System Meltdown

[joliv999]

Hi,

have a major issue, don't know what to do. My system has been working great over a year now, did all the updates from SL to Lion, no problems at all.

Been on Lion 10.7.3 for a couple of month, again, no issues whatsoever. All of a sudden, while doing Skype, my system froze. Shutdown, try re-boot, would open everything fine again, at the last moment before all background application would finish loading, it would freeze again, with the message "need to shutdown".

Tried to use my backup copy on another disk, the same story.

Having tried re-booting a few times, at some point it would not even boot anymore. After the apple coming up, it would give a kernel panic and freeze.

Tried to make a clean install on an additional spare HD, the Lion installation would crash and give me a HD error. After re-formatting with Disk Utility, tried to install Lion again. This time it says "Lion cannot install on this disk", even if it is correctly formated.

Tried Rboot cd, also no result. System sometimes would not load or crash just after it was loaded.

I'm no techie, but since the issue can't be with the hard disks, there must be something else wrong, either Motherboard or RAM. Is there anyone that can give me advice?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Joao

PS: See my profile for system details

 

[ijhu]

I am assuming you must have windows operating system installed as DUAL BOOT? If so, have you test loading Windows operating system? At least that rules out certain aspect of hardware problem.

The other thing to try is
-"double check your BIOS setting"
-disconnect any external USB device for the time being..

 

[mitchellk]

I am assuming you must have windows operating system installed as DUAL BOOT? If so, have you test loading Windows operating system? At least that rules out certain aspect of hardware problem.

The other thing to try is
-"double check your BIOS setting"
-disconnect any external USB device for the time being..

Sure sounds like your hard drive is failing or has failed. Suggest you follow above advice and see if you can load Windows on that drive. One thing I know about OSX after running it for nearly 2 years now, when things start going horribly wrong it's 99.9% faulty hardware that's the cause.

 

[joliv999]

My bios settings are correct. As far as HD failure is concerned, that can't be the case. It happened with the original one I had installed, then the same thing with my separate backup HD. I removed the first one and replaced it with my backup drive. The same story.
Unfortunately I don't have dual boot. I might try to install WIN 7, to see where it takes me. I'm still inclined to think that there might be some issue with my RAM or even the motherboard.

My system has been flawless for more than a year with all system upgrades. Hard disk is definitely not the problem. What else could it be?

 

[mitchellk]

My bios settings are correct. As far as HD failure is concerned, that can't be the case. It happened with the original one I had installed, then the same thing with my separate backup HD. I removed the first one and replaced it with my backup drive. The same story.
Unfortunately I don't have dual boot. I might try to install WIN 7, to see where it takes me. I'm still inclined to think that there might be some issue with my RAM or even the motherboard.

My system has been flawless for more than a year with all system upgrades. Hard disk is definitely not the problem. What else could it be?

One thing is for sure, faulty RAM can cause all sorts of untold problems. I assume you have 3 x DDR3 chips installed? If so, try taking 2 out and booting with only one. If that fails, take that one out and try with one of the other 2 you removed. This may help you identify if you have a faulty RAM chip causing this problem.

Don't rule out that your motherboard has gone faulty either, could have been a power surge or power dip that caused damage to RAM or mobo. Is your machine powered from a UPS / Surge protected?

See what a Win7 install can reveal.

 

[joliv999]

Made a fresh Lion install by connecting the hardisk to my MacBook and installing from USB installer. Booted with Rboot CD and was able to load the new Lion install. Will see if I can find any hardware issues.

Will also have a further look at the RAM, it's in fact 3 modules.

 

[joliv999]

It was a faulty RAM module! What I thought in the first place, so thanks for the input and reassurance.