My eMac Went Crazy! Urgent!

[TheZeppo]

Note: I previously posted this on the Apple Support Forums, but...not much support.

For a couple of days now, my eMac has been really crazy. It takes around 20 minutes to start. The gray apple with the circular motion thingy stays on for a long time at start! It takes a long time to log in and for Panther to start. When I click on a program, it takes around a minute to begin, and just keeps bouncing for the whole minute. Safari/Firefox take a long time to start and I get the beach ball of death every minute from just clicking a link! Anyone know what's going on? I've tried the disk utility 4 times already and I've used OnyX and a couple of other programs to try and fix the emac, but nothing will work!

Does this have anything to do with RAM? I really can't spend $50 on more ram. 250 mb barely lets me run Panther (I used the RAM program from macupdates.com), why would Apple sell me something so deffective like this? It worked fine since 08/04, but now its gone crazy!

edit:

I'm so close to selling this piece of s*** on ebay, mind my french. I'm that frustrated. My ethernet connection is just connected to my modem, which is only used by me. No other computer, no upluggs. I used the OSX repair CD to Repair Disk and it was good, for 5 minutes. I then did another reboot (which took 10 minutes to log on) under safe boot, and still same. I was using 10.3.8, which I downloaded from Software Update from version 10.3.7, so not the convo update.

I got frustraded last night and just completly re-installed the system and backed up my files on my ipod. And it was good, for an hour.

The computer again is being slow and tormenting me. I can barely run a program. Everything runs slow. I get the goddamn beach ball of death every 2 minutes and lasts from 30-50 seconds.

I think the eMac is begging for eBay, but i'm just begging to finish my project, which is now a day overdue because I was unable to print it yesturday!

I'm this close to switching back to windows, which is still bad, but at least lets me print a paper!

HELP!

PS: I'm back to 10.3.4

 

[cyanide]

do you have an iShock controller? Even if you do not, go to your console (applications>utilities>console) and delete all your log files. there may be a huge one in there causing the problem. this was a 10.3.8 problem for people with an iShock but may have other victims as well. calm down, and do this, and report back.

 

[TheZeppo]

do you have an iShock controller? Even if you do not, go to your console (applications>utilities>console) and delete all your log files. there may be a huge one in there causing the problem. this was a 10.3.8 problem for people with an iShock but may have other victims as well. calm down, and do this, and report back.

I don't have an iShock controller, but I did what you told me to, and deleted all logs, but .. still running crappy

 

[SteveC]

So you bought it in 8/04? Why put it on ebay? It's still covered by AppleCare. What are you worried about? Call Apple and get it fixed.

Secondly, who's going to want to buy it on ebay for any amount of $ over $100 if it doesn't work? Unless you plan to not mention it and mislead them...

Call Apple. You have free coverage. Did you know that? Don't sweat it.

 

[cyanide]

Have you restarted? Repair permissions, and restart while resetting your p ram. this may help get you back on track.

 

[parrothead]

I have read in many forums that 512mb is the minimum RAM needed for Panther to run smoothly. If you can back up your important files, I would try a complete reformatting and reinstallation of OSX. That way, if it is still running badly you know it is not software related, and Apple should do a warranty repair for you. Good luck.

 

[mkrishnan]

When you re-installed, did you check the disk for errors? It sounds to me like bad ram or bad blocks on your HD are the most likely culprits, since you did a clean install and the problem recurred. Have you tried running fsck to check the disk out? http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214 (It says it shouldn't be necessary for a journalled volume, but it will still tell you if you have disk issues....)

One more question. When you backed up your files, how did you do it? Did you copy your entire home directory? If this is what you did, then if there are corrupt preference files at fault, which is a possibility, then you have copied them and then restored them onto the clean install!