Kernel Panic

System panic or Kernel panic is a special issue in Mac. When it occurs, a screen curtain rolls down quickly like a transparent film blocking the whole screen. After the curtain is down, you cannot interact with Mac OS any more. There is no way you can save anything you have done. Therefore, it is extremely frustrating during the time you have lots of work done but not saved. Fortunately, most of time you can get back to normal OS after power down and up again.

I had this issue several times in my previous iMac 27 with Snow Leopard. Recently the kernel panic came back twice again in the past month. I remembered that I called Apple support line about this issue. I think that we spent about more than half hour to figure out any issue. Eventually, I was told that I had to reinstall my OS. After the re-installation of OS, the issue seems gone for a while. That's what I can remember about the issue.

The following screen actually is the one I had long time ago. There was no way to take screen shot, so I had to use my iPhone to take a picture. Today I saw this familiar one again. I decided to to re-intall my Lion OS.

Reinstall Mac OS Steps

Power off my Mac and restart it. When the power is up, hold command+R key till the screen is back.

Select Reinstall Mac OS. This time is for Lion:

Not sure if it did download Mac OS again to not, but it only take about 24 minute time:

Then, the Mac restarted. The next screen is to install Mac OS. This process took about 35 minutes.

When the reinstallation is finished, my Mac is back. All the programs and documents are still as same as before. I hope this reinstallation will keep the kernel panic away.

Reference

• Wikipeida: Kernel panic