[LlamaBoy]

I finally received my new 15" Al 1.25GHz Powerbook on Friday (9/26) and was happy beyond belief. After hours of transferring files and configuring, I was all set to go... or so I thought.

Today (Monday) was the first day of major use, since I use the Powerbook at the office. It has crashed no less than four times today. Three times the machine would drop into a full-screen shell displaying "CPU 0 crash trying to resync" or something similar and only a hard power-off would stop the scrolling messages. Once I had the OS X "Your computer has stopped responding. Hold down the power".

I have been a Powerbook user for two years now, and I have seen crashes before. No big deal. But four in one day? I have been checking out /var/log/system.log and have the following information logged right before the reset:

1st crash
Sep 29 09:34 WindowServer[640]: orderWindow: Invalid other window
Sep 29 10:02 WindowServer[640]: _CGXSynchronizeSurfaceVisibility : IOAccelSetSurfaceFramebufferShape returns -536870210

2nd crash
Sep 29 11:19 /Applications/Microsoft Office X/Microsoft Entourage: *** Warning: Line option kATSLineIsDisplayOnly has been deprecated. *
Sep 29 11:19 /Applications/Microsoft Office X/Microsoft Entourage: *** Warning: ATSUMeasureText has been deprecated. Use ATSUGetUnjusti
fiedBounds instead. ***

3rd crash
Sep 29 13:12 /Applications/Virtual PC 6/Contents/MacOS/Virtual PC 6: *** Warning: Line option kATSLineIsDisplayOnly has been deprecated.
***

4th crash
Sep 29 14:06 WindowServer[446]: ERROR! execle(/Applications/Virtual PC 6/Contents/MacOS) returned, err=22
Sep 29 14:06 WindowServer[180]: _CGXSynchronizeSurfaceVisibility : IOAccelSetSurfaceFramebufferShape returns -536870210

5th crash
Sep 29 19:24 WindowServer[193]: _CGXSynchronizeSurfaceVisibility : IOAccelSetSurfaceFramebufferShape returns -536870210 (this displayed twice)



I did add some third party memory today, and perhaps this is the cause, but I was wondering if anyone else was having crash problems. I work as a Windows Network Admin by day, and I am well aware of the problems with bad/incompatible memory. I put in 512meg of PC2100 DDR (Microcenter).

[iDaver]

You need PC2700 memory.

[gorickey]

When you take out new memory and install the factory memory, can you re-produce those crashes?

[LlamaBoy]

I will take out the new memory and see if crashed still occur, but unfortunately they appear to be completely random in occurence. It definately seems to happen more with Virtual PC 6.0 (I was trying to set up a Windows XP image).

As for the memory, I did use PC2700, I just double-checked. I posted PC2100 incorrectly.

[pknoll]

I had the same problems after installing 3rd party memory. After replacing that module, the problems ceased to occur.

The new PowerBooks are apparently very sensitive to memory quality; both modules were (ostensibly) high quality, but one worked and the other didn't.

Pull that module and see if your stability returns.

[HouseSold]

I went through your same gyrations; you're going to go nuts with no apparent solution with crashes occurring no matter what you're working on.

My crashes (kernel panics) occurred after moving data from my backup firewire 160gb drive (previous Powerbook - 10.2.6) onto the new Powerbook 17"1.33 (10.2.7).

Even though I added a 512mb stick (from www.oempcworld.com - who will buy back other sticks of any size after a purchase) and updated to 10.2.8, the panics occurred more often waking from sleep and randomly while browsing after moving my data to the new Powerbook.

On an Applecare call to revive an ABS which clonked after the 5.1.3 firmware update, the tech listened to my dilemna and suggested a clean install (creating a new previous system folder and leaving data files unchanged) and/or losing the added 512mb stick (not supplied by Apple). I resisted at first, but when it froze while on the call, I caved and re-installed 10.2.7 after running AHT (Apple Hardware Test) revealing no defects (takes forever and a day for memory test)

End result is a panic-less (so far-since Saturday 9/27/03) 17"1.33 which previously came close to invoking some language, that even I had forgotten.

Turns out I should have moved only data and Applications, not another System Folder which in operation confused the OS as well as the Applications. Certainly explained sleep freezes, especially open and shut cases. Memory may be less likely the culprit.

Best wishes...