PowerBook Beachballing and Freezing

[ingenious]

My aging PowerBook G4 can't be dying.

It's just not possible! That thing is truly a beast.

Anyway, dramatics aside, it's started doing some strange things.

Last Friday, it wouldn't start up at first (I had to press the power button six or eight times). This could be because it was completely dead, though.

They just got worse yesterday. Again, it wouldn't start up (it was dead again- computer won't calculate battery charge properly). I put my laptop in its bag after recording something in GarageBand (single track... don't worry ), and when I opened it this morning at school, it was frozen, with the clock at 1:02 P.M. Sunday and the Bluetooth mouse assistant up.

Today while working with a share on a server running W2K Server, Finder beachballed out twice (everything else was still working, including Image Capture, which was uploading pictures to that same share).

The only way I got it back each time was to do a complete hard shut down.

I added RAM about 3 weeks ago, but Tech Tool said it checked out.

I paired my new Motorola RAZR V3a with it on Friday (afternoon, after the weird start up thing).

The Bluetooth assistant comes up every time it wakes up now.



Help?! (I can't afford a MacBook Pro just yet!)

 

[emac82]

Is your hard drive making a ticking noise?

Have you tried resetting your PRAM? It wouldn't hurt...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

 

[yoda13]

My aging PowerBook G4 can't be dying.

It's just not possible! That thing is truly a beast.

Anyway, dramatics aside, it's started doing some strange things.

Last Friday, it wouldn't start up at first (I had to press the power button six or eight times). This could be because it was completely dead, though.

They just got worse yesterday. Again, it wouldn't start up (it was dead again- computer won't calculate battery charge properly). I put my laptop in its bag after recording something in GarageBand (single track... don't worry ), and when I opened it this morning at school, it was frozen, with the clock at 1:02 P.M. Sunday and the Bluetooth mouse assistant up.

Today while working with a share on a server running W2K Server, Finder beachballed out twice (everything else was still working, including Image Capture, which was uploading pictures to that same share).

The only way I got it back each time was to do a complete hard shut down.

I added RAM about 3 weeks ago, but Tech Tool said it checked out.

I paired my new Motorola RAZR V3a with it on Friday (afternoon, after the weird start up thing).

The Bluetooth assistant comes up every time it wakes up now.



Help?! (I can't afford a MacBook Pro just yet!)

My powerbook did that a few years ago, and it checked out fine with tech tool as well as apple hardware test disk, but it was bad memory I had just added anyway, it just didn't show up until more extensive testing at the apple store...

 

[emac82]

Yeah definitely could be bad memory...

 

[ingenious]

Is your hard drive making a ticking noise?

Have you tried resetting your PRAM? It wouldn't hurt...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

I'll try that... I'd rather it not be bad memory, but if it is, well, there I go...

Does it matter that the stick has more capacity than the computer can address (it is the right kind, though...)?

----

Okay, so I just reset it, and (in the minute and a half it's been on... ) so far so good.

However, is there something that resets whatever reads the battery's charge? Mine always reads something outlandish like 667:24 and then stays on for three hours, or something else weird and shuts off after a few seconds...

----

Hmm... after reading this [Apple.com], does resetting the PMU help my charging problem?

----

Okay, last edit.

Reset PMU, and while the start up seemed faster (don't know why), the battery issue is still the same.

No word on the freezing/beachballing front.

 

[ingenious]

Okay, today disaster struck.

As had been happening sporadically before, pressing the power button would not turn my PowerBook on unless I tried repeatedly, waiting a small while in between tries.

Today, however, whenever I'd close the screen, something would happen, because when I'd go to open it back up, the computer would be on (one could hear the hard drive spinning), but nothing would show up on the display. After some work to get it turned off and then turned back on, all would be somewhat normal.

Normal, that is, until about 12:05 CDT today. After that point, my computer has refused to turn on. It has the same symptoms as before, but nothing makes it really turn on. About 2:05 the screen actually came on when I tried to start the computer up in Target Disk Mode. The computer went into it, but soon froze.

After that, when it started it would chime and then beep three times and then flash the sleep indicator. It did that for about the next four times I tried to start it and then went back to sometimes spinning up the hard drive and sometimes not.

I tried removing the RAM I added (128 MB is built in) but it wouldn't start up. I tried putting in the original RAM. Nothing happened.

Any ideas?

I think the hard drive's still good, so I'm going to see if someone can pop it out and transfer the files off in the meantime.

Thanks.