Hi guys my perfectly working iMac has developed a serious problem today.
Basically NI Maschine mk2 arrived, i already had Maschine mk1 installed, legit. Instead of bothering with the huge download of 1.8, i decided to uninstall my previous version of Maschine and install from the new disc. Stupidly i uninstalled maschine mk1 before checking the install dvd.
Did a full uninstall of maschine, loaded mk2 dvd and my optical drive did not read it. Loaded it on my macbook pro, double clicked and copied everything on to usb drive. Started installing from USB drive, after a while it asked me to insert install dvd for content. Again dvd did not work. I did show contents from the macbook pro again and copied evrthing and brought it ti imac. No luck. Accidentally clicked on one of the packages while Maschine installer was waiting for dvd. System froze. Had to hard reboot. Uninstalled this half installed version.

Then i figured i may as well DL from service center. Moved some of my kontakt libaties, reactor etc out of lib prefrences and. appsupport/ni/service center.
launched service center, saw download options, was too slow so gave up again.

at this point the imac froze again. this time hard reboot resulted in gray screen of death followed by half screen gray, bottom blue with graphic bigs like wierd dots and lines onn the screen. very scary.
Hard reboot in safe mode, verified disk repaired permissions etc. Disconnected all fw and usb devices. restart and things were ok. then when the system was idle for 5 mins it froze again. restart resulted isame damaged grayl
Works fine in safe mode. restarts fine even with fw and usb devices, but freezes once its idle for a bit.

I thing i fucked something up or deleted a preference by accident. but i only moved the ni prefs to the desktop and put them all back in.

Other thing i installed was smc fan control a few days and had been running it it only when imac started to get really hot.

Can u please suggest something. Will i have to erase didk and feinstall from scratch ??

If someone can offer some help, i would be highly grateful. I have most legit stuff and some stuff i test, play around and uninstall. I dont run too many things.

All was fine till i screwed up the mashcine install and prefs move i am guessing.........

Will really appreciate your help and advice.

Thanks

 

start in this mode http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1492?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

and take a photo of the kernel panic so we can see what kext to remove.

if you can .

 

Thanks fpr ur reply New Agent,
just a few newbie questions i have never done this before.

Which mode should i select, single user or verbose ?
Where will i find the kernel panic report ?
How do i do a screen capture which i can post here ?

Thank u for this ray of hope......

 

may be you "uninstall" manually? NI don't have an uninstaller within apps, download separately. May be you delete essential system files from your iMac accidentally.
Check this to avoid future disaster on uninstalling NI software: How to Uninstall Native Instruments Software and Drivers from a Mac OS X Computer

good luck

 

Use verbose it'll print messages about what is going on.

The Kernel panic logs you can view using Console.app (/Applications/Utilities/Console.app). Click on Show Log List if it isn't shown by default. Look for panic.log. Also check 'All messages' at the top for messages logged at the time the freezes occur. Archived logs for the past week are under /private/var/log called system.log.0.bz, system.log.1.bz etc)

Mac OS X: How to start up in single-user or verbose mode

Code:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1492?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Mac OS X: How to log a kernel panic

Code:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2546

OS X: About kernel panics

Code:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3742

You could also use top from the Terminal. Open Terminal.app and type

Code:

top -o cpu

that will give you an interactive list of processes ordered by CPU usage. The big users are on top. If you keep it running and keep an eye on it, you might be able to catch the process that is making your Mac freeze.

You can stop top by typing ctrl-c

You could also try the Apple Hardware Test

Code:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1509

to rule out hardware issues.

 

Does your optical drive function at all ? If so, see if you can boot from your Mac OS X Install Disk

If possible, run the Disk Utility from the booted Mac OS X Install Disk to verify and run repairs on the MacintoshHD

If that does not resolve the problem, you might see fit to perform a reInstallation of the core OS

There are options that could preserve your user data via system A) Upgrade (Attempts to reInstall Core OS
while retaining User files and settings) or B) Archive and Install (Installs New System, and Archives old Installation)

 

Guys thank u so much!! Due to time zone differences and schedule i have just seen ur replies. Let me try what has been suggested and get back to tou in a bit. Hopefully we can solve the issue soon.

Thanks

 

Booted in safe mode, spent some time on Console and copied a system log, kernel log and "all messages" to text files. However, internet wont work in safe mode, neither will it allow me to use a pen drive to copy the text files on to........
how should i proceed.

btw, and excuse me for being naive, is it cool/safe to post system logs or kernel logs on forums ?? isnt that kinda like a naked pic of ur whole system ?? just wondering how that could be used for malicious intent......

as of now, i dont how to to proceed. The clean install of everything does sound like a good idea considering its been years since i did that and may have accumulated some dirt and junk, especially with the try before u buy stuff!

Still, everything was perfect till yesterday, an easy fix if possible would save me a lot of pain!

 

No, no need to post all the logs. They do contain some information that could be used to make inferences about you. Such as your hostname, username, and IP addresses.

You need more specific logs like a panic.log or crash logs (look under CrashReporter in the left log list in Console) that occur around the time when your Mac freezes. Or look in 'All messages' for often repeated errors. Stuff like that.

You can use the search box in Console (top right) to look for terms like 'error', 'failed', 'fatal', 'aborting', 'warning' in the 'All Messages' log and also the 6 System logs (under /private/var/log in Console). That would be interesting. Just clean it of personal info (host and username, IP addresses...)

If you have a panic.log then that would be useful to see, but unless you saw the specific Kernel panic screen you can see pictured in this article:

Code:

http://www.cultofmac.com/50685/how-to-fix-common-mac-startup-problems-macrx/

it probably wasn't a Kernel panic. Freezing can have various causes. It could be related to some kind of hardware failure (often RAM) or it could be caused by some process running amok (Finder, launchd, mds). You might have damaged something when you choked off the installer.

Might be a good idea to do a clean install.

 

Thanks Feridan,
Yes i think its a sign that i need to clean up the system and start fresh........daunting task

 

You could try running Onyx once. Do you have Onyx available?

Code:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11582/onyx

And try typing this into Terminal

Code:

nvram -p

and see what the output is. It should be an ordered list containing entries like SystemAudioVolume. If you see a string of garbled random characters then you should reset it. It might contain information about a recent Kernel panic, too. If you find that, copy it.

About NVRAM and PRAM

Code:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

But going back to Onyx. Start it up and allow it to check your volume and then enter your Admin password when it requests it.

Then do this:

Click on the Verify tab and choose the Preferences sub-tab, click the Check button and allow it to check the Preferences

Click on the Maintenance tab and choose the Permissions sub-tab, click on Execute, and wait for it to finish. Click on the Rebuild sub-tab and see if LaunchServices, dyld's shared cache, and Help viewer menu are checked, then click Execute again.

You can rebuild your Spotlight index from here as well, but be warned it can take hours to finish. Your problems might be related to a corrupt Spotlight database, especially if you see that mds is gobbling up all CPU (check with top) during a freeze.

But perhaps forsake rebuilding Spotlight index for now and move on to Onyx' Cleaning tab. Choose the System sub-tab and make sure everything is checked there, before clicking Execute.

Once it finishes it will ask you to reboot your machine, but click on the close button instead. No need to reboot several times

Move on to the User sub-tab, again check everything, and click Execute, then click Close instead of Reboot.

Move on to the Fonts sub-tab, check everything, Execute, again Close instead of Reboot.

Now move on to the Info panel in Onyx, and chose the Memory sub-tab. There is a button labeled Reload next to the 'Active' entry. Click that.

Also click the Purge-button next to 'Inactive'.

Once you've done that, quit Onyx and immediately reboot your computer.

What you can also try is to download the most recent Combo-update for your system from Apple, and run that. It might fix damaged components in your install or replace missing ones.

If you suspect a disk problem try DiskWarrior, it's fairly conservative and often finds problems DiskUtility misses. Make sure you use the right version for your OS.

 

Thank you so much for the details Feridan, i really appreciate you.
Will report back after running these tasks.

 

guys, thank u so much for yr help n advise. while the steps mentioned would have found the issue surely, for optimum peace of mind and sanity i feel i should do a fresh re-install and get rid of all the junk i have collected over the years. there is also a chance that i may be upgrading my machine this week so this episode has just kinda moved me towards that purchase. so i'll be installing everything from scratch on that system and will just perform a clean OS install and sell this.

Thank u and will talk soon. Very helpful forum indeed!