Powerbook studders big time-

[jackieonasses]

Okay here goes, I am going to make this long people don't have to ask me all sorts of questions.

My Rev. B powerbook 12" with 768megs of RAM that has been added on AFTER purchase. (the ram has worked for over a year), My computer has been without a kernel panic for as long as i have owned it (5 months) and one day over iChat, my friend sent me a video that she was making, and ever since then it has been hell. It will bog down completely to a stop, and eventually stop responding to ANYTHING i do. only a cold restart will help. It will do it again once i restart, and once i cold shutdown and restart again, it won't even boot up! I tried zapping the PRAM and everything else, but still no go. So i loaded up the install cd, and tried repairing permissons. It worked! but only for a while til' it starts the process over. So i was guessing i need a clean-install. So i Archived & Installed to 10.2.7 (Jaguar) and i thoght i was finished with the problems. Well, i was completely wrong. it did it again, this time it started when i tried playing a Dave Matthews Dvd. I am really lost on what to do.


What i am thinking is wrong is possibly:
Hard-drive failing (doubtful)
Just do a complete reinstall
or something Hardware related (i really hope not)

I dont think it is the RAM, it has been in there to long, so all you uber-mac geeks, help me out.

thanks in advance

kyle

 

[Porshuh944turbo]

Sounds like you have covered all the bases aside from a clean install (not archive) but I hate to do that... I would uninstall the RAM for a week or so and see how it goes, yes it may be much slower but at least you will know. You should be able to do normal tasks even with 256MB. You could also buy some temporary RAM to use for a week (although would be inducing a new variable into the equation) and see if it makes any difference.

Did you try creating a new user and working only with that new user? I've had other problems that only occured with a certain user account before. Might try that.

I don't think harddrive could do what you described, but I've never seen a failed hard drive and its effects in a Mac.

 

[jackieonasses]

Sounds like you have covered all the bases aside from a clean install (not archive) but I hate to do that... I would uninstall the RAM for a week or so and see how it goes, yes it may be much slower but at least you will know. You should be able to do normal tasks even with 256MB. You could also buy some temporary RAM to use for a week (although would be inducing a new variable into the equation) and see if it makes any difference.

Did you try creating a new user and working only with that new user? I've had other problems that only occured with a certain user account before. Might try that.

I don't think harddrive could do what you described, but I've never seen a failed hard drive and its effects in a Mac.

The only reason why i haven't tried the new user thingy (which i have thought of) is it seems to start to studder faster and faster, and i wanted to rule other things out before i tried that. I might just end up copying my hard drive to my Cube, and complete reinstalling.

Any other ideas?

 

[Flowbee]

How much free space do you have on your hard drive? OS X really slows down if you have less than a couple hundred mb free. I only ask because you said it started after your friend sent a video file, which I'm assuming was pretty large.

Just a thought.

 

[jackieonasses]

How much free space do you have on your hard drive? OS X really slows down if you have less than a couple hundred mb free. I only ask because you said it started after your friend sent a video file, which I'm assuming was pretty large.

Just a thought.

I know os X slows down alot, that is why i had 22.45 gb free. It's fine. I will do a fresh install and tell you guys the scoop.


kyle

 

[jackieonasses]

Well that took a long time, I had to wait a week for a cheap 6pin to 6pin firewire cable to get my stuff off. So i Erased and reinstalled Jaguar (that is all i had) and i thought it worked fine. Wrong. Everytime i restart the computer it shows a grey screen - and the hard drive goes do do do do do do (not singing haha) and it sits there so when you repair disk (under the install cd) it finds that block 4 is wrong or something. But it happens everytime. And after using the comp for about an hour it studders and beachballs tremendously. I have Jaguar now so i can not find a program (for free) that will test if my hard drive is burnt out or not. I am willing to get a new one, i just have to make sure that is the problem.

thanks in advance.

kyle

 

[haiggy]

Hey,

same thing just happened recently on my 14" iBook. The hard drive made weird noises and the system would not respond and things would freeze. Then after a minute or sometimes a few seconds everything would be back to normal and it would slow down again. I would restart and it wouldn't boot up I could just hear the drive spin up and down trying to go. I put in the hardware test cd and it said my hard drive was dead. I was freaked out. So, I came back to my computer, tried to turn it on once more time and it worked fine and has been working great for the past week. Obviously I've backed everything up since then. I think you are into more of a serious trouble and I think from what you describe it might be your hard drive.

Edit: If you have access to a firewire hardrive or an iPod, install OS X on your iPod and try to boot from it. If everything works fine you know it is your hard drive.

 

[jackieonasses]

Hey,

same thing just happened recently on my 14" iBook. The hard drive made weird noises and the system would not respond and things would freeze. Then after a minute or sometimes a few seconds everything would be back to normal and it would slow down again. I would restart and it wouldn't boot up I could just hear the drive spin up and down trying to go. I put in the hardware test cd and it said my hard drive was dead. I was freaked out. So, I came back to my computer, tried to turn it on once more time and it worked fine and has been working great for the past week. Obviously I've backed everything up since then. I think you are into more of a serious trouble and I think from what you describe it might be your hard drive.

Edit: If you have access to a firewire hardrive or an iPod, install OS X on your iPod and try to boot from it. If everything works fine you know it is your hard drive.

That is what i thought, I am too lazy to hook it up to my ipod though... hahaha do i have a second opinion on the hard drive thing? The only thing that kinda weirds me out, is after i run disk repair, it works. and goes just as fast as it normally does. I don't want to get jacked with 2 working hard drives.