OS 10.6 blue screen of death?

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Level 2

285 points

OS 10.6 blue screen of death?

after i had left the computer to remove files from an external harddisk this afternoon, i came back to find the machine switched off.
odd, i thought and switched it back on.

it has been cycling through 2 different blue screens for the rest of the afternoon: one that has a dark-gray rotating "loading" animation towards the bottom of the screen and one that has the mouse cursor at the top-left corner of the screen.

i've tried booting from the install cd, had disk utility repair the disk, repair permissions, again repair the disk, repair permissions again, until it found no errors any more.

restarting the computer gets it back into blue screen cycle mode.... :S

any ideas what could be the cause of this?

pismo powerbook G4 500MHz & Mac OS X 10.4.11, macbook (2007), Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Jun 14, 2010 7:34 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

82,925 points

Jun 14, 2010 7:47 AM in response to rene beekman

Is the blue screen happening with nothing attached but keyboard and mouse?

If it is, the hard drive may be near death. If your data isn't backed up, see these data recovery options*:

http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html#RECOVER

- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

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Answer 2

Meherally

Level 4

1,123 points

Jun 14, 2010 11:08 AM in response to rene beekman

Since you are able to boot from the install CD and access the disk utility, you might as well go ahead and re install Snow leopard. Fortunately, the SL installer is designed to just install the system and leaves your other folders untouched. You will still have all your work/applications/utilities intact.

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

82,925 points

Jun 14, 2010 11:12 AM in response to Meherally

I wouldn't do this unless data is backed up. You have no idea if the lack of access is due to directory issues, or a dying hard drive. Until you can eliminate both, be sure the data is backed up or recovered first before any install is done. Otherwise you run risking overwriting your data, and making it harder to recover your data if it is at all possible at the end.

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Answer 4

Meherally

Level 4

1,123 points

Jun 14, 2010 11:24 AM in response to a brody

Oops. Yes, quite right. I kind of assumed the external disk of the OP was a back up disk. But on reading it again realized that was a wrong.

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Answer 5

rene beekman Author

Level 2

285 points

Jun 14, 2010 10:24 PM in response to rene beekman

thanks for the answers so far.
i have meanwhile been able to restore access.

the problem started with an external disk connected (firewire, fw powered), where i was trying to delete 30+gb files.
the side of the laptop where the firewire disk was connected, got abnormally hot
at some point the laptop shut down - not sure why as i didn't see it happen

after starting the machine from the original install cd and having disk utility repair the disk and repair permissions i restarted the machine in safe mode (hold shift during startup). this worked, got me a login screen and from there on i managed to log in.
i then restarted the machine and reset pram (alt + cmd + p + r, had it cycle through the startup chime several times, just to be sure 🙂 )

all seems to be working now
system profiler claims it sees a firewire port, but i haven't tried connecting it yet

for now, i blame the external hd, possibly its powersupply.
will try to confirm that later today when i find an external powersupply for the hd, see if that makes any difference

internal hd seems ok
diskwarrior hardware check does not report any problems and claims S.M.A.R.T. is working normally...

keeping fingers crossed it is just the external disk...

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Answer 6

a brody

Level 10

82,925 points

Jun 15, 2010 5:29 AM in response to rene beekman

If you can't afford another hard drive at this point, I'd burn any important data to CDs just in case something else is wrong. It is important to keep a backup handy. I would also consider the Newertek Voyager series of hard drives. These you can find at http://www.macsales.com/ Mine work very well. The only thing I have to be careful is to give the hard drive a chance to spin down before removing the hard drive from its cradle.

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