Leopard crashes non-stop. Troubleshooting ideas?

[rhalls]

I havent read all posts in that thread but here my advice from my experiences:

DONT ever use an IDE Harddisk and IDE Burner when also using S-ATA on a Gigabyte P35 based Board (also G33, GH31). You will have massive Kernel panics!

If you need to have a IDE drive e.g. for Windows, unmount that at startup (you can automate this: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...p;#entry566700).

WITH IDE Drives present, i had many Kernel Panics (3-4 a day) now i unmount my win HD and use a S_ATA burner - Perfectly Stable!

[Apple Sauce]

As suggested, Ive attempted to try stability without IDE. In fact, I went so far as to disable the Jmicron controller in BIOS. These actions did not fix my kernel panics. At the moment, I am sticking with 3+3/8 GB of ram as set with the maxmem flag and all is stable.

 

I did notice that Gigabyte released the F11 bios upgrade. I will give that a try this evening. I've ben running F8 since F9/F10 gave memtest errors. Maybe F11 will be helpful in this regard.

[ZosoM3]

Team:

 

2) I did find an easier workaround them physically removing memory. I've used the boot flag "maxmem=3456" and I get a stable, crash-proof system (note: using maxmem=3584 fails ... so something under 3.5 GB is needed. I went to the nears 128M) I plan on putting this into /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist so I don't have to type it each time.

 

 

Nice work! One question about editing com.apple.Boot.plist. Where exactly do I put the flag "maxmem=3456"? This is what I see in the file:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string></string>

<key>Timeout</key>

<string>5</string>

</dict>

</plist>

[Zeblade]

LOL well its nice to see I'm not the only one that is having crashes. I have gig p35c ds3r and was running TOH r2 10.5 (then updated to 10.5.1 with 4g and NEVER had a problem. I updated to kaly 10.5.1 and man I get the crash you guys get. So it must be and I am NO expert here at all. But it must be one of the kext files.

[Apple Sauce]

It goes in the "Kenerl Flags" section inbetween the <string></string> delimiter (see below. The red text shows where it should go).

 

 

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>maxmem=3456</string>

<key>Timeout</key>

<string>5</string>

</dict>

</plist>

[LeonDEpro]

It goes in the "Kenerl Flags" section inbetween the <string></string> delimiter (see below. The red text shows where it should go).

 

 

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>maxmem=3456</string>

<key>Timeout</key>

<string>5</string>

</dict>

</plist>

It's very helpful, and it WORKS! Thx, Apple Sauce. But in my case, 3456 won't work, then I tried maxmem=3325 and no crash ever! I tried 3325 cos my Vista 32 bit only recognizes only 3325 of physical RAM (in Task Manager), displayed like this:

 

Maybe it's different on different machine, just give it a try, then.

 

It's good that I can now have part of my 4th RAM stick installed, better than 3GB "only", eh?

 

BTW, Apple Sauce & Trance2007, have u guys got my PM reply? It seems my forum message function can't work properly either in IE7 or Safari 3, and I dunno why...

[ZosoM3]

maxmem=3456 seems to work for me!

 

 

Not only does it give me a bit more RAM than 3GB, but it also allows the memory to run in dual channel mode!

[LeonDEpro]

Bravo!! Problem solved!!!

[Trance2007]

Dear LeonDEpro and ALL,

 

I just pm you my friend and I was just able to back from my business trip.

What I can say is my system is stable with 3 gb Ram but as everyone wants I want to keep my 4 gb and DDR2 property on my system/tower. I think AppleJuice found something new for us. But I got some questions;

 

- Is this new method allows to work us in DDR2 Dual channel?

- Can someone make a walkthrough about how to edit save etc. ( I am almost a newbie and I can only edit kexts in text edit / save over it. Is that it? Repair permission? )

 

I would like to hear good news from you all about ur system's stability

 

P.S. I got some other problems such as "about this mac" cpu is showing as 2.4 ghz unknown . Is there a way to make it correct as Quad Core 2.4 GHZ? and change the display of about this mac?

P.S. 2. Is there any developments with Shutdown / Restart / Sleep functions?

 

Thank you all and have a great day.

 

 

Trance2007

[ZosoM3]

Has anyone here played with Windows XP with 4GB of RAM? I noticed that XP would register my 4GB of ram as 3.5GB or so and it turns out that 4GB is the total amount of address space that XP can support because it is 32b. The reason I wasn't seeing all 4GB of RAM is because the rest of the address space is needed by other components such as:

• System ROM
  
• APIC(s)
  
• Integrated PCI devices, such as network connectors and SCSI controllers
  
• PCI cards
  
• Graphics card
  
• PCI Express cards
  

I'm sure that most of us have systems with PCI-E Graphics cards with a hefty amount of RAM. The differences in hardware is also why most of us have different maxmem=xxxx numbers. It all depends on what else is in your computer.

 

This make perfect sense, right?

 

Here's the problem with this theory:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/64bit.html

 

Is something still limiting us to 32b of address space?

 

 

Dear LeonDEpro and ALL,

 

I just pm you my friend and I was just able to back from my business trip.

What I can say is my system is stable with 3 gb Ram but as everyone wants I want to keep my 4 gb and DDR2 property on my system/tower. I think AppleJuice found something new for us. But I got some questions;

 

- Is this new method allows to work us in DDR2 Dual channel?

- Can someone make a walkthrough about how to edit save etc. ( I am almost a newbie and I can only edit kexts in text edit / save over it. Is that it? Repair permission? )

 

I would like to hear good news from you all about ur system's stability

 

P.S. I got some other problems such as "about this mac" cpu is showing as 2.4 ghz unknown . Is there a way to make it correct as Quad Core 2.4 GHZ? and change the display of about this mac?

P.S. 2. Is there any developments with Shutdown / Restart / Sleep functions?

 

Thank you all and have a great day.

 

 

Trance2007

 

If you keep the RAM modules in pairs, it will run at dual channel. Adding the maxmem statement just keeps Leopard from trying to address and use the entire memory.

 

The way I modified my file is that I went to a terminal and navigated to the correct directory then I did a:

sudo pico com.apple.Boot.plist

 

It then asks you for your passwork and enters the pico editer. Then just add the statement as shown above and hit cntrl-x and answer yes when it asks if you want to save.

 

I didn't repair permissions but I could and probably should have.

 

I haven't had a single crash since I added the statement and I have all four 1GB RAM modules (running in dual channel) installed in my system.

[LeonDEpro]

Has anyone here played with Windows XP with 4GB of RAM? I noticed that XP would register my 4GB of ram as 3.5GB or so and it turns out that 4GB is the total amount of address space that XP can support because it is 32b. The reason I wasn't seeing all 4GB of RAM is because the rest of the address space is needed by other components such as:

• System ROM
  
• APIC(s)
  
• Integrated PCI devices, such as network connectors and SCSI controllers
  
• PCI cards
  
• Graphics card
  
• PCI Express cards
  

I'm sure that most of us have systems with PCI-E Graphics cards with a hefty amount of RAM. The differences in hardware is also why most of us have different maxmem=xxxx numbers. It all depends on what else is in your computer.

 

This make perfect sense, right?

 

Here's the problem with this theory:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/64bit.html

 

Is something still limiting us to 32b of address space?

If you keep the RAM modules in pairs, it will run at dual channel. Adding the maxmem statement just keeps Leopard from trying to address and use the entire memory.

 

The way I modified my file is that I went to a terminal and navigated to the correct directory then I did a:

sudo pico com.apple.Boot.plist

 

It then asks you for your passwork and enters the pico editer. Then just add the statement as shown above and hit cntrl-x and answer yes when it asks if you want to save.

 

I didn't repair permissions but I could and probably should have.

 

I haven't had a single crash since I added the statement and I have all four 1GB RAM modules (running in dual channel) installed in my system.

It's helpful, It's working, and it's GREAT!!!

 

Just been back from a trip to my mother-in-law's, and Leopard is the best relief from hours and hours of road trip. And with a Leopard hackintosh that won't crash, hey, what can I ask for more? Great work, ZosoM3

[ZosoM3]

It's helpful, It's working, and it's GREAT!!!

 

Just been back from a trip to my mother-in-law's, and Leopard is the best relief from hours and hours of road trip. And with a Leopard hackintosh that won't crash, hey, what can I ask for more? Great work, ZosoM3

 

 

As much as I'd love to take credit, I did nothing! Thank Apple Sauce, Trance, and others. They're the ones that found the fix.

 

~3.4GB in dual channel, running reliably is much better than 3GB out of dual channel or 4GB but unstable.

 

In any case, I'm glad your system is running well.

[LeonDEpro]

Right, right. Hope this thread already helped as many as possible. Leoparding...

[aquagrrl]

I have a P35-DS3P with 4 gigs of ram that randomly kernal panics, so I though this was my problem. Unfortunately, its been a week since I chanced maxmem, and I still get regular crashes. I tried maxmem=3456 first, then maxmem=3325. No difference. Any ideas? Any thoughts on troubleshooting this further? There doesn't seem to be any consistency in the crashes. it seems to happen regardless of what I'm using.

[Grooby97]

Interesting thread. I am experiencing random crashes too. Maybe this might be the cause of the problem. Will have to look into it. What sucks is that I was planning to upgrade the ram to 8GB because I want to turn this box into a development box and have several Parallel desktop running. damn!

[ZosoM3]

I have a P35-DS3P with 4 gigs of ram that randomly kernal panics, so I though this was my problem. Unfortunately, its been a week since I chanced maxmem, and I still get regular crashes. I tried maxmem=3456 first, then maxmem=3325. No difference. Any ideas? Any thoughts on troubleshooting this further? There doesn't seem to be any consistency in the crashes. it seems to happen regardless of what I'm using.

 

Does it still crash if you remove 1 RAM stick bringing your total RAM down to 2GB or 3GB (depending on your configuration?) What video card do you have and how much RAM is on the video card?

[aquagrrl]

No, I haven't removed any ram yet. I've got two 2gig sticks and removing one would make me sad (plus I assumed the maxmem would be the answer). I guess that's the next thing to try.

 

My specs:

gigabyte P35-DS3P

2.66ghz dual core (both cores running)

4gb ram (667mhz, I think)

geforce 8800gts with 320mb QE & CI working.

HD and DVD are SATA.

 

Running the Vanilla kernel 10.5.1 w/ EFI 8

[Grooby97]

just out of curiousity..has any of you do memory scan on the machine? like get a linux boot disk (ubuntu comes in mind) and run the memory test to make sure the memory is good.

[muitommy]

how about create a ramdisk for the system?

[dashaund]

Hey guys. Shewwww...so relieved to see I'm not the only one getting these crashes with 4GB of RAM. I had 2GB and I'm like "Well, this stuff is so cheap, and I'm sure I'll see a performance boost, I'll order some more." Slapped them in there, bam, starts crash like crazy. Did everything to see if it would fix it, nothing fixes it. And then I remember reading about someone having a problem with 4GB of RAM in Tiger a while back...took it out, and it doesn't crash anymore. Haven't tried the maxmem, but I'll give it a shot. Err...this stinks. Somebody will figure it though...

[tomazzzi]

hi

 

i use 6gig of DDR2 with kallyway 10.5.1 without any problem

 

just wanted to notify you ..

 

6GIG DDR2 667

[troisd]

I got same problems. Random crashes with my MacPro system running with only 2GB (2x1GB). Will try the maxmem trick to see if it helps. But we need to find the root cause of this. How's the IDE/S-ATA theory going? I think it is very plausible. My mobo does have the infamous JMicron controller!

[daryoon]

Wow...been looking at all sorts of solution involving the HD. Took it off the jmicron. Disabling it completely. SO many scenario was tried. But finally, added the maxmem of 3325 solved the crashes for me. I tried the other memory values suggested but 3325 was what works.

[mdkathon]

This fix seems to be working for me. I was crashing every 15-45 minutes with the "grey screen of death" and once I set maxmem to 3325 I have not seen it since.

 

This should be added to the wiki or placed as a sticky, it took me two days of searching on this forum to find this fix.

 

Thanks again for the hard work!!!

[mazjohn]

Been running Kaly 10.51 with 2gigs on a p35c-dsr3 for the last 3 weeks heavy use- never crashed, very stable even under heavy load and encoding. As soon as I added an additional 2 gigs ram for a total of 4 in dual channel, I would crash within 30 minutes of video encoding. seems to panic only when encoding but cannot prove this.

 

I just did the memory limit fix as suggested, and my system now shows 3.38gigs when i look in "about this mac".

Thanks to those who found a way around this without having to physically remove the ram.

 

I will report back after some more testing to see if this works for me....

 

obviously, there should be no memory limitations like this on a 64 bit OS- seems odd we are facing a 32bit type memory limitation.

 

*** Update 1 ***

Ran Vistas memory test - 2pass test reported no errors with ram

Added <string>maxmem=3456</string>

after a full video encode, all is well. no more panics/crashes. looks like this has worked for me....

I am at bios F7... Will try F10 which is the latest for my board and see what happens....

 

Will update if I have more feedback

I hope this can be resolved. I would really like to go to up to 8 gigs.