Macintosh Kernel Panic – Know how to fix it!
Many of the Mac OSX or similar Unix like operating system users may face a type of error known as “Kernel Panic”. When this error message get displayed, you need to restart your system as your system stops working and require restart. Since the system is not in the state that you can perform the normal restart and therefore you need to force restart the computer. At that time if you were in the middle of the process or working with some kind of unsaved document then it will also be lose.
The general causes of kernel panic in Mac OS X include:
- Defective or incompatible RAM
- Incompatible, obsolete or corrupted kernel extensions
- Incompatible, obsolete or corrupted Drivers
- Hard Disk corruption that include bad sectors, directory corruption and other hard disk errors
- Incorrect permissions on System files and folders
- Less RAM or Hard Drive Memory
- Defects in hardware, CPU or programming errors
- Incompatible hardware
Other than these the Mac Kernel Panic occurs when the core component of Mac (kernel) gets an unexpected user instruction and fails to handle that instruction properly.
Kernel Panic Fix in Mac OS X
It is monitored that the kernel panic does not come frequently but if it’s occurred then restarting the computer will solve the problem but if the error occurs due to the corrupted/incompatible system resources then reinstall Mac OSX. When you go for the fresh installation of Mac OSX, the primary volume need to be formatted and all the data present over that volume will be lost. This condition can be a bad dream as you can lose lots of important data which you had saved on that system volume.
To solve this problem of Mac Kernel Panic manually,
- Reinstall Mac OS X if you've recently changed a system file
- If you know that you have moved or renamed a Mac OS X system file or folder, then you must reinstall Mac OS X. It won't work to just replace the specific item.
- If you have not changed any Mac OS X system files or folders, try the following procedures.
- Restart your computer
- Choose Apple menu > Restart. Most of the time the kernel panic is an isolated event that requires no further action.
- Restart with the X key
- Hold down the X key and choose Apple menu > Restart. This may force the computer to start up using your Mac OS X system.
- If the computer starts up, release the X key. Choose Apple menu> System Preferences, and then click Startup Disk. Make sure that the disk containing Mac OS X is selected.
- Restart with the Option key
- If you are unable to start up using the X key, choose Apple menu > Restart and immediately hold down the Option key.
- When icons start to appear in the center of the screen, release the Option key. Select the disk that contains Mac OS X, and then click the forward arrow to continue starting up.
- Reset PRAM
- If the above attempts are unsuccessful, shut down your computer; then turn it on again and immediately hold down the Command-Option-P-R keys. When you hear the startup sound for the second time, release the keys. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, and then click Startup Disk. Make sure that the disk containing Mac OS X is selected
Important: Resetting parameter random-access memory (PRAM) may change some system settings and preferences. Use System Preferences to restore your settings.
Source: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/8965.html
Apple has acknowledged the issue and is working on the solution. The Apple representative said “We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix”.
If these manual steps do not help you then you need to take the help of application that can recover the lost data. The same can be performed via Mac Data Recovery software. It is a tool which is made to recover the lost data from Mac computers and will recover the lost data from all the possible data loss situations including the drive formatting, accidental file deletion, OS crash and corruption, virus and other security threats.
The Mac Data Recovery is compatible with all the file versions of Mac OS X including Mac OS X jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard and the latest Snow Leopard. It’s fast scanning makes searching really fast and this will makes your important files always available to you.
