10.6.4 Crashing After New Installation Yesterday...

Question

Yesterday I installed 10.6.4 on a cloned volume on an external drive. Since then my iMac has crashed three times; in the previous seven years of using OS X I only experienced one kernel panic. I am copying the pertinent part of the crash report because I cannot interpret it:
Interval Since Last Panic Report: 1581 sec
Panics Since Last Report: 1
Anonymous UUID: 0FFF8740-CE10-4468-B460-BE33D3CE99A8
Tue Sep 21 14:43:32 2010
panic(cpu 0 caller 0x2269f0): "thread_invoke: preemption_level -1, possible cause: unlocking an unlocked mutex or spinlock"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1504.7.4/osfmk/kern/sched_prim.c:1476
Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x49d03e18 : 0x21b455 (0x5cf328 0x49d03e4c 0x2238b1 0x0)
0x49d03e68 : 0x2269f0 (0x58712c 0xffffffff 0x5870c4 0x2262b4)
0x49d03ee8 : 0x2270f6 (0x8ae07c4 0x0 0x6df9000 0x1)
0x49d03f58 : 0x227161 (0x22fa9b 0x863ea0 0x0 0x2a1591)
0x49d03f78 : 0x22fc35 (0x22fa9b 0x863ea0 0x0 0x0)
0x49d03fc8 : 0x29e6cc (0x863ea0 0x0 0x10 0x88d8a60)
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task
I am running SL on an external Firewire drive because I want to test it re software and hardware compatibility before I commit to upgrading my Macs. (As far as I can tell my firmware, software and hardware are compatible with SL...) Good thing I decided to do so considering the problem that I am having!
Message was edited by: MisterMojo

Answer 1

Thanks Greg. I've done some more research since I started this thread and it seems that a LOT of folks are experiencing the same problem since "upgrading" to 10.6.4. I did a Google search using the first part of the crash report and found numerous posts on various forums (including this one) that noted the same crash details.
Yesterday I tried a couple of things: I eliminated a few programs from my start-up list under Accounts and I used Onyx to wipe all my caches. I didn't experience a crash yesterday but starting-up this morning my iMac hung and needed a restart.
It is obvious that 10.6.4 is problematic and I could waste a bunch of time trying to figure out the cause, if indeed that is even possible... So for the time being I am going to limp along and hope that my iMac doesn't crash while I am working on something important; I am going to save my work as often as possible. And I going to keep my MBP running 10.5.8 and retain the cloned 10.5.8 iMac volume on an external drive Just In Case.
Hopefully the 10.6.5 update will fix this problem. And while my problem is not "fixed" I am going to mark this questioned as "answered" because this is just another thread among many that isn't going to be answered until Apple fixes the problem.