iMac crash -- am I in trouble?

I got this awful screen the other day when I restarted my iMac yesterday.

I am planning a trip to the Mac store this week, but, I am really worried that I may have lost my entire hard drive ... not sure what happened here.

Any thoughts on what might've happened here?

Welcome to the forums.
That is what we know in the Mac world as a Kernel Panic.
It can be caused by a multitude of things. ie: 3rd Party Apps or a usb peripheral

Best bet is too Repair Permissions via Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities
Open DU click on the HD in the left column. Make sure First Aid is clicked then down the bottom Repair Permissions.
Once its finished (this could take a while and take no notice of the logs) reboot the Mac. Hope that does it, but if not fault find by disconnecting your USB peripherals 1 by one until it doesn't happen. OR look for and Apps you recently installed or Extensions.

HTH

Cheers

That's what's known as a "kernel panic". It may have occurred because of a hardware problem or software. If it only happened one time and does not occur again, I wouldn't worry over it.

What makes you think you lost your entire hard drive? Do you still have access to the machine? Can you log on?

jpiehowski said:

Any thoughts on what might've happened here?

Click to expand...

Did you install any new ram recently?

- Nick

Are you running Lion?

Neither of my 2 iMacs will run Lion without having a kernel panic crash. My laptop runs Lion just fine.

Just curious??

Re-install Lion on your two iMacs but this time install clean, not as an upgrade from Snow Leopard or anything else.

chscag said:

Re-install Lion on your two iMacs but this time install clean, not as an upgrade from Snow Leopard or anything else.

Click to expand...

I did all that. No help. After some research it appears that this is a known issue with the iMacs. I will try again in a couple of months after Apple releases a few updates.

What known issue with the iMacs? I'm running Lion on an iMac with no problems whatsoever. I also upgraded a 2008 MacBook to Lion likewise no problems.

The kernel panic issue. It has something to do with the graphics cards in the late 2009 Model 27" iMacs.

I helped a friend upgrade a 2009 model 21.5" iMac to Lion and it has worked great. Ni issues at all.

My 2007 Model MBP works good with Lion also. It is just a little slower when booting or opening apps than it was with SL.