In Desperate Need for Mac Help

[puddle]

This is my first post, and I've searched for a little while but found nothing that really suits my needs. I know ya'll can point me in the right direction.

I've had a little bit of a problem with my iBook G3 lately. I bought it two summers ago off eBay and it's been a great machine, until about two weeks ago it just froze. At first I laughed at the irony of my Mac freezing, but then I tried to restart it and it turns out that the entire startup disk was erased... I have no clue how.

I'm not all that computer savvy, but I reformatted the drive and reinstalled OSX.3.9... ladeda. Now, my computer is SO sluggish. It takes about 30 seconds to open a finder window, even longer if I'm trying to do something in Safari (or heaven forbid, Photoshop).

I'm not on my computer now so I can't check the exact ammount of RAM, but I know it's more than 256... Otherwise, I don't know what to do. I have no clue why it's running so sluggish. Let me also clarify that I live miles upon miles away from the nearest Apple store... I'm in the middle of nowhere... :/

If any of you know what to do or have any special tricks, please pass them on. thanks!

 

[nagromme]

I think you may have a bad hard drive, and/or bad RAM. I assume 10.3.9 is what you were using before the re-install too? (Regardless, no version of OS X is THAT slow even on a G3.)

Check the RAM later and see if it all shows up OK. 512 should be fine, more is better.

Do you have the CD that came with the machine? It should have a Hardware Test application on it that can really test both your HD and RAM.

(And also use Disc Utility to check your disk.)

If you want to be sure no app is running that's bogging down your machine (I've seen Classic do that in the past), use Activity Viewer and sort by CPU usage. If anything's grabbing a high % on the list, post what you find. People here can help you judge what's normal CPU usage.

Luckily, both HD and RAM can be replaced if you're careful.

 

[godbout]

Do you know what version of the OS that you had on your system before it went down?

 

[biozombie]

My iBook g4 did the same thing about 2 months ago. it was the hard drive. pretty much the same symptoms.

 

[Rocksaurus]

Go to your Utilities folder (inside the Applications folder) and open up Disk Utility. click on your hard drive's icon and tell us what it says at the bottom of the window for the hard drive's "S.M.A.R.T. Status". If it doesn't say verified, you've got a dying hard drive.

 

[puddle]

Thank you all for your help! I took my iBook to a certified Apple store about an hour and a half away and found out that it is indeed a bad hard drive. I decided to go ahead and have them fix it (because i'm quite clumsy.. >_>) and I should have her back by the middle of next week.

Thanks again, guys!