08-27-2007, 07:55 AM

Can anybody help me out? I was using Safari and Mail yesterday (the only programs I had open). I went away for a couple of hours and came back to shut down and my system had crashed - blank light blue screen. I forced shutdown and thought no more of it until I tried to start up today.
I keep getting either the blue startup screen with the apple on and the spinning wheel - but it hangs and goes nowhere, or I get the white text on a black background saying:
Aug 27 11:31:38 init: fatal signal: Segmentation fault

Sometimes the white text then goes onto say:
Proceeding back via exception chain: Exception state (sv=0x22B66000) ...lots of numbers...Kernel version: Darwin kernel version 7.9.0; Wed Mar 30 20:11:17 PST 2005; root: xnu/xnu - 517.12.7.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC
No debugger configured - dumping debug information
MSR=00001030
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace: ...lots of numbers...
Proceeding back via exception chain: Exception state (sv=0x22B66000) ...lots of numbers...Kernel version: Darwin kernel version 7.9.0; Wed Mar 30 20:11:17 PST 2005; root: xnu/xnu - 517.12.7.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC
panic: we are hanging here...

The only cd I can get it to boot up from is the apple hardware test cd - which I ran both the quick test and the extended test on and it found no problems. It refuses to boot up from my system software CD - the same errors happen.
I've tried starting up in safe mode (shift), I've tried resetting the PRAM (apple, option, P + R), I've tried resetting the SMU / PMU (both by disconnecting the power cable for 2 minutes and by pressing the Reset PMU button on the logic board).
I've tried to rebuild the desk top (apple, option, shift = delete) and I've also tried to set the startup disk by pressing X on start up - same error messages occur.

Does anybody have any other ideas? I keep reading articles that tell me to do an archive + install from my system CD - but I can't boot up from it! - (Nor can I boot up from my Norton disk).
Any help would be much appreciated!

08-27-2007, 08:04 AM

A segmentation fault is most often a ram error, can you swap out your chips?

08-27-2007, 08:26 AM

Have just tried swapping the ram from this G5 with it - and the same problem still occurs - any other ideas?

08-27-2007, 11:54 AM

In case it helps anybody else - I've got it to work - but am unsure of what actually fixed the problem (if any of the things I did affected anything!):
I booted up from the apple hardware test disk and re-ran the extended hardware test (which showed up no problems). I then connected the G5 to another working G5 via an ethernet cable and restarted. The system software loaded up - slowly (don't know why it chose to start up this time), and then I deleted the BootCache.kext file in System/Library/Extensions/ just in case that helped anything. Seems to start up OK now, fingers crossed... I did have to reset the security settings on my connection to my bt home hub - don't know if the wireless router was the initial cause of the problem and the ethernet cable made some sort of difference at startup....

08-27-2007, 04:48 PM

You could have booted the machine in Target FireWire mode from the other G5 and just run Disc Utility from there, it might have found the issue. Interesting work around though, I just learned something.