Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Camera God · Jul 14, 2005, 04:52 PM

Crap. I am freaking out. I have a 15" powerbook, G4 800 DVI. I had apple care, got my HD and fan replaced with 4 days before it was up. My powerbook was fine at first, but then I had occasional freezing. I reinstalled Tiger thinking it was that. The freezing got worse and worse until I had a kernel panic (said something about a corrupt stack), then after I restarted, my screen looks like this:

http://homepage.mac.com/pleisey/.Pictures/P1000476.JPG

Has anyone seen something similar? I am not all that good at trouble shooting, but if I had to guess, I would say it is hardware. Any help is appreciated. Her name is Victoria, and she is my desk queen.

OogaBooga · Jul 14, 2005, 05:25 PM

Looks to me like your GPU is overheating, or the VRAM went bad. Is the fan coming on at all?

Camera God · Jul 14, 2005, 05:31 PM

Yes, the fan comes on occasionally. When I left it in the kernel panic state for a few minues, and came back, the fan was on high and bottom was really hot. I left it when the screen was had those abnormalities, it went to sleep, I woke it up, there were less, it went to sleep, woke it up, and they were gone. Would that be consistent with GPU overheating?

Jacob · Jul 14, 2005, 07:11 PM

Either your video card is getting too hot, or the memory is bad, and it honestly sounds like a memory problem to me, why? Because you have been having continual crashes, and since memory problems are very random, it makes sense. I had to recently replace a memory module for someone who was having the same problems. Take it to your local comp technician, have them test it for you, or download some sort of memory testing utility.

ender2002 · Jul 14, 2005, 09:04 PM

Originally Posted by Camera God

Crap. I am freaking out. I have a 15" powerbook, G4 800 DVI. I had apple care, got my HD and fan replaced with 4 days before it was up. My powerbook was fine at first, but then I had occasional freezing. I reinstalled Tiger thinking it was that. The freezing got worse and worse until I had a kernel panic (said something about a corrupt stack), then after I restarted, my screen looks like this:

http://homepage.mac.com/pleisey/.Pictures/P1000476.JPG

Has anyone seen something similar? I am not all that good at trouble shooting, but if I had to guess, I would say it is hardware. Any help is appreciated. Her name is Victoria, and she is my desk queen.

that looks awesome!!!! how did you do THAT!!!!!

JK

bring it to the apple store ASAP

ginoledesma · Jul 15, 2005, 10:33 PM

I've seen those before a well but on a G4/400 and it was faulty RAM on its video card -- it was a flashed NVidia GeForce 2MX card from a PC that I put into the Mac. I'd advise bringing it into AppleCare ASAP.

euphras · Jul 16, 2005, 12:16 PM

Call Apple. I had problems with my internal burner TWO weeks after AC had expired. They were willing to repair the machine on a goodwill basis. I got a code and giving this code my machine was fixed by a local dealer.

Camera God · Jul 16, 2005, 09:18 PM

After abot 3 hours on the phone talking with 5 different people, the conclulsion is the ram slots went bad.

The good new is that they are sending me a box to ship out my powerbook. I am glad they helped me out, but I am still nervous and crossing my fingers. Thank you for all of your help. I appreciate the fast and courtious replies.

Detrius · Jul 17, 2005, 03:51 AM

I posted this in the Mac OS forum:

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=248286

It may be useful in the future.