freezing and flashing start up G4 Why?

[Patth9]

The Mac freezes sporadically, even if I leave the side door open and have an external fan blowing.

When I starts the G4 up a flashing face/folder and question mark switch back and forth about 6 times before the center Apple shows, if I'm fortunate.

Trying to keep this G4 MDD Apple Model No:M8570 going.


Patt

 

[poiihy]

What kind of freeze? Complete freeze where even mouse cursor cant move or less freeze where you can move the mouse and stuff but you get stuck at beachball when you try to do something?

If it's the latter then it's probably bad HDD. If it's the former then it may be bad RAM.

 

[redheeler]

When I starts the G4 up a flashing face/folder and question mark switch back and forth about 6 times before the center Apple shows, if I'm fortunate.

This is usually a symptom of looking for a non-existant booting partition. System Preferences > Startup Disk, select the boot drive and restart.

If the problem continues to occur afterward it's likely a failing hard drive. This would also cause system freezes (with beachballs, as poiihy said).

 

[Patth9]

Thanks redheeler. Apologies for the very late reply.