I had this issue recently. For the last 2-3 weeks and even more so recently my Mac Pro had started to give Kernel Panics and even sudden restarts.
I tried everything.
I ran Drive Genius and Disk Utility to fix all my HDs.
I ran OSX update and installed the latest updates for all my products.
I disabled QuickSilver and SMC Fan control which I use to decrease
the HD temperature a little bit extra over what OS X does routinely.
Still got errors.
I got out my Mac Pro CDs (Leoard DVD did not work) and ran
Apple Hardware Test. It ran for about 15 minutes. It OK'ed everything.
I downloaded Techtool Pro and ran all the hardware tests.
It OK'ed everything. However it did not test all the RAM, while
running TechTool I saw that 6 out of 7GB of RAM were still FREE (green).
I finally got hold of Rember for MacOSX. It actually took over virtually
all the RAM and started its painfully slow testing process. During this time
while switching to SpotLight the system crashed again - it Kernel Panicked.
Ok, so I had enough. Removed 2GB of the 7GB I had an voila, no problems
so far.
Started up TechTool and put it a loop testing RAM, loaded Rember and got it to test the RAM and even got Toast to do some H264 to MPEG2 transcoding,
this took out ALL THE RAM (0 MB free) and even the HD swap was
used, but no Kernel Panics. Now after 2 days of heavy usage the
system works great, it doesn't even give me shut down issues.
The only problem I now have is that the Mac OSX 10.5.5 update
doesn't want to install, it stops at Configuration and the progress bar
refuses to budge. Will wait for the next Update, since people have
been complaining about 10.5.5 anyway.
Conclusions:
So 3 things.
Kernel Panics --- probably faulty RAM. The vendor, TransIntl,
has given me an RMA number but sending it back will still cost me R100-200.
The other issue is that TechTool Pro at $99 doesn't TEST ALL THE RAM
while the FREE program Rember does!
Apple Hardware Test is bogus and doesn't pick up errors, which
agrees with some Google research I did on the topic. It doesn't
run off the Leopard DVD but you have to use your original, in my case
Tiger, installation disks.
I tried everything.
I ran Drive Genius and Disk Utility to fix all my HDs.
I ran OSX update and installed the latest updates for all my products.
I disabled QuickSilver and SMC Fan control which I use to decrease
the HD temperature a little bit extra over what OS X does routinely.
Still got errors.
I got out my Mac Pro CDs (Leoard DVD did not work) and ran
Apple Hardware Test. It ran for about 15 minutes. It OK'ed everything.
I downloaded Techtool Pro and ran all the hardware tests.
It OK'ed everything. However it did not test all the RAM, while
running TechTool I saw that 6 out of 7GB of RAM were still FREE (green).
I finally got hold of Rember for MacOSX. It actually took over virtually
all the RAM and started its painfully slow testing process. During this time
while switching to SpotLight the system crashed again - it Kernel Panicked.
Ok, so I had enough. Removed 2GB of the 7GB I had an voila, no problems
so far.
Started up TechTool and put it a loop testing RAM, loaded Rember and got it to test the RAM and even got Toast to do some H264 to MPEG2 transcoding,
this took out ALL THE RAM (0 MB free) and even the HD swap was
used, but no Kernel Panics. Now after 2 days of heavy usage the
system works great, it doesn't even give me shut down issues.
The only problem I now have is that the Mac OSX 10.5.5 update
doesn't want to install, it stops at Configuration and the progress bar
refuses to budge. Will wait for the next Update, since people have
been complaining about 10.5.5 anyway.
Conclusions:
So 3 things.
Kernel Panics --- probably faulty RAM. The vendor, TransIntl,
has given me an RMA number but sending it back will still cost me R100-200.
The other issue is that TechTool Pro at $99 doesn't TEST ALL THE RAM
while the FREE program Rember does!
Apple Hardware Test is bogus and doesn't pick up errors, which
agrees with some Google research I did on the topic. It doesn't
run off the Leopard DVD but you have to use your original, in my case
Tiger, installation disks.