Strange behavior from a PB G4

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Level 2

323 points

Strange behavior from a PB G4

I have a PB G4 that has been exhibiting some really strange behavior. Quite often while in Safari it just stops responding sometimes with the beachball and sometimes not. Force quit doesn't work with the keyboard or the menu. Quite often when this happens it will not shut down and I have to force it by holding the power button. I then always have to restart in single user and run fsck which always makes repairs. I've tried resetting Safari and emptying the cache but no help. Anybody have any ideas? Thanks. I have a couple other issues but I'll put them in separate posts so people can reply separately.

Posted on Nov 16, 2012 9:47 PM

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Answer 1

John Galt

Level 10

140,954 points

Nov 16, 2012 10:18 PM in response to Igor_G5

Igor_G5 wrote:

... I then always have to restart in single user and run fsck which always makes repairs.

A hard disk in need of repeated fsck repair is either failing or filled to capacity. They are not terribly expensive or difficult to replace. You should consider backing up whatever data you want to preserve immediately.

Make sure you have sufficient free space on the disk. A few gigabytes, minimum.

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Answer 2

Igor_G5 Author

Level 2

323 points

Nov 16, 2012 11:28 PM in response to John Galt

Actually, in this model it's really difficult. I thought about putting in a larger drive but when I looked up instructions for it i was surprized at how difficult it was. Besides, I don't want to put a lot into this book. It's really old and slow. I'm stuck using it because I'm a paraplegic living in a nursing home. They take all my disability. I'm hoping to get out of here some day and I'll be able to get a better one. Happy to have this for now tho.

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Answer 3

Igor_G5 Author

Level 2

323 points

Nov 17, 2012 7:54 AM in response to John Galt

Disc utility says the SMART status is ok and TT Pro givss it a clean bill of health. I was a bit low on free space. I cleaned some out and lets see what happens.

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Answer 4

John Galt

Level 10

140,954 points

Nov 17, 2012 10:31 AM in response to Igor_G5

Igor_G5 wrote:

... I thought about putting in a larger drive but when I looked up instructions for it i was surprized at how difficult it was.

Did you use the iFixit website? It has excellent pictures and instructions that are easy to follow.

Replacing any hard disk drive will be challenging for a paraplegic, but with someone's help it can be done fairly inexpensively. There are many tiny fasteners that require tiny tools. Use an egg carton to store them, separated by their location in the PowerBook.

Earlier PowerBooks are easier to work on than later ones.

I still use a PowerBook G4 on occasion, mostly for importing video for editing in iMovie. I upgraded its original 60 GB HD to a much larger one. If you were to do this you would need to locate the PowerBook's original System Install DVD to install and subsequently update OS X and all its original programs.

If you ensure at least a few gigabytes free space, I think most of your problems will be fixed. When free disk space gets down to a few hundred megabytes or less, performance will suffer dramatically. You don't want it to ever get anywhere near that low. Strange things start to happen.

Keep the number of icons on the Desktop to a minimum also. That makes a difference, for reasons that I do not fully understand.

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