Potential "crash" when external HD is on?

Question

SO recently, I've been experiencing this "crash", where everytime I turn off the laptop (bought just recently, not even a month old), it puts me at a screen where it says something to the likes of:
"Experienced some problem, please press the power button until it turns off, then turn it back on"
Just now, I could not restart my laptop with all my USBs connected, and I thought it was very strange, since it wouldn't even allow me to do a PRAM reset. But when I took off all of the USB cables, along with the power cord, I was able to do it.
I was just wondering what's going on, since I really do NOT want to experience this again. Is this my fault, or would Mac release some kind of patch (let alone, am I in the right forum?)

Answer 1

Barsona wrote:
SO recently, I've been experiencing this "crash", where everytime I turn off the laptop (bought just recently, not even a month old), it puts me at a screen where it says something to the likes of:
"Experienced some problem, please press the power button until it turns off, then turn it back on"
Sounds like a kernel panic. Many possible causes; here's some reading:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1392
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/kernelpanics.html
(let alone, am I in the right forum?)
If you just bought your MacBook, you likely have the white polycarbonate kind. This forum is technically for the aluminum unibody ones. For future reference, the right forum is here:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=248
And for OS questions (Mac OS X 10.6.x, Snow Leopard), you can post here:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=263
Good luck!