G3 B&W KERNEL PANIC ON BOOT

G3 450, 256 RAM, 9GB SCSI HDD, OS 10.3, REV 2 Board, CDROM...

As the title states, as soon as I turn the machine on, it kernel panics..if i unhook all the drives, cd and hard drive, it will keep going with the folder and ? flashing.. when i try to boot to cd or HDD (10.3.9), it panics immediately after about 2-3 seconds of seeing the white apple screen.. it was working fine as i just installed 10.3 panther yesterday, and did the first round of updates.. i then today clicked SOFTWARE UPDATES from the APPLE menu, and let it do the security updates and a few JAVA updates. It then prompted to restart, so i did so and this is when the panics began..i have tried each ram stick individually, same thing.. tried different ram out of another functioning G3...same thing... tried HDD boot only without cdrom attached.. same thing... tried no HDD, CD ROM only boot... same thing... removed the SCSI card, same thing.. i have read to try the APPLE HARDWARE TEST cd, but i do not have one, and i think it will probably just panic once it tries to read the cd anyway... is there any way to RESET the kernel, or as in PC terms "RESET BIOS?" Im looking for suggestions here... I am very new to mac, but I am very good at PC repair.. any help would be appreciated!

Dennis

Zap the pram: restart your machine and hold down the command key, option key, and the p and the r key.
The system will chime, keep holding down the keys until the unit chimes three times or perhaps more.

Harryc said:

Zap the pram: restart your machine and hold down the command key, option key, and the p and the r key.
The system will chime, keep holding down the keys until the unit chimes three times or perhaps more.

Click to expand...

can i do it with a USB standard keyboard? I don't have a MAC KEYBOARD..

Racing666 said:

can i do it with a USB standard keyboard? I don't have a MAC KEYBOARD..

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I did it on my old G4 Yikes with an Logitech Internet Navagator USB keyboard and it worked. Give it a try.

Racing666 said:

can i do it with a USB standard keyboard? I don't have a MAC KEYBOARD..

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It may work, depending on the keyboard. I have a Logitech Elite keyboard that is absolutely useless for apple boot/keyboard commands. Try it is all I can say. Use alt-windows-p-r

Harryc said:

It may work, depending on the keyboard. I have a Logitech Elite keyboard that is absolutely useless for apple boot/keyboard commands. Try it is all I can say. Use alt-windows-p-r

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excellent...did what ya said with a gateway usb keyboard, but it didnt do exactly as you said..it would come on, make the apple chime, then after 3-4 seconds, reset itself, and keep doing it over and over again so i figured it was done.. all is well now though :-D booting up nicely, i only have a couple questions..now it doesnt go right out to the hard drive when booting..i see the folder with the flashing ? in it for about 10 seconds, then it finally goes to the HDD and boots...any way to fix it? And i was just curious, being a PC technician at that, exactly what might have happened from doing SOFTWARE UPDATES to cause a KERNEL PANIC to occur when the computer is barely even cut on for 3-4 seconds... Thanks for all your help!

Dennis

Racing666 said:

..i see the folder with the flashing ? in it for about 10 seconds, then it finally goes to the HDD and boots...any way to fix it?

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Go into startup disk preferences and make sure that your boot disk is selected, then reboot.

Harryc said:

Go into startup disk preferences and make sure that your boot disk is selected, then reboot.

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you are the man... everything is good now.. under startup disk pref's, it had NETWORK BOOT selected instead..i clicked on MAC OSX 10.3.9 and now it boots in about 45 - 50 seconds from power button pressed until im into OSX.. thanks so much!

Dennis

You bet Dennis. Good luck to you!