Address Book Locks up on BACKUP

Question

I posted earlier, and tried a number of remedies, but still have this problem:
When I try to Backup my Address Book (about 900 entries), Address Book locks up (Spinning Beach ball of Death). The SBBoD starts about 10 seconds after I click Save for the BU. So, I do a force quit. Strangely, however, I am still able to save that particular BU. So, it is locking after the BU is saved (this is fortunate, because 2X in last month my Address Book has locked up while using, and I've lost all entries, and end up with a new, fresh, but EMPTY address book).
I Have tried the following:
** Deleted the Address Book preferences from User Library
** Have run , successfully, these 3: Repair Permissions, and Check HD, and Repair disk from the original 10.4 disks. No problems
** Did a complete archive and reinstall 10.4
Also, I created TEST user, and was able to BU that address book. However, it only had 4 entries in it.
Ideas?
JON

Answer 1

I had to do forced powerdown. That tell us anything?
Yes, your Disk is corrupted... the first thing Safe Boot does is try to fix the Disk.
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
Unfortunately, Disk Utility can't fix all that much, and the only other Apple Options are erasing the HD, or installing OSX to a second drive, then using Migration Assistant to move stuff over to the new HD.
You must repair the HD, if Disk Utility or fsck should fail to repair it, your best bet is DiskWarrior from Alsoft, you'll need the CD to boot from if you don't have another boot drive...
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/