[iBook] Help for a friend...

[RP McKay]

On 23/9/04 2:57 am, "patdart" <patdart at cox-internet.com> wrote (in part):

> Now, that's a thought!
> 
> More ideas?

Hi Pat,

What your friend is experiencing is called a Kernel Panic and is caused when
the OS has trouble trying to do something it should be able to do but no
longer can.

The only thing that I can think of that would cause this would be if there
was an automatic update running in the background which was downloading an
important OS update. I am really reaching here though as this normally
shouldn't be an issue.

Can you tell us if he is getting the kernel panics before he logs in (if he
logs in) or is it before this stage? If the panic happens after he logs in
then tell him to try logging into another user and see if that produces the
same results.

If the panics are happening before the login stage then he only has two
options really:

-try to use disk utility as someone mentioned to repair the disk and the
permissions. Restart and see if the system gets further than the last time
it crashed. If so continue to run disk utility from the CD over and over
until it does not repair anything anymore. See if that works.

Then if the system continues to crash the only viable way forward (and this
is really only if the data is not backed up and is important). Get Disk
Warrior version 3 or higher and try that to see if it can repair the damage.

Does he have Journaling enabled? (if so then you cannot run fsck at startup
but if you or he is comfortable doing this then give it a go as it will also
try to repair the disk.

Is there someone that lives near this person that uses a Mac that could then
be used to start his iBook in Target Disk Mode? (using Firewire this allows
another user to pretend his book is an external drive and could then
troubleshoot it or copy files over to the 'healthy' Mac before either
repairing it or reinstalling the OS on the damaged Mac.

As a absolute last resort to save the data on the disk you can do an archive
and install option which if I remember correctly will save the current
damaged OS to the disk and reinstall a new fresh OS as well.

-If all of the above fail (or if he has the data backed up / if the data is
not so important and he can live with the loss) then do a new install of the
OS.

Hope these ideas help...for detailed methods of each either post again or
check out help viewer in the finder and type the appropriate phrase into the
field.

In any case let us know at what stage he is getting the kernel panics...

Cheers,

Richard
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