Macbook crashing and rebooting, help!

[heidiho]

I've had my Macbook (10.5.8) for over two years and have had no problems until recently. It's crashed twice in the past month, and before that (for a few months) it has been extremely slow. I've cleaned out everything I didn't need and placed most of my documents onto a external hard drive in hopes that this would speed things up - it has not.

When the thing crashes it basically reboots itself with out any warning, losing my data. Both times this has happened I had photoshop and Acrobat 6.0 Professional open (I've been editing photos of texts of my research and turning them into pdf - some of these files are quite large (400 colored pages) ie. 600mb). The system usually crashes and reboots while I am editing an unsaved pdf in Acrobat.

Has anyone had similar problems? Any advice?

Thanks!

 

[vasanth4u]

I've had my Macbook (10.5.8) for over two years and have had no problems until recently. It's crashed twice in the past month, and before that (for a few months) it has been extremely slow. I've cleaned out everything I didn't need and placed most of my documents onto a external hard drive in hopes that this would speed things up - it has not.

When the thing crashes it basically reboots itself with out any warning, losing my data. Both times this has happened I had photoshop and Acrobat 6.0 Professional open (I've been editing photos of texts of my research and turning them into pdf - some of these files are quite large (400 colored pages) ie. 600mb). The system usually crashes and reboots while I am editing an unsaved pdf in Acrobat.

Has anyone had similar problems? Any advice?

Thanks!

Have u tried performing a Archive and install , if it is the same after that backup the data and then format the Hard drive using disk utility Zero out data booting through the disks and then install the OS again -if it is the same then it could be a hardware issue ...

 

[heidiho]

Have u tried performing a Archive and install , if it is the same after that backup the data and then format the Hard drive using disk utility Zero out data booting through the disks and then install the OS again -if it is the same then it could be a hardware issue ...

Hi, I haven't tried anything yet, have been backing up my files. My concern with reformatting is that I will lose some applications that I don't have discs for - ie. Microsoft office (a friend installed it for me as one of her 3 installs and has since moved away).
If I did the Archive and install, will I lose Microsoft office?

 

[vasanth4u]

Hi, I haven't tried anything yet, have been backing up my files. My concern with reformatting is that I will lose some applications that I don't have discs for - ie. Microsoft office (a friend installed it for me as one of her 3 installs and has since moved away).
If I did the Archive and install, will I lose Microsoft office?

HI

When we do a Archive and Install it would not delete Third party apps . But i recommended u to backup all the information and office before we perform anything .So that we are on the safer side .