Back to the Good Old Days?

[flyboy123]

I was wondering if anyone in the forums had any suggestions for getting my computer back to the level of responsiveness I had when I got it initially. I have a 1.5 ghz G4 Powerbook w/ 512 MB RAM that I got about two years ago. I've been running 10.4 for about a year now with no problems. I've still got 14 GB of free disk space.

All of a sudden, about a week ago, I've started to get the spining beach ball all the time. It's getting to the point where it's difficult to send email because it takes 30 seconds for Mail to load and another 30 seconds to send a message. The problem seems to occur most often in Safari and Mail but it's not limited to that. It also seems to happen independent from whether I have many memory-intensive apps open or whether I'm just running, say, Safari and Mail. Finally, Activity Monitor doesn't show any jump in processor activity when the system hangs.

I've already tried repairing permissions (no help), rebooting (ditto), and a program called Cache Out X to clean out some of the old system files (also ditto). Is my computer just feeling its age or is their something I can do? Anyone know how to get back the snappy, sleek OS experience I know and love?

Thanks in advance for any help. I really appreciate it.

 

[Sun Baked]

I'd backup everything on the drive and start hunting up a new one if it isn't under warranty.

Especially if fsck, running disk first aid, and update_prebinding don't help.

A spinning beachball that often all of a sudden when the drive isn't full, could mean a fragged drive structure (software) or a dying drive (hardware).

But backup quickly, because the flashing question mark may be around the corner.