Mac is laggy...

[rye9]

OK, now there's no more switching between speeds. it's staying slow and laggy, with many times where the computer is frozen and then jumps to something (the lag). Also, my iBook's fan is now on. Please help!!!

 

[Nermal]

What do u mean by the hardware disc Artful Dodger?

You should have a CD called Apple Hardware Test. Read the labels on the CDs carefully - sometimes AHT is on the same CD as OS X.

 

[rye9]

2 things... 1) now my iBooks beginning to do the thing where it speeds up every minuter or so for a short period of time again as i said it was doing before( but it is still jumpy, the cursor i mean) 2) What if the AHT comes back negative, then how do I fix a software problem?

 

[Nermal]

If AHT fails, then you have a hardware problem. If it passes, then create a new user account and try that for a while. If the problem persists, it's a system-wide problem. If not, it's localised to your account. This helps to track down where the problem is

 

[howesey]

I found out about the maintenance scripts, but I would still like to know if what I did was good and if rebooting (restarting) 3 times in 10 minutes will cause harm. I'm letting my iBook sleep tonight, I dont want to turn it off...again.

ROTFL. Rebooting will not harm your computer at all.