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    Grey Screen of Death

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by trueintentions, Feb 28, 2008.

  1. trueintentions

    trueintentions Notebook Evangelist

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    I do not know what in the world's happening with my Macbook.

    In the last two days, I've had 2 grey screens of death. Prior to that, I've only ever had it once in an entire year.

    Both times, my macbook is at a cool 50degrees, and the only applications I have open are Word, Safari, MSN for Mac and iTunes.

    What's going on!? It doesn't even lag or anything, both times I was happily typing up work in Word, and then it the whole machine just grey screens. Worth checking out or not? :(
     
    trueintentions, Feb 28, 2008
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  2. Sam

    Sam Notebook Virtuoso

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    Did you do all the troubleshooting stuff? That might solve it.

    And if you have to, best way to fix it all is to reinstall Mac OS X :).
     
    Sam, Feb 28, 2008
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  3. pixelot

    pixelot Notebook Acolyte

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    Not that I know anything about Mac, but I think this applies cross-platform....there is something vaguely satisfying and cleansing about a fresh install.....of course, back up all those files first. ;)
     
    pixelot, Feb 28, 2008
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  4. burningrave101

    burningrave101 Notebook Deity

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    Could be a software issue so that you just need to reinstall OS X or your memory could be faulty and causing errors. It's always good to do a full backup and do a clean install every now and then anyways to keep your system running at top performance so I'd do that first and see if it fixes your issue. If not then test your RAM.
     
    burningrave101, Feb 28, 2008
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  5. dmacfour

    dmacfour Are you aware...

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    Ha! OS X isn't perfect ;)
     
    dmacfour, Feb 28, 2008
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  6. trueintentions

    trueintentions Notebook Evangelist

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    Noone ever said it was perfect...


    anyways, back to my problem. So after I post, 10 minutes later, it grey screens... again. I decide, okay, time for a reinstall, how could that hurt. I started backing up my files - halfway through, it grey screened. AGAIN! Four times in ONE day?! Definitely time for a reinstall I believe...

    This is getting beyond frustrating!!
     
    trueintentions, Feb 28, 2008
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  7. pixelot

    pixelot Notebook Acolyte

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    Yeah. I'd say a refresh would be good, and dmacfour, haven't you ever heard that every OS sucks?! Or at least that's how the song goes.... :p
     
    pixelot, Feb 28, 2008
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  8. AJTx0

    AJTx0 Notebook Geek

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    And I thought only Windows had screens of death.

    Blue>Gray.

    HAHA.
     
    AJTx0, Feb 29, 2008
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  9. Arquis

    Arquis Kojima Worshiper

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    Nah, the Mac screen of death is actually much prettier :D
     
    Arquis, Feb 29, 2008
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  10. AJTx0

    AJTx0 Notebook Geek

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    Haha, hopefully I'll never have to see one whenever I get a Mac. :D
     
    AJTx0, Feb 29, 2008
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  11. pixelot

    pixelot Notebook Acolyte

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    No, Alex, you're getting a ThinkPad, remember!!!!!

    *pulls out blackjack*

    :p
     
    pixelot, Feb 29, 2008
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  12. wobble987

    wobble987 Notebook Virtuoso

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    try use apple hardware test from your mac os x recovery disk.
     
    wobble987, Feb 29, 2008
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  13. trueintentions

    trueintentions Notebook Evangelist

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    :) Well about 2 hours ago, I did a Disk Repair (under Utilities) and it seems to have taken care of the problem.. for now.

    I'll probably end up doing a system reinstall in a week anyways, just to clean things up properly. :D
     
    trueintentions, Feb 29, 2008
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  14. hollownail

    hollownail Individual 11

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    Yeah, its odd that certain software has been causing gray screens of deaths (AKA kernel panic)...

    Weren't by any chance running Parallels? I know some people who constantly get kernel panics from that.

    Unfortunately, some software devs write their programs to run in Ring0... And a crash at something in Ring0 causes those lovely kernal panics. And yeah, thats the reason why older windows versions were so unstable (partly anyway) and why it's gotten better (moving toward sandbox areas).
     
    hollownail, Feb 29, 2008
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