Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Rinpoche · Feb 7, 2003, 01:50 PM

we all know about the blue screen of death. i'm getting os x's grey screen of death.

at random moments my computer will freeze, and a grey transparent 'curtain' will drop over the screen with a white box in the center telling me that i need to restart the computer. (explanation in 4 different languages). on the bottom there are two sets of numbers.

now i have also been getting all kinds of 'this program unexpectedly quit' messges since my initial purchase of this powerbook last november. this happens with nearly every program that i use. then it led up to the grey screens of death, which is obviously a much worse problem. i even got the grey screen twice while using disk utilitiy's repair permissions option.

i called appple at one point and they told me to reinstall the os because the problem was most likely a software issue. i did just that, however after another day i once again saw the grey screen of death not once but twice. once in the middle of using adobe illustrator, and the second time was again while using disk permissions repair in disk utility.

i ran the hardware test cd and everything seemed to check out ok.

what should i do? i'm taking this thing into apple today and have them check it out but i'd like to be armed with some questions/possiblities that i can relay to them. any help wold be appreciated.

BTP · Feb 7, 2003, 01:56 PM

You are getting random kernel panics.

You say have already done a clean install. I'l assume you know what that is and have done it properly.

Did you add RAM?

If so, remove it. See if the crashing persists.

If you do a clean install and still get crashes, then it is almost certainly hardware. RAM is the first suspect. Also, do you have any other things attached like USB devices, etc.?

From what you are saying, I'll guess that you have installed RAM and that maybe it is bad.

Rinpoche · Feb 7, 2003, 02:24 PM

Thanks for the reply. Yes I do have additional RAM, i have 1 gig total, and I also use a usb powered mouse. So maybe youre right and one of these could possibly be screwing things up. Hopefully when the guys at the genius bar check it out today the problem will be rectified. Thanks again.

Hi I'm Ben · Feb 7, 2003, 02:33 PM

my pc never crashes.

drissa · Feb 7, 2003, 02:39 PM

Hi I'm a troll

bradoesch · Feb 7, 2003, 10:31 PM

Originally posted by Hi I'm Ben:
my pc never crashes.

All computers crash.

pliny · Feb 8, 2003, 12:13 AM

Originally posted by drissa:
Hi I'm a troll

b11051973 · Feb 8, 2003, 01:24 AM

I had that same grey screen the other day. I could barely read what it said because the backlight wouldn't come on my 12" PB. I've only had this PB for a week and I've had 2 OS crashes. The other one was when I was trying to eject a CD. The thing just locked up. Kinda weird.

How many times did my Win XP machine crash this week you ask? Zero

int69h · 02:04 AM

Originally posted by bradoesch:
All computers crash.

There are quite a few VAXs out there running VMS with 15+ years uptime. Not ALL computers crash.

edit:
I refuse to say VAXen, Boxen, virii, or any other idiotic plural form.

wadesworld · Feb 8, 2003, 10:40 AM

How many times did my Win XP machine crash this week you ask? Zero

Then leave and go use it.

Wade

b11051973 · Feb 8, 2003, 10:57 AM

Originally posted by wadesworld:
Then leave and go use it.

Wade

I put the Win XP thing in becuase of the title of this thread. If my Mac crashed like Windows, it wouldn't have crashed this last week.

Don't people on this board have a sense of humor. Did you notice the smiley face on my Win XP comment??

I like my Mac and Apple. My first computer was an Apple IIe. I also had a Power Mac 7100/66 in college. I'm just open minded and also like my Dell.

kmkkid · Feb 8, 2003, 12:46 PM

Originally posted by b11051973:
I put the Win XP thing in becuase of the title of this thread. If my Mac crashed like Windows, it wouldn't have crashed this last week.

Don't people on this board have a sense of humor. Did you notice the smiley face on my Win XP comment??

I like my Mac and Apple. My first computer was an Apple IIe. I also had a Power Mac 7100/66 in college. I'm just open minded and also like my Dell.

why can't they all be like you?

Chris

UNTeMac · Feb 8, 2003, 01:36 PM

Thread hijack in progress...

Anyway, the first thing you should do is take out the extra RAM you added. I wouldn't think the USB mouse could cause kernel panics (but who knows). Are you using any external harddrives or other storage?