Carl Sieber

Q: Kernel panics on Mountain Lion are normal?

I made the mistake of upgrading my Mac Pro to Mountain Lion. Since then, I've been plagued by several nasty issues. They are:

 

 

  • 4 to 5 kernel panics per day now on average. In the previous 4 years of owning this machine, I'd only seen one total before Mountain Lion.
  • Preferences are not being retained when saved. This is especially maddening in Mail where I have to correct a mail setting every single time it launches (or restarts from a hard freeze/kernel panic)
  • Whenever a kernel panic happens, the contents of my two monitors are swapped. What is supposed to display on the left display jumps to the right display and the contents of the right display move to the left display. This includes menubar, desktop images and my geektool scripts.
  • While not technically a bug, I feel completely mislead by Apple regarding Airplay capabilities. I upgraded solely for this one feature only to learn that my 8-core, 12Gb of RAM, Dual Video Cards and SSD Raid is not sufficient to utilize this feature. This is incredibly dishonest marketing on Apple's part.

 

Any suggestions on how to proceed? I'm leaning towards reverting back to Lion and askin

Posted on Aug 10, 2012 1:05 PM

Close

Q: Kernel panics on Mountain Lion are normal?

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

first Previous Page 5 of 11 last Next
  • by gyllstromk,

    gyllstromk gyllstromk Oct 10, 2012 11:31 AM in response to blueruck
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 10, 2012 11:31 AM in response to blueruck

    Can't, don't have the disc, nor is it available on App Store. I guess it's my fault for trusting apple not to screw up my computer when I paid them money for the ML upgrade.

  • by the-real-dionysus,

    the-real-dionysus the-real-dionysus Oct 10, 2012 12:55 PM in response to gyllstromk
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 10, 2012 12:55 PM in response to gyllstromk

    If youy had lion legally then it;s in your downlaods que in the app store! if it's not call apple and they will put it there for you to download and you can reistall. That's what I did and not a problem since

  • by GRWellsy,

    GRWellsy GRWellsy Oct 11, 2012 8:59 AM in response to Carl Sieber
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 11, 2012 8:59 AM in response to Carl Sieber

    Just to throw this into the mix, I'm getting clusters of kernel panics on 10.8.2 on a 27" iMac (12,2) with an AMD Radeon HD 6970. Several reinstalls of the OS, clean installs, resets, etc. It may settle for a day or so, and then a cluster of KPs in a row. Messy business.

  • by Rodrigo Morbey,

    Rodrigo Morbey Rodrigo Morbey Oct 11, 2012 9:01 AM in response to GRWellsy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 11, 2012 9:01 AM in response to GRWellsy

    One more here: Macbook Pro 8,2

  • by hoffMan1971,

    hoffMan1971 hoffMan1971 Oct 15, 2012 10:56 AM in response to Carl Sieber
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 15, 2012 10:56 AM in response to Carl Sieber

    Hey there,

     

    I'm on a MacBook Pro3,1 and had persistent kernel panics since ML update. Suspects were the Nvidia bug which my machine is known for, several third party stuff including parallels, hardware issues, and so on.

    Crashes went on even after a clean install on a formatted disk.

     

    Updating Nvidia cuda drivers here:

     

    http://www.nvidia.de/object/cuda-mac-driver-de.html

     

    seems to do the trick for me.

     

    Did not have crashes since I installed this.

     

    Hope it helps at least a few people.

     

    regards,

    hoffMan

  • by hoffMan1971,

    hoffMan1971 hoffMan1971 Oct 15, 2012 11:18 AM in response to hoffMan1971
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 15, 2012 11:18 AM in response to hoffMan1971

    Ok,

     

    forget it! Next kernel panic 5 minutes ago. ran in 3 KPs trying to start up again...

     

    that's it for me. Goodbye ML, going back to Lion.

     

    regards, hoffMan

  • by Apple Bobber,

    Apple Bobber Apple Bobber Oct 16, 2012 2:40 AM in response to hoffMan1971
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Oct 16, 2012 2:40 AM in response to hoffMan1971

    Hi HoffMan (and anyone else with the same problem). 

     

    I took all the steps you did to try to fix this problem and tried updating my Nvidia drivers, but they would not install on my machine.  Took my macbook to the Apple Store to run a diagnostic and it came up with a hardware failure on the graphic card.  My macbook is 2 years old and I don't have Apple Care so its out of warranty.  However, they informed me there's a "known" problem with some Nvidia graphics cards that shipped with my machine and if less than 4 years old Nvidia cover the cost of replacement - in my case they replaced the whole logic board.  I have been running without problems for a week since.  I would suggest you try this before downgrading as you may have problems with it in the future.

     

    Hope that helps.

     

    regards,

    MD

  • by Cmmts,

    Cmmts Cmmts Oct 16, 2012 5:13 AM in response to GRWellsy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 16, 2012 5:13 AM in response to GRWellsy

    Yep, having kernel panics with my 2011 27" 6970M iMac. My first iMac and not the experience I was hoping for.

  • by Luis Sequeira1,

    Luis Sequeira1 Luis Sequeira1 Oct 16, 2012 6:11 AM in response to Cmmts
    Level 6 (12,637 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 16, 2012 6:11 AM in response to Cmmts

    Cmmts wrote:

     

    Yep, having kernel panics with my 2011 27" 6970M iMac. My first iMac and not the experience I was hoping for.

     

    Kernel panics are almost always caused by hardware issues: Ram, display card, hard drive, logic board.

    You should have your machine looked up by an authorized technician.

  • by Cmmts,

    Cmmts Cmmts Oct 16, 2012 10:35 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 16, 2012 10:35 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

    The previous owner didn't have any issues and neither did I while I was using Lion.

  • by Luis Sequeira1,

    Luis Sequeira1 Luis Sequeira1 Oct 16, 2012 11:56 AM in response to Cmmts
    Level 6 (12,637 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 16, 2012 11:56 AM in response to Cmmts

    Kernel panics are NOT normal - they are always a symptom of something wrong.

     

    Millions of Mountain Lion users are NOT experiencing them, so it is still more likely that it is something with your machine - it could be software related.

    But it could also be some hardware component that simply went bad - RAM being the most likely. If you can, run a hardware test (restart and immediately hold the D key). There are also third party utilities that can test your ram. Look up the web for "memtest".

  • by Cmmts,

    Cmmts Cmmts Oct 16, 2012 12:41 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 16, 2012 12:41 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

    Nothing on the hardware-test either. BTW, my Macbook Air had the similar issue until 10.8.1. Kernel panics can absolutely be related to software.

  • by gyllstromk,

    gyllstromk gyllstromk Oct 16, 2012 8:26 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 16, 2012 8:26 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

    @luis

     

    The reporters of this problem all had working machines before the software upgrade. This incriminates a software driver error as the most likely problem. Unless all these people are having identical hardware failiures at exactly the same time, I don't think the memory diagnostics will be helpful.

  • by preston_baba,

    preston_baba preston_baba Oct 18, 2012 2:45 AM in response to gyllstromk
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 18, 2012 2:45 AM in response to gyllstromk

    I can totally understand your frustrations, as I have had simialar issues! What is even more annoying is after getting a supposedily genuinly concearned phone call from AppleCare Customer Services, I was told that I would recieve a follow up call and if I had any queries too email the customer rep. After weeks of not hearing back from the customer reps I emailed the rep and after 4months and guess what no reply. Even calling Applecare they tried contacting the rep. I guess Apple's new attitude since Steve is no longer around is we will take your money employ incompetant software engineers and basically "who gives a rats a?? about the customer" as it sure certainly seems that way no matter how you look at things... Thanks Apple and Apple Care for caring NOT!

  • by Carl Sieber,

    Carl Sieber Carl Sieber Oct 18, 2012 8:40 PM in response to Carl Sieber
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Oct 18, 2012 8:40 PM in response to Carl Sieber

    I just had another kernel panic and thought I'd share a few other things I've noticed in the moments before a kernel panic happens. To be clear, I'm having the kernel panics with particular extensions com.apple.NVDAResman, com.apple.GeForce, and com.apple.iokit always showing up in the problem report.

     

    A few things I've noticed:

    • When my machine seems to be prone to a kp, Silverlight will have crashed. Chrome explicity says as much when I try to watch something from netflix (silverlight-based).

    • When watching video content on Hulu, using the full-size video feature produces choppy and extremely low fps performace implying that graphics acceleration is not taking place.

    • All of my kernel panics occur with some sort of video activity playing. It's not just silverlight, but html5-based videos and flash has triggered the kernel panic.

     

    Anyway, best of luck to everyone suffering the same issue. I'm hoping for a graphics update to ML but Apple's response doesn't give me hope at the moment either.

first Previous Page 5 of 11 last Next