Continuous crashes

[jonathanaz]

My PowerMac G4 keeps crashing on me. Sometimes it will stay up for a day, sometimes it won't stay up for 5 minutues. Its running OS X 10.4.8, two 1.25ghz G4 processors, 80 gig HD, and all the software is Mac software. I use the normal stuff like Safari, Apple Mail, iChat, iTunes, iCal, Address Book, stickies...nothing weird. But it keeps on crashing. First thing I did is backed up it up to an external LaCie 160 gig HD. What's wrong with my Mac? Is anyone else experiencing this mess too? Oh, and Safari likes to quit too. That's not as bad though as the whole OS telling me I need to hold down the power button to restart...that's frustrating. So far today, Safari quit three times, and the OS quit once. And its only noon!

 

[bartelby]

Have you changed any hardware or added any RAM before the troubles started?

 

[jonathanaz]

no changes

No, I haven't changed anything since I got it. Its been faithful in the past, haven't done anything other than normal use to it.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Do you know how to reboot into Single User Mode and run fsck?

 

[zami]

Does it crash if booted off the LaCie external drive?

Try that first in case it is fault of the internal HD. Also try disk repair of the internal HD from the booted external HD.

Obvious but worth trying.

 

[jonathanaz]

Posts 4 and 6:

Thanks for your advice, for the people in posts four and six. I don't know how to do either of those w/ my Mac. I don't think that the LaCie drive can boot the computer, its just external storage...I'm pretty sure I don't have the OS installed on it. Do I need to?

 

[IJ Reilly]

Thanks for your advice, for the people in posts four and six. I don't know how to do either of those w/ my Mac. I don't think that the LaCie drive can boot the computer, its just external storage...I'm pretty sure I don't have the OS installed on it. Do I need to?

Restart your Mac, hold down cmd-s until you see the black screen with white character appear. When the screen stops scrolling, at the prompt type:

fsck -f [including the space, return]

If repairs are reported, repeat fsck until none are reported, then at the prompt type:

reboot [return]

Let us know how that goes. The most important/serious results are disk errors that cannot be repaired.