OS X Tiger on eMac repeatedly freezing

[anitfreeze]

Hi,

I'm running Tiger on a 1.25ghz eMac with 512mg of RAM. For the past month or so my mac has been randomly freezing for no evident reason. I realised that it started happening after getting a new printer and installing the software, so I dumped that and reinstalled it hoping that would work. It didn't. It would also frequently happen why hiding/unhiding the dock, or when the dock would maximise the icons, so I turned off both these functions, and that seemed to reduce the rate of freeezing, but not by much. I then tried the disc repair and repair permissions options, but once again it is still happening. I am wary of archiving and reisntalling OSX as I've never done this before and am worried about losing all my pictures, music etc.

So I thought I'd ask you guys if you had any suggestions as to why this might be happening and what I could do to fix it, and if your suggestion is to archive and reinstall Tiger then I wanted some reassurance and advice about the whole archiving procedure.

I'm quite proficient at using my mac and navigating my way around, but when it comes to tech issues such as disc permission repairs etc I must admit to finding myself pretty lost.

Thanks in advance for any help/advice you can give me, I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Cheers

Tom

[bunga]

First of all I'd probably check your Harddrive

This can be done by starting from your install cd/DVD

Have the install disk in your computer and restart and hold down the 'C' key. You will be prompted for language select and continue. Once you get to the next Window under (I think off hand it's the Window) Menu and open Disk Utility.

You will see your harddrive in Disk Utility, click once and select Repair Disk

OSX will fix basic problems and will inform you of anything it can't repair. If it comes to that you may need to consider either purchasing DiskWarrior or the worse option of another Harddrive

If OSX repair comes out ok the other option is open a new user account and log into there and see how things are with that. If it's ok then there must be some conflict in your original account.

Then you may like to report back here and ask about how to transfer everything from your old user account to the new. I hope the better options work out for you, good luck