Black "Restart" Screen - In 5 Languages

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Level 1

8 points

Black "Restart" Screen - In 5 Languages

My nephew's iMac 4,1 had slowed to a crawl and was freezing. We bumped the machine up to 2GB and upgraded to 10.6.3. All appeared to go well, but he is now experiencing the screen greying out (like just before the screen goes black for inactivity) and a black box slowly descends with the words, "You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button until it turns off, then press the Power button again." Message is repeated 4 more times in French, Spanish, German, and Japanese. Anybody ever see this? It has happened at least 4 times in the 5 days since we did the upgrade. Is this the Mac equivalent of the PC Blue-Screen-Of-Death? Is this symptomatic of a dying MotherBoard? Did my $50 fix NOT forestall the purchase of a new Mac?

Thanks in advance.

Alex

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.3), Time Machine ver. 1.1

Posted on Oct 12, 2013 7:57 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Tommy197944

Level 2

185 points

Oct 12, 2013 8:05 PM in response to Cook2son

That's what is called a kernel panic. Not very good news. These steps should help you fix it.

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Answer 2

Cook2son Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 16, 2013 11:08 PM in response to Tommy197944

Tommy,

Thanks for the information. I'll forward this on to the kid and see what happens. He called today (I'm in Arizona and he's in Florida) to say he switched to Firefox from Chrome and hasn't had an episode. I should have him switch back to Chrome to see if it starts acting up, again.

Thanks for your help.

Alex

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Answer 3

Oct 19, 2013 3:26 PM in response to Cook2son

No problem. For future reference, if you're having any problems, upgrading the os most likely won't fix it, and most likely will cause more problems. Always update to see if that fixes it. If not, there are always troubleshooting steps to try to fix it. 🙂

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Answer 4

Klaus1

Level 9

52,749 points

Oct 19, 2013 3:46 PM in response to Cook2son

Do not attempt to update a Mac until it is running perfectly.

Kernel panics are generally hardweare related, often due to faulty of badly seated RAM modules.

What is a Kernel Panic?

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3742

and http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1892?viewlocale=en_US

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2002/tn2063.html

More details here:

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/kernelpanics.html

Useful articles on how to avoid and eliminate kernel panics here:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10344626-263.html?tag=mfiredir

http://www.macworld.com/article/2027201/how-to-troubleshoot-a-kernel-panic.html# tk.nl_mwhelp

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Answer 5

Oct 19, 2013 5:51 PM in response to Klaus1

To be more specific on my post, there's a difference between upgrading and updating. Upgrading is going from 10.5.x to 10.6.x. Updating is going from 10.6.1 to 10.6.8

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