Q: Pismo freezing

Hoping someone can help to narrow down where to look to solve this problem.

About a week ago, my Pismo (500mhz. 1gb ram, osx 10.4.8) began to freeze after waking from sleep. Sometimes directly after waking, sometimes just after launching the first program (usually Mail but also Word or whatever) everything would freeze except the cursor. After a short while the cursor would disappear or freeze also. A reboot would fix this.

A few days ago more than one reboot was needed to get things right. The first 1 or 2 reboots would show the apple, the spinning clock, but then stop at a grey screen. Sometimes it would go briefly to grey, then to blue, then back to grey and hang like that.

After one or two of these it would boot fully, but then freeze again after a short while. After a few restarts and subsequent freezes it would keep going and be fine all day.

Earlier today however things got more serious. After it being asleep for about 3 hours I woke the laptop and it froze almost as soon as Mail launched. On reboot the apple screen and spinning clock came up and then it went to the grey, blue and then back to grey screen and stayed there. This then happened for at least a dozen reboots.

I tried booting to OS 9.2 and it booted up to the third extension icon loading on screen (in order - PC exchange, Machelp, speaker) and then stalled. I had tried booting to 9.2 once before when I was getting only to the grey screen in OSX and got to the same point.

I booted into target disk mode and that seemed fine. Back to OSX and still the apple, clock, grey, blue, grey and then stall.

Eventually it booted all the way (although the progress bar on the boot screen only moved a few mm before the screen shifted on to the desktop loading). Things froze nealry straight away. Then proceeded with another 6 or so complete reboots with the freezing occuring soon after beginning work in an application.

Then after the last reboot it kept working and has been fine since. No doubt when I shut down or sleep it and boot up again later this will all happen again but even worse.

I have reset the power manager, cleared all the caches, repaired permissions, etc. However it would seem to be hardware as bootup is stalling in both OS 9 and OSX which are installed in different partitions. All I/O ports are unplugged except Ethernet.

Also, for a long time now, cold boot brings up the question-mark folder and happy mac face for one flash before going to the apple in OSX. Why does this happen? How can it be stopped?



Pismo G3 500   Mac OS X (10.3)  

Pismo G3 500   Mac OS X (10.3)