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Elevin · Mar 26, 2004, 11:39 PM

Hi all,
I just got my new 12" iBook (640ram, 60gb hd, bluetooth, airport card) in the mail yesterday. Very cool little machine. Looks great, and seemed to work nicely to begin with. It only crashed once or twice yesterday. It has probably crashed around 10 times today. I'm not just talking about a program freeze (well, it does that too), but a full crash. A little grey box comes up and says (in several languages) something like "you need to restart your computer now". I can't force quit that box or anything, all I can do is restart. Various programs have been force quitting on their own. iChat, airport utility, firefox (mozilla), Safari. Safari was crashing so bad I couldn't post here. After safari crashes a couple times, it crashes the whole computer with that grey box thing. Now, I have downloaded some stuff. I downloaded Acquisition (on which I've downloaded one song), Firefox, Snood, and Escape Velocity, I think that's it. This isn't normal, is it? Here's the kicker, I'm taking off to go back to college on sunday, so this'll be a real pain in the ass to fix/send off unless I do tomorrow (saturday). Is this hardware stuff going wrong? Software? What's the deal? Should I try reinstalling the whole system (PLEASE say "no")? Thanks for the help,

-Ezra

discotronic · Mar 27, 2004, 12:51 AM

Originally posted by Elevin:
Hi all,
I just got my new 12" iBook (640ram, 60gb hd, bluetooth, airport card) in the mail yesterday. Very cool little machine. Looks great, and seemed to work nicely to begin with. It only crashed once or twice yesterday. It has probably crashed around 10 times today. I'm not just talking about a program freeze (well, it does that too), but a full crash. A little grey box comes up and says (in several languages) something like "you need to restart your computer now". I can't force quit that box or anything, all I can do is restart. Various programs have been force quitting on their own. iChat, airport utility, firefox (mozilla), Safari. Safari was crashing so bad I couldn't post here. After safari crashes a couple times, it crashes the whole computer with that grey box thing. Now, I have downloaded some stuff. I downloaded Acquisition (on which I've downloaded one song), Firefox, Snood, and Escape Velocity, I think that's it. This isn't normal, is it? Here's the kicker, I'm taking off to go back to college on sunday, so this'll be a real pain in the ass to fix/send off unless I do tomorrow (saturday). Is this hardware stuff going wrong? Software? What's the deal? Should I try reinstalling the whole system (PLEASE say "no")? Thanks for the help,

-Ezra

It's called a kernal panic. Sounds like a problem with the RAM upgrade to me. Take the ram out and restart. See if that is the cause of the crashes. Another thing you should do is boot up with the OSX install CD and run the Disk Utility. If there are no errors there you should run the Hardware Test program that came with the system. If you still don't have any errors you might want to consider reinstalling. If you have an Apple Store near you might want to consider paying them a visit or at least call Applecare.

I always do a clean install when I get a new system. The one time I deceided not to do it the system crashed from a bad install.

discotronic · Mar 27, 2004, 12:53 AM

You might want to take the Airport card out also.

Elevin · Mar 27, 2004, 01:54 AM

Hmmm,
I took out the 512 stick of ram and it seems to be now running as good as it looks (which is damn fine). No crashes yet (and I've redownloaded firefox and have been surfing for several minutes). I've tried to crash it, but its not working (dang!

) So I guess I need to call apple, send 'em this stick of ram, and have them send me a new stick up at school. At least I can still play with it on the plane ride up there. Another note: the keyboard isn't really wanting to fit back in to place all that nicely. I'm probably just stupid. I'll try to refit it some. Thanks for the help though, that seemed to fix the whole crashing problem.

-Ezra

Elevin · Mar 27, 2004, 02:37 AM

This is weird. I can't seem to get the damn keyboard to fit back into place exactly right. I can't get both tabs to go in thier spots. If the right side is in, the left side is a bit raised (ie, if the f12 is nicely level, then the esc is raised). Is there some trick to this? Also, when calibrating the battery, does it matter if you turn off the computer or remove the battery (as long as you don't plug in the ac adapter)? Thanks again for the help,

-Ezra

va3uxb · Mar 27, 2004, 06:34 AM

When you put the keyboard back in, make sure the tiny little magnet is flat.

This threw me for a few minutes when I first installed the airport card. Around the F6 key, underneath the keyboard, is a tiny little round flat magnet that is suposed to lay flush with the casing, and helps hold the keyboard down. When you lift the keyboard up the magnet pulls up partway, and sometimes ends up sticking up on it's side.

Then when you go to put the keyboard back the magnet gets in the way and the keyboard doesn't fit right.

However, once the magnet is back in it's little spot and is pushed down flat, the keyboard should fit correctly.

-Stephanie

amazing · Mar 27, 2004, 10:33 AM

Also check that the little white locking screw is retracted.

grand mufti · Mar 27, 2004, 12:25 PM

Elevin, lets us know how things go with the stick.. as im goin to upgrade my new book also with the same amount of ram.

nredman · Mar 27, 2004, 01:28 PM

Originally posted by Elevin:
This is weird. I can't seem to get the damn keyboard to fit back into place exactly right. I can't get both tabs to go in thier spots. If the right side is in, the left side is a bit raised (ie, if the f12 is nicely level, then the esc is raised). Is there some trick to this? Also, when calibrating the battery, does it matter if you turn off the computer or remove the battery (as long as you don't plug in the ac adapter)? Thanks again for the help,

-Ezra

i had that keyboard problem after installing my aiport extreme...try pushing down on the keyboard by the space bar...on mine it wasn't completely locked in right. hope that helps.

Elevin · Apr 2, 2004, 10:33 AM

Hey all,
they sent me a replacement keyboard and a new 512 stick of ram. Here's how a fixed the keyboard problem (just in case any newbies are reading this): If you press down the bottom keys (ie spacebar, apple, etc) you can get a real clear view of the slots and the plastic pegs (or little pieces of plastic) that fit into those holes. Then you can get it lined up real nice and it will fit right in. Before, if I had it in on one side, then the other side would be about a millimeter too high. Thats what happened on the old keyboard (and I must have mashed it in and bent it). After I put in the new stick of ram the crashes stopped. Its been a couple days now, and no crashes, so its looking good.
-Ezra

Mrjinglesusa · Apr 2, 2004, 11:11 AM

Originally posted by grand mufti:
Elevin, lets us know how things go with the stick.. as im goin to upgrade my new book also with the same amount of ram.

You'll love it. I upgraded from 256 to 640 and this thing is like a new machine now. VPC w/ Windows 2000 is actually quite usable.

Elevin · Apr 6, 2004, 12:09 AM

I've had this non-crashing machine for about a week now, and its freakin' awesome. I haven't had a mac since OS 9.2, so this is a whole new deal. The whole interface kicks ass. I love how programs are installed. Some of 'em are just a single file/icon that you place where you want (firefox for instance). It may be just me, but it seems like windows programs in general have worse interfaces/appearances. Its really something you gotta experience. Great machine, I'd recommend it to anyone.

-Ezra