Sudden, persistant kernal panics

Question

Hi all.
I am suddenly having a ton of kernal panics. I know there are other threads about this, but I wanted to start one that had my specifics to see if anyone has any ideas.
I had been working on my PowerMac G5 all day on Monday without incident. Suddenly I got a kernal panic. Odd, but no big deal. I rebooted and soon after startup, I got another one. I shut the machine down, came back later and things seemed OK. Then I got another panic. I re-started, heard the chime, then about 5 seconds later, the machine shut off. I turned it on, heard the chime, and 5 seconds later it shut off again. Thinking maybe it had to do with my UPS, I plugged the G5 directly into the wall outlet. It booted up and all seemed well. I updated all my software to the latest version, and a few hours later, kernal panic. I removed all external devices, I re-boot, it loads up and a few minutes later kernal panic. I re-booted again, an that's when it got weird.
During boot-up, I got all sorts of weird writing on the screen, which looked like the old kernal panic (early OSX). The machine sat there frozen. I re-booted and it booted up OK. I used Disk Utility to repair permissions, re-booted and all seemed OK. I worked for an hour, and KERNAL PANIC!
I re-booted, and got the weird screen during startup, re-booted again, OSX comes up....instant kernal panic. I tried re-booting off the OSX install disk, but it seemed to ignore the DVD and booted from the HD.
Just so you know, when this started, it was after an 8 hour day of working. I did not install new software or hardware. Anyone have any ideas??
Thanks!

Answer 1

I am trying to help understand what to do.
And a panic is a hardware failure. The system is not to be trusted.
Prevention. Have a plan, a strategy, an emergency system.
It is / was time to get the tow truck and mechanic to look under the hood.
It is not "life as usual."
Using a system in such a state and after any freeze can only make it worse until resolved.
You said you had seen and read some of the other threads and articles, but they didn't hit home on what to do.
I call a kernel panic and what to do a "wake up call."
Sometimes it is as simple as a shorted or bad USB or Firewire cable.
You should post and ask, but there wasn't enough detail or background, and no one can pull a rabbit out of a hat and know what caused your particular machine and system to die and panic.
A 20 step check list of things to rule out, maybe.
When someone comes into the ER, you don't get offered cookies and cake, nor do you want to, you want to know what is wrong and bandages. If "Stop using your system!" seems severe, so be it.
Hopefully anyone after 5 yrs on these forums and using a G5 would also have along the way used a bootable backup and has a spare system that they can use. And has learned to repair their system, learned not that some things are vulnerable and have their weaknesses, like HFS Extended, doing upgrades and updates without backups.
A panic can be from corrupt nvram and 'zapping pram' on a system is probably the first thing that could be done.
I use to get chastised for posting the same "10 rules" type list of what to do when a system crashes, so I stopped, and yet you see the same problems and errors over and over being repeated.