[Scooterboy]

My PowerBook gets a kernel panic on every startup. This started yesterday and now my computer is unuseable. I get about 30 seconds of use after booting, and then the message, "You must restart your computer" comes over the darkened screen".

I ran both CD hardware tests, and everything checks out ok. I tried repairing permissions from Disc Utilities on the PowerBook software disc and I still got the kernel panic. I tried repairing the disc and received this message (in red):

Invalid catalog record type
Volume check failed
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)

(in black text) Repair attempted on 1 Volume

(in green text) 0 HFS volumes repaired
(in red text) 1 Volume could not be repaired

It sounds like a hard drive issue, no?

I tried an Archive and re-install of OS 10.3

I am going to back up the drive (it will mount in FW target disc mode on my eMac) and then zero the drive and reinstall OS X 10.3.

Any thoughts?

[Scooterboy]

The Archive and re-install failed. The kernel panic happened during install.

I next did an erase and install, and this worked.

Now I'm Copying my backed up User folder from my eMac back to the PowerBook. It's mostly Documents and iTunes music files.

What do you think went wrong?

From Finder.crash.log:

Command: Finder
Path: /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder
Version: 10.3.2 (10.3.2)
PID: 243
Thread: 6

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x06009830

[Scooterboy]

And from Exited.process.crash.log:

Command: Exited process
Path: Exited process
Version: ??? (???)
PID: 2612
Thread: Unknown

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0xe8800200
(null)
PPC Thread State:
srr0: 0x908311f4 srr1: 0x0000d030 vrsave: 0x00000000
cr: 0x42042224 xer: 0x20000004 lr: 0x000abd4c ctr: 0x908311e0
r0: 0x000abd4c r1: 0xf0497da0 r2: 0x00000001 r3: 0x067be500
r4: 0x90882614 r5: 0x000299c4 r6: 0x02268d68 r7: 0xf0497d70
r8: 0x00000000 r9: 0x06759ca0 r10: 0x00029934 r11: 0x0043d78c
r12: 0xe8800200 r13: 0x00000000 r14: 0x00000000 r15: 0x00000000
r16: 0x00000000 r17: 0x00000000 r18: 0x00308358 r19: 0x0196b0d0
r20: 0x0196b130 r21: 0x0196b334 r22: 0x0003e767 r23: 0x00000000
r24: 0x0196b000 r25: 0x0196b91c r26: 0x0030bad0 r27: 0x0003e767
r28: 0x0196b334 r29: 0x00001133 r30: 0x0196b000 r31: 0x000abcb0

[typoon]

Did you install any RAM? Sometimes 3rd party RAM can cause issues. Try removing the new stick of RAM and see if that fixes it.

[tooki]

Originally posted by Scooterboy:
...Invalid catalog record type
Volume check failed
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)

(in black text) Repair attempted on 1 Volume

(in green text) 0 HFS volumes repaired
(in red text) 1 Volume could not be repaired

It sounds like a hard drive issue, no?

No. A bad hard drive can't be scanned. That's just corruption, which is (broadly speaking) a software problem. If a complete OS reinstall (erase the disk first!) doesn't fix the problem, then yeah, I'd look into bad RAM as people have suggested.

tooki

[Scooterboy]

Thanks for the replies! I don't think it was the RAM, although it came from Fry's outpost.com because with the Apple supplied RAM my PowerBook still did the same thing.

I did a full erase and install, and now everything is running as it should. I'll be re-installing the 2 GB RAM soon so then I'll know for sure if it's bad. I'm taking the PowerBook on a short trip this weekend and it seems to run longer on battery with only the 512MB installed, so the extra RAM will go in next week.

So, Tooki, it looks as if you're right in that it was corrupted software. But I thought OSX can't be corrupted, that the System folder can't easily be compromised.

[tooki]

I have found Mac OS X to be much harder to corrupt than Mac OS 9, but it's still possible.

That said, what you had was disk corruption (which is not the same thing as operating system corruption). Mac OS X is a lot better in that respect as well, but again, not immune.

What happens is that corruption then causes more crashes, which then in turn corrupt the disk even further in a vicious cycle, until -- as you experienced -- it gets too corrupted to boot.

On your fresh system install, be sure that journaling is enabled on the boot volume. This massively helps to reduce corruption if the system crashes.

tooki