Random Crashing after PMU resets

Question

Background Info:
Yesterday my Powerbook crashed. The mouse went out first, and then it froze and the monitor wouldn't show up. [That same day, my brother tried downloading files on his corrupted Nano and I'm suspicious that the courrupted nano - which has crashed twice already - did something to my computer]. So I tried a PMU reset and it worked for a little bit, then it said I needed to restart my computer about an hour later. I wasn't doing anything except resizing a finder window. Then I reset it again and it said I had to reset a few seconds after the computer booted up. I did another PMU reset and the same thing happened.
I'm guessing that I need to repair disk permissions by reading other threads on this forum. If so, how do you do that? (can't seem to find any specific instructions) and is there anything else I should do after I do that?
Thanks,
Stacy
Powerbook G4 15"   Mac OS X (10.0.x)   can't tell exact OS X number

Answer 1

Tests such as those are inconclusive unless they say there is a problem.
Mac OS X usually does not have fragmentation problems as it does a lot of its own small file defragmentation. If your hard disk is very full, or you are running a lot of files in swap space, then naturally things will slow down because it it will be harder to access files on the machine.
I think what happened is that your recovery might have attempted to restore cache files for specific applications which are now quitting and bad preferences and that the backup prior to the erase copied over corrupted files as well. If your backup prior to the erase was a full fledged clone, you can sometimes use the Migration Assistant to import the clone if it was on a Firewire hard drive:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25773
That can often get rid of a lot of the corruption.
Disk Warrior 3.0.3 will also repair the directory much better than Norton will. But I would only run it on a system that is backed up.
Just how full is your hard disk?