Intel MAC keeps crashing and Unlinking Media

Question

Hi All,
I know this is a probably unanswerable question on a forum or telephone support even as the crash I am getting doesn't appear to be recreatable or at any specifc point.
Basically we are editing away quite merrily and a couple of times day we get the complete crash screen with Chinese or Japanese writing on (what is the technical name or nickname for this screen?)
We then have to hardboot the PC at this point. When we go back to the job on some of the reboots it has unlinked the media so we have to manually reconnect and also see how much work we have lost since last autosave.
Does anyone have any ideas why this might be happening? We have other (IBM) Quads that don't seem to have this behavior. The machines are completely uptodate on there software. I have trashed preferences.
My problem is that being random it is ask to hard to ask for support..
Any help or hints to finding the problem would be mucho appreciated.

Answer 1

This is the list Andy mentioned.
20 Troubleshooting Steps for OS X
by Jan Johannsen (Collected from: Apple>User Tips Library>User Tips Contributions forum)
So your OS X Mac isn't working quite right. What should you do? Here's a list of 20 basic steps to try.
FIRST AID
01 Restart
02 Check/fix the filesystem
03 Make sure you're not running out of free space on the System volume
04 Repair permissions
05 Create a new user account, and see if the problem persists there
06 Clear system & user caches
07 Disable Application Enhancer, if you're running it
08 Startup in SafeBoot mode, and see if the problem persists there
09 Reset system firmware
10 Unplug all USB, Firewire devices except Apple mouse
MORE SERIOUS TROUBLESHOOTING
11 Reapply the latest combo updater
12 Run the Apple hardware diagnostic CD
13 Check the hard drive for bad blocks
14 Take out 3rd party RAM
15 Unplug 3rd Party PCI cards
16 Reset PMU
17 Archive and reinstall the OS
18 Reinstall the system from scratch
19 Send the machine back to Apple
20 Additional Notes
Read the rest of the hint for more detail on each of these steps...
It can be found here.
Specific issues relating to Final Cut Pro's malfunctioning operation often involve updates to Quicktime.
What software have you recently upgraded, changed or new installs?
Audio software and Quicktime updates are both potential trouble causes.
Reinstalling QT can often solve camera/VTR connectivity problems.
good luck.
x