Home Forums Hardware Mac Desktops & Notebooks Kernel panic or worse?

My daughter's Macbook has suffered a severe breakdown. It may be related to my attempting to use it to rebuild the directory on my Pro. At least, it happened soon after.

1) Attempted to start my Pro in Terminal mode, linked Firewire to Firewire with daughter's MacBook. Icon for my Pro never appeared and her MacBook froze repeatedly. "About This Mac / More Info..." on her computer gave message to the effect that her Firewire could not be accessed....

2) Soon after, her machine either will not start up, freezing on a light grey screen not long after startup. Nothing to do but hard close and restart. Or...

3) Sometimes I get a screen with variations of the following:

"panic(cpu 1) caller 0x2aaf41: Machine Check at 0x556a531c, thread:0x6b0f7a8, trapno:0x12, err:0x0, registers:
CRO: 0x80001003b, CR2 0x82984c, CR3 0x00100000, CR4:0x00000660
EAX:….. alphanumeric strings similar to above
ESP:…. ditto
EFL:…. ditto

Debugger called: <panic>
Backtrace (CPU1), Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x5547efb8 : 0x21b837 (0x5dd7fc ………._
similar[i]
[i]similar[i]
[i]similar (8 lines total)[i]
Kernel Extensions in bactrace (with dependencies):
Com.apple.driver .AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement)142.6.0)@0x5569c000->0x5bffff

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel task

Mac OS version
10k549

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 10.8.0 date
System model name: MacBook 4,1 (Mac-F22788A9)

System uptime in nanoseconds: [i]various…"

About 6 months ago we had an additional 2GB ram installed in her MacBook....

Any ideas before I trot to the shop? We are both running 10.6.8

Your description is unclear. Before starting this, did you boot your daughter's MacBook into Firewire Target Disk Mode? (Either boot while holding down the "t" key or by selecting Fire Target Disk Mode in System Preferences > Boot drive.)

I was trying the other way. Booting my Pro into Firewire so that I could use her computer to repair the Directory (don't have the Pro Snow Leopard startup discs for some reason). Could not see Pro icon on her computer, checked her Firewire in "About This Mac" and received red warning message that it could not be accessed.

At this stage, her machine will not boot up in Safe Mode either. I get variations of the same message. In May we had it upgraded from 1 - 4GB, which I believe meant removing the original 1GB and replacing with two "new" 2GB chips.

Thanks for the reply

you might try just opening it up and making sure the RAM hasn't gotten a bit loose?

Usually if RAM gets loose, the computer won't even try to boot; it will just beep when you turn it on.

It sounds to me like the directory has become damaged on the Macbook, and needs to be repaired.

tried booting the hardware test disk?

how does it react to zapping pram?