Incredibly stressful: iMac G4 crashing a lot

[macJC50640]

Hello,
I just bought an iMac G4. This machine has been great, until a few hours ago. I was surfing Camino, when I went to go to IE for Mac (to check my Gmail, because Camino crashes when I go to Gmail) and then the same website I typed in on IE (mail.google.com) showed up in Camino. Of course, Camino crashed. Then, Camino started itself back up again, automatically surfed to mail.google.com, and crashed again. Then Camino started up again...(and so on)

So I chose to force shut down the computer via the power button (which was probably a bad choice). When I got back on, I tried starting Camino. It crashed almost as soon as I clicked on it. I tried again...same thing. I soon came to realize that everything to do with the internet (Camino, Safari, IE, AIM) crashes the same way (almost as soon as you click on it). You ask how it crashed? Just the normal "This application unexpectedly quit" type.

I am now stuck with an iMac G4 that has no access to the internet, and I can't figure out why. I really need this machine to access the internet, and this problem is incredibly frustrating and stressful.

Here are the specs:
iMac G4
700mhz
15 inch
Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar
40 gig HDD

Please help me!

P.S. maybe it's not because all of those programs have something to do with the internet....maybe it's because those all all of the programs I had running when I force shut down the computer (not including Safari)

 

[Consultant]

You should not use I.E.

If you have other macs in your "collection", you should know how to use disk utility to repair / verify disk.

Probably reinstall the os.

 

[madog]

There's also iCab (bleh), but depending on which version of the OS you are running on, you might be able to download an older version of Firefox from their downloads page. The newest one would not work.

Also, your machine can handle Tiger, Mac OS 10.4. You can't find it in stores anymore, but should be able to find a copy of it online, albeit possibly a bit more expensive than it's original retail price of $129. It's the latest system that machine can handle, and is a great OS and is still supported by pretty much every mainstream app out there that isn't Intel only.

 

[macJC50640]

So I tried Disk Repair (via Disk Utility, of course), and that did not fix the problem. I really don't know what to do...

Thanks for the replies.
-Justin

 

[macJC50640]

You should not use I.E.

If you have other macs in your "collection", you should know how to use disk utility to repair / verify disk.

Probably reinstall the os.

Oh, I know how terrible IE is. But, Camino dislikes Gmail, so I had to use it. I really would not like to reinstall the OS, because I would have to somehow get a good browser off of an outdated browser (safari something) that doesn't display pages correctly...

 

[Consultant]

Oh, I know how terrible IE is. But, Camino dislikes Gmail, so I had to use it. I really would not like to reinstall the OS, because I would have to somehow get a good browser off of an outdated browser (safari something) that doesn't display pages correctly...

It could run 10.4 fine, which means with 10.4 you can run almost all current software.

Or if you only have 10.2 you can get the app by googling:
old apps mac