OSX - Black Screen of Death

roamer

One of the macs here in the office has started displaying a black box on the screen with a power on/off icon faded into the background regularily. In this black box it says I must restart my computer in various laungauges.

Has anybody else come across the Mac "Black screen of death" and if so, what causes it?

Gordon

Thankfully I haven't.

Here's a google link

Syth

Gordon wrote:

Thankfully I haven't.

Here's a google link

Greek google?!

mycroft

Gordon wrote:

Thankfully I haven't.

Here's a google link

Eerily I have as well just in the past few days on my powerbook g4. Kinda more than a little alarmed.

Considering taking it into the mac store on tuesday.

JoeBaz

Hi Guys.
The Black Screen of Death can be caused by various issues (Hardware & Software).
The best thing to do is try and remember what you installed last on the machine whether it was hardware or software, before the BSOD was happening.

You should try and load up the Mac by holding down the shift key. This will load up in "Safe Boot". You should be able to see if there are any problems in the software etc when you boot in.
Let me know how you get on and if possible and you are in the Dublin area, I might be able to have a look at it for you. I have had to fix two powerbooks recently with very similar problems.
Cheers.

Gordon

(Yeah, I'm in Greece and can't get English google toolbar on Firefox! good luck with it op)

babypink

yeah the black 'screen of death' is generally caused by a kenel panic. It could be anything to be honest though the usual culprits would be faulty ram or terminal os error as JoeBaz said earlier.

i'd try the safe boot, making sure that no extra peripherals are connected, just to be sure

mycroft

babypink wrote:

yeah the black 'screen of death' is generally caused by a kenel panic. It could be anything to be honest though the usual culprits would be faulty ram or terminal os error as JoeBaz said earlier.

i'd try the safe boot, making sure that no extra peripherals are connected, just to be sure

Once you safe boot, what would you suggest?

JoeBaz

After you safe boot, check your Apple System Profiler and go through all of your hardware. Make sure all of your hardware is present.
I recently fixed two powerbooks and they were both suffering from the BSOD. One of them had a faulty Memory Dimm, which once it was removed, the machine worked fine.
The other powerbook had a faulty airport card. The way I found this out was by checking the Apple System Profiler and discovered that the card was no longer present. The machine was trying to utilize the card and thus would cause the BSOD. After I removed the card, the machine was fine again.
Do you have the Apple Hardware Test CD that came with the powerbook? If you do, run the hardware test on the CD and see if any of the tests fail.
If it is not a Hardware fault, then it could be something in the software conflicting within the Kernel. Did you install any new software before the BSOD would happen?
Give that a go and let us know how you get on.

babypink

JoeBaz wrote:

After you safe boot, check your Apple System Profiler and go through all of your hardware. Make sure all of your hardware is present.
I recently fixed two powerbooks and they were both suffering from the BSOD. One of them had a faulty Memory Dimm, which once it was removed, the machine worked fine.
The other powerbook had a faulty airport card. The way I found this out was by checking the Apple System Profiler and discovered that the card was no longer present. The machine was trying to utilize the card and thus would cause the BSOD. After I removed the card, the machine was fine again.
Do you have the Apple Hardware Test CD that came with the powerbook? If you do, run the hardware test on the CD and see if any of the tests fail.
If it is not a Hardware fault, then it could be something in the software conflicting within the Kernel. Did you install any new software before the BSOD would happen?
Give that a go and let us know how you get on.

ditto to this.....i'd also run the apps you were running at the time of the BSOD to rule them out also

mycroft

babypink wrote:

ditto to this.....i'd also run the apps you were running at the time of the BSOD to rule them out also

I've narrowed it down to Azereus and my new modem, it's usb is drawing it's power from the laptop.......Hmmmmm

Jorinn

Actually I've encountered this a few times in rather more unusual circumstances. you can get kernal info and just read where it fails to isolate the problem further. In my case it was cpu related.

Hugh_C

roamer wrote:

One of the macs here in the office has started displaying a black box on the screen with a power on/off icon faded into the background regularily. In this black box it says I must restart my computer in various laungauges.

Has anybody else come across the Mac "Black screen of death" and if so, what causes it?

It's called a Kernel Panic.

Here's what to do (before you go through any of the Safe Boot recommendations):

1. Reboot your machine off an install DVD or CD (it'll be a DVD of you're on Tiger). Once you've rebooted,

2. go to Disk Utilities (can't remember exactly where it is since I'm not booted off an install disk) and once you're there, select your disk drive in the top left hand side, it'll look something like this.

3. Then select Repair Disk from somewhere near the bottom right hand side. If it has problems repairing, then it'll tell you - that's a whole 'nother can of worms, see below. After you've repaired the disk, you need to

4. Repair Disk Permissions. It'll take a few minutes.

5. Then reboot again, this time off your internal drive. Hopefully, this will have tidied up any crud that may have been screwing up your machine. If your kernel panics persist, then it's time to start ars1ng about with safe boots etc.

If Disk Utility can't repair your disk, your machine has a serious anomaly in its directory structure, unfixable by Apple's own repair utility. It's time to call in the heavies like DiskWarrior which will fix a lot of stuff that other utilities can't. It's not free.

hth, hugh

gerryk

Can you not examine the syslog/messages to see what causes the problem before blindly doing rebuilds?

babypink

gerryk wrote:

Can you not examine the syslog/messages to see what causes the problem before blindly doing rebuilds?

i wouldnt call repairing the drive permissions a rebuild, it's no more than a 10/15 minute event and doesn't cause any data loss. Yeah examine them to your hearts content, they'll tell you which thread crashed and what it was doing at the time. Generally though its a good first port of call with a kernel panic to repair the permissions.

deRanged

mycroft wrote:

I've narrowed it down to Azereus and my new modem, it's usb is drawing it's power from the laptop.......Hmmmmm

Os x will shutdown USB ports if it decides they're drawing too much power. It normally pops up a dialog box saying that though.
I wonder if it's doing that and that's causing your problem. It should be worth checking the system logs.

Anyway - I've always found USB to be problematic, so I try to always use a powered hub.

mycroft

deRanged wrote:

Os x will shutdown USB ports if it decides they're drawing too much power. It normally pops up a dialog box saying that though.
I wonder if it's doing that and that's causing your problem. It should be worth checking the system logs.

Anyway - I've always found USB to be problematic, so I try to always use a powered hub.

I think this is the core problem and I've remedied it by switching off my USB modem when it's not in use. Which seems to do the trick.

Now however when booted, my G4 occasionally admits a high pitched whinge.

gerryk

babypink wrote:

Generally though its a good first port of call with a kernel panic to repair the permissions.

I'm not a fan of any form of automated repair unless I've exhausted all other options.
Also, I don't see how messed up permissions would cause a kernel panic, the kernel runs as UID 0 and can therefore r/w anything.