Follow up help: more problems

[michaelb]

To follow up on my post about my kernal panics, I have several questions and am not sure what to do from here:

http://forums.macresource.com/read/1/176...msg-177108

I upgraded the HD and reinstalled 10.4 from the disk last night. The new system seemed to work ok. It was slow to wake from sleep, but that may have been due to reindexing everything in spotlight. The finder did crash once at the beginning.

Problem 1: using a newer tech universal adapter from OWC, I tried to hook up my old internal HD externally. It didn't mount initially, and with the adapter (just a various pile of different cables) it was hard to tell if it was really powered up and/or connected, so I went through and was checking all the cables, including disconnecting and reconnecting the power cable. I got it to mount, but immediately had problems. It now won't mount at all, and disk utility can't repair it (something with the btree). I have a complete user back up from 10/1, and I am not sure I need anything on this (I would love to mount it before erasing it though), but suggestions are welcome and this is a warning about possible problems with the newer tech.

Problem 2: I ran system update overnight, including the combo update, itunes, QT, java and airport. This morning on restart I got a KP after logging in (hadn't done anything). My major KP problems started after upgrading itunes and QT a few weeks ago. The crashlog is from SHFSPlus, which is not something I have seen before and not an app that I knew was even running. The only app I had installed was drive genius, since I didn't remember that the demo doesn't actually do anything.

I reset the SMU and PRAM this morning, which I hadn't done before (lots of my KPs seem to be sleep related, so just maybe the SMU will help). I know people will say this is hardware related, but I still don't believe it, and I am not sure what I can do about that. Should I wipe this and reinstall 10.4, and then not update it? Or update it one by one? Is there a place to download the combo update say to .6 (so I can skip .7 and .8)?

Thanks again.

[johnc]

[quote michaelb]It now won't mount at all, and disk utility can't repair it (something with the btree).
http://www.treachery.org/log/2005/08/24/...-my-bacon/

[quote michaelb]Is there a place to download the combo update say to .6 (so I can skip .7 and .8)?
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/m...orppc.html

[michaelb]

I get about a minute of a spinning beach ball waking from sleep, the system log says:

Oct 7 10:48:12 imac-g5 kernel[0]: IOATAController device blocking bus.
Oct 7 10:48:23 imac-g5 kernel[0]: IOATAController device blocking bus.
Oct 7 10:48:35 imac-g5 kernel[0]: IOATAController device blocking bus.
Oct 7 10:48:46 imac-g5 kernel[0]: IOATAController device blocking bus.
Oct 7 10:49:20 imac-g5 kernel[0]: IOATAController device blocking bus.

searching for that, other threads on maxfixit, etc, suggest that is likey a hardware problem, with the harddrive controller, but could still be software. I will admit that I just stuck the new drive and hooked it up and then formatted it with the install disk, so if I needed to anything special, I missed that step. This is a new problem, since I hadn't noticed this before in the log or with waking from sleep (it used to KP waking from sleep though).

I may reinstall the os and see if this is reproducable with a perfectly fresh version of 10.4 (I probably have 10.3 and 10.2 around here too).

[Fritz]

I see you tried memtest and your old drive.
Dunno if you access to other ram and HD, but I personally have experienced ram that has passed the test, but still was the root of all evil.
The probs you encountered in your previous post sound mem-like to me.

[chas_m]

What's it going to take to get you to take this turkey into an AASP?

[mattkime]

how long did you run memtest? it should be run at least overnight

[michaelb]

I get the delay from sleep with the IOATAController device blocking bus after the clean install and during the setup process, so that problem, which seems new, seems to be related to installing the harddrive (although my KP problems could also be HD related).

I ran the hardware test extended, and the memtest (but that didn't take all night). I may try them again. Taking it in for service was not something I had been considering, although smalldog is not that far away.

thanks for the help.

[mattkime]

At this point I'm quite confident that you have a hardware problem somewhere. Run memtest overnight - it has to be run repeatedly for a long time to catch flaky ram. I've also experienced the update problems you're having because of a bad hard drive. Or you could have a bad install disc. Or a logic board problem - which you'd only be able to uncover by verifying these parts on another machine.

[michaelb]

Thanks again, guys. I feel about computers the way my grandpa felt about cars: even if I don't know how to fix them, it is fun to try. My kids are 5 and 7 and I want to stay ahead of them as long as possible. The iMac G5 is really beautiful on the inside and a joy to open up compared to any other computer I have seen.

I swapped the ram chips, and although I think it booted the first time, after I closed it up I couldn't get the computer to boot with the OWC chip in the first slot, and when I finally booted off the hardware test cd, that obviously found a problem with the ram in mem 1. I am going to run memtest again for a long time and see if that confirms something (now that I printed the instruction and realize I should run it in single user mode). The ram should be under warranty (and is the only thing still under warranty on this iMac).