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60-hz · May 17, 2003, 08:47 AM

Hi i just sold my imac G4 17" he says that when he got home he couldn't get it to boot and only showed a question mark. He did a clean install of OS X 10.2.1 he says he can't upgrade past 10.2.1 and goes into kernal panic reguarly.

Before i sold the iMac i had no problems what so ever and never had a kernal panic on the system ever.

What could have caused this to happen? And what are the soloutions to this problem?

Any feedback is appreciated

entrox · May 17, 2003, 10:29 AM

The kernel of an operating system is a normal program like every other on your system, with the difference that it has special privileges (among other things). If a user-land program causes an error - say writing to a wrong memory location (of another process maybe), the kernel traps that and handles it somehow, usually by killing the offending process. Some people call that "crashing" or even "unexpectedly quitting" :-)

Now think about what happens when the kernel itself is in error - It doesn't know what to do and ... panics! This is called a "kernel panic" and can be caused by bad hardware or (more often) by a programmer error either directly in the kernel or in a loaded driver.

So either some hardware has gone bad, or the guy has done something, which wasn't foreseen by the programmers and triggered a bug.

And please notice: It's spelled "kernel", not "kernal".

Rickster · May 17, 2003, 10:52 PM

Really? I thought it was spelled "colonel".

If you sent the guy the original CDs that came with the iMac, you can have him use the Apple Hardware Test CD. That'll help tell you if something got broken in shipping, or if there's bad RAM (maybe he added RAM after receiving it?). You're still under your original warranty -- I'm not sure how you make sure AppleCare gets transferred to a new owner, but if there's a hardware problem he might be able to get it fixed in warranty.

Axo1ot1 · May 18, 2003, 02:09 AM

AppleCare goes with the computer. He should have no problem geting service, but this sounds like either bad RAM or like an inept user issue to me. I think you should suggest that he run the hardware test, and if all else fails take it in to an Apple authorized service center.

60-hz · May 18, 2003, 05:33 AM

Thanks guy's for the information

I'll pass the information on !!