Gray screen of death

[kristiwright]

Recently I had my first meeting with the PC equivalent of the blue screen of death. It told me to power down immediately which I did, everything came back seemingly normal. I ran disc permissions repair several times in utlities and then ran the in depth hardware test using the dvd that came with my imac. It reports no errors.

Should I be concerned? I recently downloaded photo mechanic and I'm having problems with that software not rendering images. PM techs are adamant that it is my imac that has the problem (hardware) and not their software.

System:
20" iMac purchased 2009
Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB

I'm pretty new to macs so I'm not sure if I need to rush my computer to a tech for evaluation or if the gray screen is common. It's only happened once.

I appreciate any feedback.

 

[chscag]

What you experienced may have been a "kernel panic". Those can be caused by software or hardware.

Since it was only a one time thing, hopefully whatever caused it to happen is gone. If it occurs again or happens more frequently, post back and we'll do some trouble shooting.

You did the right thing by running permissions repair and the AHT with your install DVD. It may in fact have been "Photo Mechanic" that caused the problem, but unless it happens again with the same program, there's not much you can do.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Regards.

 

[Mercedes1787]

So thats what a Kernel Panic is. When this happens to me (almost never on my intel imac, may once, but allot on my old G5 Imac) I just restarted my mac and nothing after. Whats this repair things you should do afterwards?