OS Crashes with 2 monitors while watching video full screen... ?
Hello Forum
I just recently attached a second monitor to my Mac Pro (early 2009). I have only one video card. My setup is as follows:
- miniDVI > 1920x1080 monitor
- DVI > 1280x1024 monitor (connected through a DVI to VGA adaptor.. it's an old monitor...)
The computer now crashes pretty regularly at least once a day. I notice that it always seems to crash when I watch netflix videos full screen on the 1920x1080 montior.
Also I notice that the 3rd and the 4th slot of the RAM seems to have also pretty consistently ECC Errors... (I have 8 gigs of RAM) I don't know if that's normal? Are these two issues related? Also is there a way to fix /resolve the ECC errors other than just restarting the machine?
Any insight would be much appreciated.
Thank you
Regards
sk
Mac Pro (early 2009),
Mac OS X (10.5.6),
1 video card 512mb. 8gigs of RAM
Everything freezes and the main monitor has a crash please restart kind of message in a rectangular grey box in the middle of the screen and the screen slowly wipes top to down (or vice versa?) to a dark grey.
Thank you for the lead. I indeed have purchased 8 gigs of ram from OWC. Yesterday I switched back to the apple RAM (3x1 gig) to see if the situation would change. It got worse. Now the system crashes even more frequently.
With both the Apple RAM as well as the OWC ram the 3rd and the 4th slot keep getting ECC Errors. Is it possible that something's wrong with these two slots? Would that make the OS crash?
Once ECC errors appear in the system profiler, are they supposed to stay or resolve themselves? They never disappear until I restart the computer... is that normal?
The next thing I'll try it to connect only one monitor to see if that makes things less crashy...
Below is the last crash report.
Any ideas?
Thank you
sk
-------------------------
Interval Since Last Panic Report: 14825 sec
Panics Since Last Report: 1
skstuff wrote:
Is it possible that something's wrong with these two slots? Would that make the OS crash?
Yes, either bad RAM or bad slots would make the OS crash. Different modules both causing the crash makes it more likely that the slots are involved. Check both the edge contacts of the modules & the slots themselves for signs of trouble, like contamination on the contacts, uneven or unusual marks on the contacts where they mate, etc.
I have reinstalled the whole OS and am now running only Firefox, FCP, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Photoshop.
I have switched back to the original Apple RAM (3 gigs) and use only one monitor. I have one Timemachine attached through firewire 800.
It seemed to be going ok for 1 day and on the second day I get the same deadly greyed out screen that tells me to restart the computer.
The strange thing it really crashes when I hardly use anything ram intensive, reading my email for example, or watching netflix videos. I can't seem to find a pattern.
When restarting I get the following error message:
(any idea where the issue lies?) Any insight much appreciated.
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: firefox-bin
Mac OS version:
9G3553
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 9.6.3: Tue Jan 20 18:26:40 PST 2009; root:xnu-1228.10.33~1/RELEASE_I386
System model name: MacPro4,1 (Mac-F221BEC8)
Yes I finally opened the comput and visually checked both the RAM and the slots. They all seem fine (from a perspective of a person who looks at this stuff for the first time 🙂
Yesterday it crashed 3 times. The crashes seem to increase.
I decided to take out the DIMM 3 Slot RAM (the one that gave me problems) and run the machine on 2 gigs just to see if the crashes disappear...
all right... I am on day two now with only 2 gigs of ram (DIMM Slots 3 and 4 are empty). No crashes so far... With the RAM in Slot 3 the computer was crashing up to 3 times a day. I think it's fair to assume that something's wrong with DIMM Slot3 (and possibly 4 as well)...
How long would that take Apple to fix? How long would I be without computer? Is this something that the Apple Genius bar people can do on the spot or would they need to send it in?
I've been having this issue for several months myself. However it only happens for me, well most of the time anyway, when I run Handbrake. This happens with Apple's memory and my 6 gig upgrade kit. Guess maybe I ought to take it in and have it checked out.
