Re-ocurring Kernel Panics and other problems...

So it first started out a few weeks ago with about 2 kernel panics a day. I wouldn't even be on the internet, and it would kernel panic. So, with much research I saw that Disk Utility might fix my problem. So first I put in my Mac OSX snow leopard install cd in my mac, held "c" or "shift", whatever it was, and opened up disk utility there and basically it said everything was fine when I verified my macintosh HD and the install disk. No problems were found there.
So I went and erased the Macintosh HD in the disk utility and wiped everything to start from scratch. I then went and re-installed the OS and actually had a kernel panic in one of the steps of the installation process. So now I finally re-installed my OS and now I'm up and running, kernel panic free (so far). But, I've run into a few problems. I am unable to install any applications, programs or anything. I can't even run a software update. I tried inserting my applications disk that came with the mac but keep getting errors that It failed installing onto the disk. This might be a really long explanation to a simple problem, and for that I apologize.

Kernel panics are often caused by hardware problems. Wiping the disk was probably a bit of a rash move as OS X, being a UNIX-like OS, really doesn't ever need to be reinstalled (like Windows does).

I would start by running the Apple Hardware Test. Then run the SMART Utility just to make sure everything is good with the HDD.

Ok thanks, I'll try that and see what happens.

Pay careful attention to RAM. It has been my experience for a long time and even recently on my Mini that RAM causes kernel panics. Went thru that just yesterday, bad ram was causing a kernel panic on my Mini, swapped out the RAM and memtest is clean.

Bill

Well in response to cwa107, the first hardware test didn't come up with anything and it all checked out. The other Smart Utility program you suggested I can't do because when I try and download it, it says I dont have any free disk space.

notimportant said:

Well in response to cwa107, the first hardware test didn't come up with anything and it all checked out. The other Smart Utility program you suggested I can't do because when I try and download it, it says I dont have any free disk space.

Click to expand...

Is your system volume full? Did you check to see how much free space you have?

Generally speaking OS X needs about 20% of its system drive empty in order to have enough elbow room to maintain itself. If you're operating at significantly less than that, that could be the source of your issues.

I have 151.46 GB available free space. It says I've only used 8.23 GB

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Try and download SMARTReporter from this link. Perhaps your problem lies with a faulty hard drive:-


corecode->SMARTReporter

Well like I said above, I'm not able to download anything. So any software your recommending isn't going to work. A message pops up saying I have not enough free disk space available. I've verified everything and repaired everything in disk utility and nothing works. I'm also unable to delete anything. I feel like my computer is almost acting like its running off of some sort of memory source that has no memory in it, like a disk or something. Any way to reset something like that? I also checked to make sure everything is read/writable. And, I'm actually not having any kernel panics anymore, so that is not a problem anymore. I stopped having them after I erased everything and reinstalled max osx snow leopard.

notimportant said:

Well like I said above, I'm not able to download anything. So any software your recommending isn't going to work. A message pops up saying I have not enough free disk space available. I've verified everything and repaired everything in disk utility and nothing works. I'm also unable to delete anything. I feel like my computer is almost acting like its running off of some sort of memory source that has no memory in it, like a disk or something. Any way to reset something like that? I also checked to make sure everything is read/writable. And, I'm actually not having any kernel panics anymore, so that is not a problem anymore. I stopped having them after I erased everything and reinstalled max osx snow leopard.

Click to expand...

Check your web browser's settings and see where it's pointed to save downloads to by default.

It's set to save downloads to the 'Downloads' folder. Let me try and switch it to Macintosh HD and I'll let you know the results

Nothings changes when I switch it to either Macintosh HD or Desktop. It also always reverts back to the downloads folder whenever I reopen the preferences.