Is my new Macbook supposed to crash?

December 5, 2006 6:00 PM

My Macbook kernel panicked today, and I've had a fair amount of applications crash since I switched to OS X a week ago. Is this normal? If not, how do I fix or reduce the crashes in the future?

I'm a many-year Linux power user and professional administrator, and I bought a Macbook a week or two ago. I played around with OS X, and decided that if I ever had a hassle because of proprietariness, I'd scrub the OS X stuff and put a Linux on it.

A few days into it, I decided to reinstall OS X, to see how bad the damage would be if it ever hit the fan when I had a deadline, and during the reinstall I made my primary user be non-admin, and made an admin account.

Today, when deleting a file off the desktop, I saw the most beautiful kernel panic of my life. I've restrained from doing anything "weird" to the system until I decide to stay with OSX or leave it. I've had Adium crash on me probably 10 times in the last week, and iTerm crashed once or twice, and a few other apps have died.

Thinking it could be bad RAM, I've ran the hardware test off the CD, but didn't do the extended test. Should I?

Is this normal? I understand Adium and iTerm are third party tools, but Adium is fairly popular, and I wouldn't expect a popular piece of software to crash like this.

posted by adamwolf to computers & internet (24 comments total)

I've run Adium for years and had fewer than ten crashes, total, ever. Other than known hardware issues I've never had a kernel panic in OSX. This is definitely not normal.
posted by raf at 6:08 PM on December 5, 2006

Hardware problem. Faulty RAM or logic board.
posted by unSane at 6:22 PM on December 5, 2006

That's definitely not normal, and I agree that it could be bad RAM; run the extended test for starters, and then try taking out the extra RAM and see if it works any better. Either way, you're well in the warranty period, you could probably get a new machine with very little trouble.
posted by xil at 6:23 PM on December 5, 2006

In my experience the hardware test CD will rarely detect bad RAM. If you try the extended test your best chance is to put it in looping mode (Control-L) and run it overnight. Memtest86 has worked for me in the past but there is a small fee to download it now.
posted by Amaterasu at 6:24 PM on December 5, 2006

I bet it's bad ram. Bad RAM has always been the primary cause of kernel panics on my machines. I've never had luck with the hardware tests. I've always just pulled the suspect stick, and all magically becomes well.

With that said, my current brand new MacBook Pro was Kernel Panicking because of some sad Logitech Software that runs my USB mouse. I found out from checking the panic logs:

Applications>Utlities>Console

Open "Console.app" and click on the Logs icon. Expand the arrow next to "Library/Logs" and browse to "panic.log"

Sometimes you can parse what's causing it from the description given. For my problem, the line "com.Logitech.driver.HIDDevices(2.1.1)@0x3b463000" gave it away. I uninstalled the software, and everything has been happy since.

Head over to the discussion groups on Apple's site with your error message, and often the experts there can figure it out. Here and here are good resources.

And, yeah, it's probably just bad RAM!
posted by donguanella at 6:24 PM on December 5, 2006

nth-ing the suspicion that it's bad RAM. The only time I've ever experienced any kind of pernicious crashing/kernal panic weirdnedd it wass due to some non-Apple RAM my boss bought. Betaware can sometimes do strnge things, but certainly not to the degree that you're describiing.
posted by lekvar at 6:30 PM on December 5, 2006

Fun. The RAM is all stock, albeit 2 gigs instead of the standard stock 1G. I'll run the hardware test on loop overnight, and go on from there.
posted by adamwolf at 6:32 PM on December 5, 2006

Kernel panicking is not normal, though crashing applications might be more so depending on the application.

Here's another resource about diagnosing kernel panics.
posted by advil at 6:47 PM on December 5, 2006

Definitely not normal. I've never had a kernel panic or anything BSOD like in the 5 years I've been using OS X. Lots of MS Office apps crashing of course... Also: I tried using iTerm for a day and ended up trashig it. It is not a stable app, as others have found as well (both on G5 and Intel Macs). I find the regular terminal app to be completely adequate...
posted by drmarcj at 6:51 PM on December 5, 2006

I've been using OSX since it came out, only had a problem once, with - you guess it - bad RAM.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 6:58 PM on December 5, 2006

Bad ram.

Seriously. I've had 6 kernel panics, all related to bad ram/peripheral removal (that going away in osx.2.x)
posted by filmgeek at 7:11 PM on December 5, 2006

Another vote for bad (or loose) ram, bad motherboard, something like that.

Some apps crash, but OS X itself does NOT kernel-panic like that. I've used it daily (and hard) since the beta on dozens of machines and only seen anything like that once... and it was mismatched (mixed-speed) RAM.
posted by rokusan at 7:18 PM on December 5, 2006

If I get the hardware test to say it has bad RAM, is it going to be relatively straightforward to write down an error code and get it replaced at an Apple store? What's the usual turn around on something like that? I'm a college student and we're about 6 days before finals start.
posted by adamwolf at 7:23 PM on December 5, 2006

In the two years I've had this Powerbook, I've only had one panic, though I never actually bothered to track down why it happened. Bad RAM tends to be the cause of repeated panics, though.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 7:37 PM on December 5, 2006

As rokusan hinted, make sure that RAM is firmly seated. Bad RAM is hard enough to id via software tests; loose RAM makes for all kinds of intermittant chaos. Look for the RAM installation directions in the manual. Easy. Just don't skip the static discharge step.

My Intel Macs also became considerably more stable after upgrading their PowerPC apps to Universal. Since this is your first Mac, maybe a moot issue for you. But it's easy to check: run /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor. Rosetta runs as process 'translated'. App type is listed in the "kind" column.

You probably won't get the Apple Store to replace the RAM without letting them run some checks first. But they should be able to satisfy themselves and make the swap same-day.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 7:39 PM on December 5, 2006

I had repeated kernel crashes on the Mac Pro when running games with the stock NVidia 7300GT... it was very frustrating. When I replaced the card with a 1900XT, all crashes disappeared and the machine became very solid. So OSX crashes certainly aren't impossible -- the NVidia drivers apparently suck a bit -- but they are pretty rare.

In your case, as so many others are saying, RAM is a very likely culprit, though not the only possibility.

One thing you can try... occasionally the RAM gets seated badly, rather than actually being defective. If you're comfortable opening the machine, try pulling and re-seating the RAM, keeping them in the same position. If that doesn't fix it, pull out one stick. If it's still unstable, swap sticks. If it's STILL busted, you'll have to take it in or ship it off to be fixed. If it starts working, you'll know which stick was defective, and should be able to deal with Apple on just that one part.
posted by Malor at 7:40 PM on December 5, 2006

The Apple Hardware Test (AHT) that comes on the install DVD is should not be trusted when testing RAM. I've had known bad RAM pass repeatedly. I just this evening resolved unexplained (there were no helpful logs) kernel panics at boot on a black MacBook with a simple archive and install.

If it's conclusively bad RAM, and easily reproduced by the AHT, an authorized Apple repair center (or an Apple store) should have replacement RAM the next day, assuming it's in-stock. If the hardware test says bad RAM, just sleep the machine and take it in to show them. This assumes it's all Apple RAM (when you say, "all stock", I assume you added it at build time.)
posted by now i'm piste at 7:48 PM on December 5, 2006

Oh, and on the MacBook the RAM and hard drive are easily accessed by the end-user. Remove the battery and the L-shaped bracket is held in place with three captive screws. There are levers to pry the RAM out, and the HD just slides in and out with minimal force. Don't be alarmed if you remove and reseat the RAM, some of them come with thermal grease
posted by now i'm piste at 7:53 PM on December 5, 2006

One more thing...if you're going to the Apple Retail store, schedule an appointment for some support. Beats waiting around. Of course, I know of no Apple certified repair place that requires you to call ahead.

(I really hate most everything about the Genius Bar)
posted by now i'm piste at 7:59 PM on December 5, 2006

Aside from the *only* solution that everyone is giving, do you have any additional prefpane items or unsanity haxies installed?


I had a 17" PB and it was getting KP's not from any hardware, but it was a prefpane addon (i believe sidetrack).
posted by mphuie at 8:18 PM on December 5, 2006

Nthing the "this is not normal" response; I've been doing heavy duty OSX development for many years, and very rarely get a kernel panic --- maybe one a year, if you discount the occasional preview or prerelease OS seed. That's on a par with my Linux and BSD boxen. It's more common for the windowserver or some other piece of the userland to crash, but that can usually be recovered from without a reboot.
posted by hattifattener at 8:22 PM on December 5, 2006

(Sidetrack installs a kernel module, BTW.)
posted by hattifattener at 8:29 PM on December 5, 2006

I've already reinstalled the OS (last weekend) and the instability didn't change. The apple hardware test ran for ~8 hours, 28 passes and didn't find any errors. I had it on extended test, and looped.

This morning, after I didn't have any bad ram messages on the hw test, I opened up the bottom and reseated the RAM. I'm working on the machine now, and I'll have to see if that fixes the crashes.

Thanks guys!
posted by adamwolf at 5:44 AM on December 6, 2006

adding to the chorus here - i'm a daily mac os x user/developer and i've had 4 kernel panics since the osx public beta. about 1 per year, like hattifattener says, and all of them were related to hardware. ram is the most obvious culprit and the easiest one to troubleshoot, but it could also be something on the logic board.
posted by the painkiller at 7:34 AM on December 6, 2006