kernel

After reports surfaced of its Chrome browser causing crashes on some of Apple's new MacBook systems, Google has publicly acknowledged the issue, claiming a workaround is immediately available and a true fix is in the works.

Owners of Apple's new MacBook Air had been experiencing persistent kernel panics on their systems, which after investigation were found to be rooted in actions like closing tabs and otherwise managing windows in Google's Chrome Web browser. Unfortunately, being kernel panics, the crashes did not just close the browser, but caused the entire system to require rebooting.

In a statement to Gizmodo, … Read more

Apple's MacBook Air is one of the more popular of its laptop offerings, and in its recent hardware announcements Apple updated the Air with speed and storage bumps, in addition to including the faster Intel HD 4000 graphics capabilities. While these updates have been enticing to new buyers, a number of people who have been using the new systems are experiencing crashes.

After using the systems for a while, many users are noticing that they seem to randomly crash with a kernel panic, which fades the display and presents a message that states the user needs to press the … Read more

Ordinary folks may not notice much right away from the fact that Google's Android programmers are bringing their work back into the Linux kernel fold.

But it's an entirely different situation for a smaller but important group: the programmers who like to experiment with Google's open-source mobile operating system.

So predicts Tim Bird, the Sony programmer who's centrally involved in the merge of Google's Android Linux work with the "mainline" Linux kernel project. That cooperation took a big step Sunday when Linux leader Linus Torvalds released version 3.3 of the heart of … Read more

A number of events happen when you boot your Mac that activate the hardware and load the system software. Understanding these and some of the behaviors that the system might show when problems occur during these steps can help determine what you should do if your system will not boot properly.

Powering up Upon pressing the power button on your system, computer components such as hard drives, add-in cards, and other controllers receive power and start initialization routines to ensure that their hardware is working OK. If these components are all in working order, then they will assume a "… Read more

An issue that has been plaguing some owners of MacBook Pro systems is a black-screen bug where systems will suddenly show a black and unresponsive display after performing specific tasks that may be as simple as moving a window, resizing screen elements, or when waking the system from sleep. The problem may show a kernel panic, but generally just displays the black screen and requires users to press the power button to restart the systems.

This issue was first widely noted when OS X 10.7 was released, but it soon became clear that the problem was present (albeit less … Read more

Fusion Garage's new Grid 10 tablet is selling for a healthy $200 below its originally announced price.

Available for sale in the United States and scheduled to start shipping this past Monday, the Grid 10 is being served up in two versions--a 16GB Wi-Fi-only version for $299 and a 16GB Wi-Fi + 3G edition for $399. Those numbers compare with the previously announced prices of $499 and $599, respectively. Shipping is free.

A spokewoman for Fusion Garage told CNET that the company was able to lower the price after negotiating its supply chain costs with a manufacturing partner. Customers who … Read more

If you launch the Activity Monitor utility on your Mac, you will be able to see what processes are running and what system resources they are using. As expected, some processes will take up more RAM and CPU time than others. Seeing this in Activity Monitor can be handy for figuring out which tasks are taking up an unexpected amount of CPU or RAM. One regular culprit for using a lot of RAM is Safari, but in addition you will see another process called "kernel_task" that also will regularly use a few hundred megabytes of real RAM and … Read more

Apple's new OS X 10.7 has a number of enticing features and seems to run well on many systems; however, after about a month of Lion being out in the wild, there are several prominent issues affecting some Mac users running Lion that seem to all revolve around the management or processing of graphics.

The first issues are with MacBook Pro systems (specifically the 2010 models), where it seems a bug results in kernel panics when performing specific video-processing tasks, be it the movement of a window, or the editing and management of a graphics file. The systems … Read more

A number of people with 2010 MacBook Pro systems configured with Core i7 GPUs and Nvidia graphics cards are reporting an issue where the systems periodically crash with a kernel panic. The screen shows the classic kernel panic message instructing users to hold down the power button to restart the system, and when the panic log is shown it mentions an error stating something similar to the following:

panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff7f809a52bf): NVRM[0/1:0:0]: Read Error 0x00000100

In addition, the kernel extensions that were loaded and being accessed when this error occurs are aspects of the … Read more