Sudden login/slowdown issues

[enathan1085]

So I have a 3-4 year old 15" Titanium Powerbook G4 1GHZ, 1GB, 60GB, 10.3.9 with all the latest updates etc. Today I noticed extreme slowdowns and spinning beach balls when doing such mundane tasks as opening up safari pages, opening up mail, and the like. I checked to see that I had adequate free hard drive space and I do (around 13GB). I rebooted the computer but to no avail, I then tried to run cocktail and repair permissions but the computer froze up mid-cocktail session. No spinning beach ball, the ball was frozen.

I then attempted to restart the computer, but it wouldn't boot past the grey apple screen with the clock-wise rotating thingy. Rebooting into safe mode didn't work (I held down shift immediately after the chime, and nothing, grey apple screen but no clockwise spinning thing), eventually I rebooted it and it made its way to the login screen. When I clicked on my name the spinning beach ball popped up again for 5-10 seconds, and the computer always freezes before the finder/desktop fully loads. I've tried holding down cmd-option-p-r while rebooting, and while the second chime sounded it never made itsway past the grey-apple-clockwise-spinning thing screen.

At this point I really have no idea what's making my powerbook sick. These problems just appeared out of the blue and I can make neither heads nor tails of them. Any help would be muchly appreciated. Thanks!

[enathan1085]

Update: I ran the extended Apple Hardware Test off of the included CD and it came up completely clean... I'm now in the process of repairing the disk permissions using Disk Utility.

[enathan1085]

Update: I tried repairing permissions twice last night. The first time froze right at the end of repairing permissions, the second time it appeared to go all the way through, but when I tried to click on anything I got the spinning beach ball. Subsequent reboots reveal the problem is unchanged, although now it sometimes boots all the way to the desktop, then one of the auto-launch programs starts bouncing, bounces a few times then the computer freezes up again. Bah.

I tried booting into single user mode and running "fsck -fy" which displays this after only a few seconds:

** /dev/rdisk0x5
** Root file system
** Checking HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
Invalid node structure
(3,297)
** Repairing volume.
** Rechecking volume.
** Checking HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
Invalid node structure
(3,297)
** Repairing volume.
** The volume Macintosh HD was repaired successfully

***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****


.... the problem is, no matter how many times I run "fsck -fy" the same message keeps coming up...

[Mobius Rex]

Well, as many have said, Diskwarrior: http://alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html and
Techtool Pro:http://www.micromat.com/index.php?op...ask=view&id=31
are diagnostic utilities that are well worth owning/using.
Do you do regular maintenance with utilities such as Macaroni:http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/9633 or
Onyx:http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582.
You can test your Powerbook's memory with Memtest:http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14004
and Rember:http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15837.
These are utilties that can be of great help when experiencing problems such as you've described.
The hardware test that's included with one's installation disks often won't be of much help, in my experience.

[enathan1085]

Unfortunately the computer doesn't actually load to the point where you can use/run any of those programs. The farthest it gets is the finder screen, where it freezes after a couple of dock application bounces.

I do regular maintenance with Cocktail but I can't get to the point where I can access cocktail.

Currently the problems have progressed to the point where any attempt to reboot the computer (single-user mode, safe mode, etc.) leads to the grey screen with the flashing finder icon / ? mark. I put in the software restore/install cd to see if I could try repairing permissions from there again. However, when I open disk utility, the 55.89 GB disk shows up but the volume underneath that has no name. Whereas before it was named "Macintosh Hard Drive" or something like that.... this is getting quite tedious....

[Satcomer]

Danger will Robinson, Danger. You are in the mist of LOSING your data because you have experiencing a hard drive dying a slow death and you don't have a backup. Take this as a lesson learned and let it burn into your brain. Replace the hard drive because soon will come to screeching halt and you are really going to be screwed.

[enathan1085]

Hard drive failure eh? Now that sucks. I've reached the end of all my knowledge of self-troubleshooting so I'm taking it into the neighborhood Apple Specialist tomorrow to see what they tell me.

[irreg]

Its happening to a couple of computers at work for me as well. It takes at least 5min from the login screen to load the desktop. Our Macs are running on 10.3.9 as well.

I have run disk utility and there were some permission errors which have all been repaired but it still takes a long time to login.

Any help would be appreciated.