"Kernel panic"...what is it?

[6drums]

It's prolly a dumb question to most of you, but I keep reading about it on various forums.

How do I know if it's happening on my machine? What cures it - a forced restart?

[xchanyazy]

It's kind of comparable to the Blue Screen of Death on Windows (only it happens much, much, much, much, much less often).

This is from ars technica:

Kernel Panics

Kernel crashes or "panics" are the real deal. If you land on one of these whammies, your only recourse is to restart (or debug the crash remmotely, if you're so inclined). These are the equivalent of the venerable "bomb" dialog boxes from classic Mac OS, only much, much uglier

That message is from 10.0, but it's still the same thing.

You'll know if it happens to your machine - your computer will stop responding completely and this weird text will cover up whatever was on the screen at the time. (look at the above link for a picture)

Forced restart is the only way to fix it that I'm aware of.

[6drums]

Thanks for the heads-up, xchanyazy. Looks like it's something I don't ever wanna see, (and I thought it was what happens to popcorn in the microwave!)

BTW, you know anything about possibly overclocking the Radeon 7500? Thx!