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Powerbook G4 550mhz, random freezes

P

popsandfriends

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 5, 2005
36
0
Hello,
The title pretty much sums it up. My powerbook which i just got off of eBay has been acting up. After a short amount of time, it will just lockup/ The cursor freezes, the screen freezes in place, and it wont sleep. It just has to be restarted. This usually happens when I press the command or space key, or when I am typing something into safari's text area, but it also happens randomly. Is there a software fix for this?

PS -I have the newest 10.4.5 installed


Hunter
 
popsandfriends said:
Hello,
The title pretty much sums it up. My powerbook which i just got off of eBay has been acting up. After a short amount of time, it will just lockup/ The cursor freezes, the screen freezes in place, and it wont sleep. It just has to be restarted. This usually happens when I press the command or space key, or when I am typing something into safari's text area, but it also happens randomly. Is there a software fix for this?

PS -I have the newest 10.4.5 installed


Hunter
Click to expand...


Have you run Disk Utility and repaired permissions?
 
Well, i fixed the complete lockup problem, it wa actually a hardware issue. But now, everything I try and do, like open safari, browse a folder, even in the middle of repairing permissions in disk utility, brings up the spinning beach ball!!! its driving me nuts, it never goes away either, always needs to restart!
 
Did the seller promise you fully functional operation? Sounds like that dude wasn't entirely honest.
 
he did, but i dont think it was his fault. My best guess is that its some sort of Tiger Operating system bug, maybe you know of a fix for something like this?
 
Whenever I have had the spinning beach ball over and over, only one thing ever fixed it: A complete backup of my files, a reformat of the hard drive, a test of the hard drive condition with Disk Utility or something better, then a fresh install of OS X, then a manual reinstall of all programs that are not part of the OS, then a manual put back of the files. It has happened twice where something got corrupted and it would not be fixed, no matter how many caches or preferences I threw away or cleaned, or how many times I reset open firmware, reset the apps, repaired permissions, or ran all the maintenance tasks that the various utilities I have will run.
 
yeah, i hate to say it, but maybe an erase and install is the best option. use the CD you got with the computer and select the erase and install option (after backing up files)
 
never got the CD's with it :eek:

It's got 512mb ram which is pretty good, I'm thinkin about selling the unit, its in GREAT shape just on the software end needs some tweaking. You're right tho, its probably necessary to do a full reformat
 
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