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OS X 10.7.x, (updated to 10.7.2 when it became available last week); Quad Core iMac.

Hard crashing about every 2 or 3 weeks, except had one yesterday and another today, 5 times total so far. Mouse and keyboard go dead. Screen frozen. Doesn't respond to LAN ping. Dead.

Reboots fine. Nothing at all about the crashes in the console all-message log. No evident problems, operating normally.

Note: This machine has had no kernel panics at all in about a year, since I bought it, by the way.

My two suspects are

  1. Add-in-RAM -- maybe I should have bought the most expensive instead of moderate-priced 4GB modules , a few weeks before the first crash.
  2. Firefox 7.0.1, as that was the active app when the last 2 crashes occurred.

I'm keeping notes on the date, time, and front-most app when the crashes occur.

Any ideas? Any instrumentation to add? Tests to run? (Given the time between crashes, I doubt a memory diagnostic is going to find anything.)

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As with any problem, it's important to trace your steps. First you need to isolate the problem. Remove Firefox 7.0.1 and revert to a previous version you know to be error free. Run the system for an extended period. If that fixes it, you know the issue. If not, remain with the old Firefox but remove the RAM and replace it with the previous modules. Run the system for an extended period. Alternatively, you could run memtest (or equivalent) and test your RAM for errors. It is remote someone here will be able to offer anything other than ways of testing. Those two are good places to start. – cksum Oct 19 '11 at 4:24
My MacBook Pro was doing this. A clean install of Lion fixed it, and a number of other problems. – spudwaffle Oct 19 '11 at 5:32

1 Answer

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You could try testing the hard drive with Smart Utility, but it sounds like to me that it is your Ram that you installed. I have personal experience with bad/incompatible ram and the symptoms you are describing are exactly what happens if the ram is the aforementioned.

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Links Images Styling/Headers Lists Blockquotes Code HTML advanced help » Yes, thanks, in the end, I pretty much proved the problem was bad RAM. I removed the suspect modules and replaced them with some purchased from another vendor. No problems since then. <sound effect: huge sigh of relief> Yes, thanks, in the end, I pretty much proved the problem was bad RAM. I removed the suspect modules and replaced them with some purchased from another vendor. No problems since then. – hen3ry Oct 18 '12 at 18:15

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