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iToaster

macrumors 68000
May 3, 2007
1,742
0
In front of my MacBook Pro
It's not the hard drive, it's more likely to be that you're running Leopard on 512 MB or RAM, which needs more RAM. Of course, there could be a deeper problem, such as bad RAM in general, but not having enough RAM will produce a lot of slowdowns and potentially lockups, but, once again, I can't rule out some other problem in this situation. The beep(s) would indicate bad RAM, so I'd have to go with the RAM... potentially both slots are actually failing... I dunno...
 

JPIndustrie

macrumors 6502a
Mar 12, 2008
909
213
Queens, NY
I think you can get another 512 for pretty cheap nowadays. It's not like it's 2003 :p

Try getting another 512 to replace the you had.
 

andiwm2003

macrumors 601
Mar 29, 2004
4,382
454
Boston, MA
the powerbooks of that time had a problem called upper ram slot failure.

the ram slot failed, not the ram itself. try putting your ram in the other slot and see if it's better. if it is better go to a apple store, maybe it's under warranty (mine was).

aside of that replace your ram with at least a 1GB stick.
 

jalagl

macrumors 6502a
Jun 5, 2003
802
1
Costa Rica
Those Powerbooks in particular suffered from several issues that became apparent after the warranty expired. Mine had the following issues:

  1. First, it would go to sleep every once in a while while you were working. it was frustrating to say the least. It turns out one of the temperature sensors (under the trackpad) tends to go bad, so the PB goes to sleep because of an "overtemp" signal. This can be "fixed' by removing some kext files that deal with the temperature sensors.
  2. Then, I had the same issue with the memory. The memory slot failed, and the computer had the same symptoms as yours. This is well-known issue, and Apple even had a replacement program for a while. The only definitive fix is to replace the motherboard, and, if it isn't under warranty, can get very expensive.

There is some information and links over at Wikipedia
 
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