only one processor working?

P

pawzisme

Registered
Hello, wondering if someone could give us clues on how to proceed here.

We have been asked to help a young man who has a problem with his Power Macintosh dual 2 Ghz processor G5. It does not always boot up, and when it does, it indicates that only one processor is active. He recently ran a Leopard (his OS is Tiger) cache cleaner and it gave him a read-out page on which it says that the Darwin kernel is configured for a single processor only.

I should say that while we are both quite used to computer-fixing in this house, which is why we were asked to help this young man, I am actually a PC person ( sorry 'bout that), but my husband does know a fair bit about fixing Macs - but we have not had much experience yet with G5's and OS X.

What we are asking for is clues as to where to look in respect of getting the other processor configured again, if that is possible. Is it a software problem, a hardware issue, is this a known problem with a known resolution?

We do not have the machine here as the young man needs it for his work.

Hope someone here can give us some pointers.:confused:
 
Best way to verify is to use activity monitor. You may also download iStat menu so you verify if both processors are running.

Try to perform an erase and install(back up first, i dont need to emphasize more on this)so you can also isolate if its a sw or hw issue
 
kisuke that sounds really helpful - thank you. Hubs is going back next week and will do as you advise and after his visit I will post back here if there is anything good ( or bad) to say.
 
If only one processor is working, I would highly suspect it has to do with hardware, not software. It would be extremely unusual for some kernel extension or operating system-level driver to suddenly switch to "single processor" mode (although this is possible to do with Apple's CHUD software).

The G5s are notorious for CPU-level failures. The liquid-cooled G5s are especially prone to leakage, which causes motherboard and processor failures. It sounds like one of the processors on the motherboard is having problems, which may range from very simple fixes to complete processor failure. One of the following may have happened:

1) One of the processors has become unseated from the motherboard.
2) If liquid cooled (which I don't think it is, but...), there could be leakage that would be noticeable in the very bottom of the computer when the case is open.
3) A processor fan has failed, and the computer is deactivating that processor to prevent overheating.
4) A processor fan has failed, and the computer did not deactivate that processor to prevent overheating, and the processor overheated and failed (i.e., it's broke!).
5) The motherboard processor socket for one processor has failed and no longer detects that a processor is installed in that socket.
 
thanks ElDiabloConCaca, this has been the suspicion of the machines young owner, given that there seem to be a lot of issues with G5 processors posted about on the web - but we will try what kisuke suggests - it cannot hurt.

If that does not help then re-seating the processor might well be the next move, though I wonder by what mechanism it could have become unseated. I wonder too, how we would check the processor fan on the faulting processor - will it be spinning given that it has not failed, even if the processor is not active?

Anyway, this is all useful stuff, because it helps us come to a conclusion, even if it is the worst one... thanks.
 
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