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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > Kernel Spikes and crazy display colours...?? :s

Kernel Spikes and crazy display colours...?? :s
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B Gallagher
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May 29, 2008, 09:48 PM
 
Hello all,

I've got a 3 month of MBP. Over the past few weeks or so, every now and then something really strange will happen.

My system will freeze, unfreeze for a few seconds, freeze again... and repeat, until I force an manual shutdown. I've always got Activity Monitor open, and it's showing that the kernel is spiking on a regular basis, then going back down to 'normal.' And repeat... like so...





Not only that, but once this start, I get crazy colour stuff going on with any menus I click on after this (left-clicking on the trash gave me a similar result):


This has happened maybe 5 or 6 times sofar. After the first time it happened, I ran an extended hardware test, which came up clean.

The last two times this happened I was:
1) Closing Transmission.
2) Changing the default downloads folder in Safari.

This hasn't happened since I've updated to 10.5.3, but it's only been a day sofar!

Has anyone else had a similar issue/know what this is/what I should do?

Many thanks.
( Last edited by B Gallagher; May 30, 2008 at 05:49 AM. )
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tinkered
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May 29, 2008, 10:48 PM
 
This is clearly a hardware problem. I would back up my data and hand my MBP for to apple for repair.
17" MBP C2D 2.33/3 GB RAM/500 GB 7200 rpm/Glossy Display|-|
17" iMac CD|-|15" PB G4 1.25 GHz|-|iBook g4 1Ghz|-|Pismo
     
B Gallagher  (op)
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May 29, 2008, 11:08 PM
 
As I feared.. Data's being backed up on an hourly basis, so that's not a problem. I'll have to wait a couple of weeks before I will have time to take my MBP into Apple though.
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seanc
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May 30, 2008, 03:46 AM
 
What's the SMART status on the hard drive? Does the console say anything interesting?
     
B Gallagher  (op)
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May 30, 2008, 04:20 AM
 
SMART status is verified. What is the console? :o
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seanc
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May 30, 2008, 12:38 PM
 
Originally Posted by B Gallagher View Post
SMART status is verified. What is the console? :o
Console.app is an application in the Applications>Utilities folder. By default it should open console.log which will log any problems which occur in OS X or applications that are running. This may help to work out why kernel is taking up a lot of your CPU.
     
B Gallagher  (op)
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May 30, 2008, 10:46 PM
 
Thanks seanc - where within Console.app should I look check the logs related to the kernel for when this last happened?
MBP 15" C2D 2.2GHz 4.0GB 500GB@5400
iPhone 4 32GB Black
     
B Gallagher  (op)
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Oct 11, 2008, 04:50 PM
 
Seems that this is the solution to my problems.
Further images attached:



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Jasoco
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Oct 11, 2008, 09:10 PM
 
Well, it's good it's being supported.

Just a word of note though, when you get back up and running, do yourself a favor and throw away Last.fm. It's a resource hog. Replace it with iScrobbler or GimmeSomeTune. Both do the same thing and with less overhead.
     
B Gallagher  (op)
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Oct 12, 2008, 12:47 AM
 
Thanks for the tip Jasoco. I think I changed over to iScrobbler when I reloaded my system, but I'll check when I get back home!
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Big Mac
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Oct 12, 2008, 03:21 AM
 
It must be due to the Nvidia defect, right?

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
   
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