Beyond the flashing Finder/Folder at startup help, please
I have a G4-867 updated with a Giga Dual 1.33 processor + 1.5G RAM, a SATA PCI expansion card with 2 internal HD's (250G & 750G), one with 10.4.9, the larger with 10.4.10. Also, a firewire/USB expansion card. Software UTD, permissions repaired, PRAM reset. Tech Tool Pro finds no problems. No problems with this set up for >2 years.
Recently, system seems to be sluggish & I'm having to force quit applications with some increasing frequency. The "You need to restart your mac" grey box came up once ~1 week ago.
Today after a force quit & several reboots (including PRAM reset), the flashing folder/finder continually re-appeared at start-up. When rebooting with "option" depressed, the 2 HD's with OS 10 are recognized, can be selected & start-up occurs.
Is this a sign of the SATA PCI card starting to fail, is a RAM chip potentially a culprit, the USB/firewire PCI card or is one of the HD's starting to fail. Or something else?
Comments/suggestions appreciated!
Hi
The flashing folder at startup may be normal after a PRAM reset. I'd imagine the OS X startup disk choice must be held in the PRAM, it can't be held on the disk otherwise it would be a catch-22. If you'd left it for a while it may have eventually found a bootable volume and started up okay. You'd then have to reselect the startup disk in the relevant OS X system preference.
In terms of freezing applications and kernel panics, I'd start by checking the basics. To ensure it's not heat related I'd check all the ventilation holes are free from dust etc and all the fans (case, power supply and processor) are still spinning. You could try using the computer with the case open temporarily to check this, which may also result in it running cooler anyway. To ensure it's not memory related I'd remove any third party DIMMs, and then finally the factory installed DIMM by swapping it out for one of the others. I assume you still have plenty of free space on the hard drives, especially the one containing OS X? Ideally I'd always try and keep at least 5GB free on the boot volume for the virtual memory and temporary files etc.
I hope this gives you a few starting points.
Message was edited by: Rodney Culling
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