This morning when I turned on my G5, the display was delayed in coming on...you know usualy you watch the blue screen come up and watch it load. This morning when the display came up it was already at the desk top. I left it for a few minutes and went into the other room. I came back when I heard the fans running really high and there was a black screen up over the desktop telling me to shut down the computer by pressing the power button, so I did. I don't know what's going on with it...Can anyone give me any insight? Do I need to take it to the repair shop?

Karli

The dark screen you are talking about is called a kernel panic (similar to the blue screen of death on Windows). If this becomes a recurring event then I would be concerned. I could just be a one time occurrence. I would restart it and see if it happens again.

Yes, KC is correct. An occasional kernel panic is no cause for concern. KPs can be caused by a corrupted preference file, software interaction, even a small blip in the electic supply. If you start getting them frequently, then it would time to investigate further.

The one you experienced could have been caused by several things...the HD having snot spun up fully when loading OS X, an app having not been shut down fully/properly before the Mac was powered off, etc.

Let us know if it happens again and what you were doing when it occurred.

C

Hmmmm... this provides an interesting visual picture. Perhaps the computer needs a tissue?

Wow...guess I should re-read before hitting the Submit button, huh?

Thanx guys...I'll test it when I get back home and let you know

Karli

Okay so when I went home I powered up the G5 and it loaded up normaly and I went to look on my HD to see if there was anything that I need to back up. I then opened up Photoshop by mistake and then quit. And then the whole computer froze...the mouse and the keyboard wouldn't work. I shut it down by holding down the power button. Then when i powered it back up again the monitor didn't come on with it. The keyboard seemed to be working fine becasue I could hear the volume change as I pressed the bottons. So I just shut it down again and I've left it.

My PM G5 quad has done this on a couple of occasions. On other occasions I get a warning that says power up failed please retry. Very infrequent and not all that bothersome at this point. May have happened 4X in 7 months.
Dave

This has now occurred twice in 2 days. Starting to get concerned. I am sure there is a crash log somewhere in utilities, but for some reason I can not locate it.

The utility for reading log files is named Console. Look in system.log and tell us what you see.

It may have something to do with the black 'snow' on that other site you frequent so often?


Seems like it causes my G5 fans to ramp up when I view the main page. May be some Java inconsistency?

Thanks Larry. I had them turn that snow script off yesterday. I am not sure this has to do with that or not. I am supicious of a video card issue??

Thanks Dave, solved my fan revving anyway.

Today I booted from my back up hard drive and discovered the issue did not occur there. It appears it was a software or bad file issue. I Partitioned the main Mac HD (which essentially erased it), renamed it with the same original name and the copied the back up drive to it. I then booted from that original drive and it appears all is well.
Having a good back up boot drive has really paid off here as now I do not have to reinstall OSX and do all the updates, try and reload all of my applications and do the same (as well as locate licenses).
Just thought I would share this in case it is of any help to the rest of you.
I was doing weekly back ups of my entire Macintosh HD and thankfully this week's had not yet occurred so I had a good back up to work from.
Dave

Michael,
Sorry I did not see this reply earlier. Even though I feel I have resolved the issue I would like to locate this log you are speaking of for future reference.
Where is it?
Thanks,
Dave