Apple Kernel Panics, Random Crashes - How I Diagnosed My Problem
So I’ve been harboring a dirty secret for a very long time - I’ve been plagued with kernel panics and crashes for a very long time on my PowerMac Quad Core G5. They’ve been going on for a very long time. Sometimes I’d have up to five a day. I’ve always just chalked them up to running a video production machine - running around large chunks of video data was thrashing my poor Mac. But I’m here to tell you today that I’ve found the cure!
First I started small - deleting all my render files and questionable media in Final Cut Pro. I’ve seen corrupted media crash a computer quicker than most anything. Then I went through the steps outlined on Kernel Panic FAQ pages like this one. Generally they all recommend disconnecting hardware, checking RAM, etc. and then graduating to reinstalling the system and whatnot. I did all of these things. Twice. I called AppleCare - not much help there, but they recommended I call a local Apple-Certified repair shop. I did. He recommended I check my RAM because it sounded like a bad stick somewhere. I told him that I’d done this already using Apple Hardware Check and TechTool Pro. He seemed unconvinced and recommended that I use a piece of software called Rember, which is a “real-deal” RAM tester. Have you guessed the outcome of the test yet? I had bad RAM causing the crashes. I was amazed that this little utility uncovered what Apple Hardware Check and TechTool Pro could not. Ironically it was the stock Apple RAM that came with the computer that was bunk . . . not the 4 GB of third-party RAM that I’d installed myself to save money. So no more Kernel Panics!
