbook and get my money back and I don"t know if i will buy an apple again.

(actually i want a powerbook again no matter what happens)

[HouseSold]

There is a larger, more widespread RAM quality spec problem than currently appears. It is not Apple per se, but more stringent quality parameters needing to be met by 3rd party vendors reselling RAM.

Powerbooks seem to have Samsung memory in most of their OEM RAM slots and even on occasion they may falter according to AppleCare techs. How frustrating if you only have 1 RAM stick in slot and no way to remove it to swap with another 2nd RAM stick you bought. Or worse yet, to have your memory be bad on a 12" powerbook soldered on the motherboard.

As soon as this comes more in the open and everyone realizes how widespread percentage wise this is, it will get nipped in the bud. In the mean time many of us have to suffer and wonder should we have waited for some Apple branded memory and would that have really been the only solution.

[forcelite]

this could very easily be a hardware problem. I had kernel panics everytime I picked up my 12' from the left time.

I could make this happen anytime I wanted to. Took it to the apple store and they shipped it off with no questions. Great people at the apple store in newport

[tomfoolry]

I've had my 1.25 ghz stock powerbook (no added hardware/ram) for about 3 weeks, and I just recently started having this problem with kernel panics.

I think they started shortly after installing the new 10.2.8. Since then I have done a clean re-install, but they only seem to be getting more frequent. The last 2 consecutive times it's come out of sleep with a kernel panic.

[cambro]

As most posts in here make clear:

If you have frequent kernel panics in X, then you MUST have a hardware problem (or you've hacked around with kernel extensions and system resources). X is just too stable to be freaking out all over the place.

99% of the time, kernel panics can be blamed on faulty RAM, Apple installed or otherwise. This has been made clear in every board in these forums. And yes, RAM can get screwed up even if it was fine to begin with and a hardware test may or may not properly diagnose screwed up RAM.

[HouseSold]

tomfoolry,

When you wake from sleep KP, are you on battery or connected to ac adapter?

AppleCare tech says if memory passes ok, it may be a PMU board in some cases.

Keep track or log what your activity/power mode is when it KP's.

If you only have 1 original memory stick, see if you might be able to swap out with another to see if it solves your KP's.

Also many, including me, have greater success using the OSX.2.8 combo installer instead of the software panel.

[Daniel Bayer]

I am fine now. Took out the bad stick of ram, got a return number from Ramjet, have a crucial stick on the way and will wait until I have Panther installed to put it in.

I just don't trust what 10.2.8 might be doing to third party ram since all these KP's are around the Power management system.

I don't really give a hoot if some of you think that because it says "Mac OS 10.2.8" that it is super-duper bomb proof stable. Remember, it was released and quickly pulled back off the site with bugs. Many of the bugs power management related. The udate addressed those issues and might have goofed a few others.

Next OS please.

I'll let you all know if she bonks in the mean time.

[tomfoolry]

Originally posted by HouseSold:
tomfoolry,

When you wake from sleep KP, are you on battery or connected to ac adapter?

AppleCare tech says if memory passes ok, it may be a PMU board in some cases.

Keep track or log what your activity/power mode is when it KP's.

If you only have 1 original memory stick, see if you might be able to swap out with another to see if it solves your KP's.

Also many, including me, have greater success using the OSX.2.8 combo installer instead of the software panel.

HS -
Thanks for the suggestion. I've been getting the panics under both battery and non-battery power.

I'm not too concerned at the moment... I just need to remember to save my documents before closing the lid, and I'll hopefully get a replacement for the white spots problem... but I'm trying to wait a while to give apple time to work out all the bugs before sending it in.

I read in
this thread that the panics may be linked to having the processor set to "Automatic" in energy saver. I'll have to play with this and see if there are any changes.

[KP*]

I am using Apple-installed RAM and my system is rock solid except when waking from sleep. I'm no hardware expert, but it seems to me that if the RAM was bad I would have other stability problems during normal use. It sounds more logical that it's power-management related.

Is anyone with this problem running Panther, or is it all 10.2.7 /10.2.8?

[HouseSold]

Dan Bayer,

I have a replacement 512 mb stick on the way from www.oempcworld.com who "just discovered an anomoly with Powerbook G4 2700 memory" They resolved an issue where the same stick would work in one Powerbook and then would KP in the very next Book they tried. Good enough for me to hear a hardware solution of some sort.

In fact they now put Powerbook G4 memory in its' own category.

I never heard anyone, Tech or otherwise, that heard or knew of a way software could fry or permanently affect hardware.

I think you should run your new stick in 10.2.8 because:

1) It will show you that it's not OSX.2.8 that is the problem. Too many are running it with success.

2) Your memory you're getting is lifetime guaranteed.

3) You are learning enough here, and with your Book, to make any Mac head proud of their machine.

I just swapped out Apple's 512mb stick with mine and the original slot and back again and have been KP free all day without fsck or repairing permissions even once.

[Wiskedjak]

I sometimes get kernal panics on my iBook when plugging in or unplugging the power adapter and doing something else. eg: un/plugging in power adapter while dialing out with the modem; un/plugging in adapter while removing memory key.

[Lucky Dog]

I have been getting KP's also. I've narrowed it down to waking from sleep and pressing a key or scrolling on the trackpad before the computer has had a chance to fully wake up. It is pretty much reproducible on my computer. I've had it with the power plugged in and not. Anyone else have it happen the same way?

As long as I remember to give it a second or two to wake up, I don't have a KP. This morning I was in a hurry, forgot, and KP! Seems like a pain in the butt to have to wait for waking before typing or scrolling. I may try to take it to the Apple store this week.

[Tomster]

Originally posted by Lucky Dog:
I've narrowed it down to waking from sleep and pressing a key or scrolling on the trackpad before the computer has had a chance to fully wake up.

That about follows along the lines of the problems I've had. Wake from sleep by clicking the mouse with the lid shut = kernel panic. I'll try waiting a few seconds.

BTW - Lucky Dog, are you who I think you are? If so, small world.

Tom

[KP*]

Originally posted by Lucky Dog:
I have been getting KP's also. I've narrowed it down to waking from sleep and pressing a key or scrolling on the trackpad before the computer has had a chance to fully wake up. It is pretty much reproducible on my computer. I've had it with the power plugged in and not. Anyone else have it happen the same way?

As long as I remember to give it a second or two to wake up, I don't have a KP. This morning I was in a hurry, forgot, and KP! Seems like a pain in the butt to have to wait for waking before typing or scrolling. I may try to take it to the Apple store this week.

Good thinking. I have been wondering this too. Lately I've gotten into the habit of opening my PB, muttering "pleasedon'tcrashpleasedon'tcrash" until I think it's safe to touch it, and I've found it panics less. I know I have had a few KPs when I have not touched the trackpad or keys (my lid pops open by itself, and sometimes I find it KP'd when I open it, but that could be the same problem with it being slept and woken in quick succession by the lid bouncing open). However, I've noticed most of the time that the KP occurred just as I touched the trackpad or key. That made me start waiting longer. I'm glad to hear someone else came up with this theory independently.

Last night I did my second reinstall of 10.2.8, this time using the downloadable installer, not the Software Update version. So far no KPs, but I've been keeping my 'book plugged in at work because I can't be bothered with this problem all day. Tonight I'm going to see if I can reproduce the KP without touching any keys.

[HouseSold]

Apple acknowledged that they have had some bad ram of their own in Powerbooks. Your problem sounds similar to mine before I found my bad ram which had passed every test.

If you feel so inclined, you might remove one of your 2 sticks for awhile and then switch sticks to see if one alone will KP in time. You will eliminate that queasy feeling of 'russian roulette' wondering when the next KP arrives, by isolating which one is causing the problem. The odds are pretty great that both are at fault.

I might add, to expedite your testing, run off battery and not ac power adapter. Seems bad memory likes to rear its' head more on battery than ac power.

[Daniel Bayer]

After my nightmare with bad ram and what I still suspect is a buggy 10.2.8, I ordered new ram, did a clean install of 10.2.7 and have not had any problems since.

I will wait for Panther thank you, some might be O.K. with 10.2.8 but I simply can not take the chance, had waaaay to much down time on the last jaunt.