Sound loss, crashes and other problems

Question

Hello,
I have been having some serious problems over the past several months.
In the past it was fairly manageable, but recently things have been getting worse.
I have a 12-inch PowerBook G4, I bought it at the McGill bookstore in October 2004. The first problem was the apparently random crashes that Mac OS X (v.10.4.8) would experience from time to time. It was fairly infrequent at first so it didn't bother me too much (and I thought it was just some sort of glitch). But it persisted and came to be expected.
What would happen is that my screen would darken and center box would appear telling me, "You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button." (it would display this message in English, French, German, and Japanese for my convenience). After I restart the computer I get the message, "The computer was restarted after Mac OS X quit unexpectedly". At first it seemed to be linked to time; after a while it would just crash, sometimes after an hour or so, sometimes after as little as five minutes. (I fear as I write this that I will have to start over). More recently I've come to associate the crashes with movement of the computer; perhaps the battery (which is pretty much dead after so much use) is affecting the performance, I don't know.
The next problem, which coincided with the crashes, was my clock being reset. I assumed this was directly associated with the spontaneous shutdown of the computer, yet though the crashes continued, the clock was not always reset (just about a third of the time). This was a pretty frustrating inconvenience given the frequency of the crashes at the beginning.
The major problem that prompted me to take action was the lose of sound. One day, about a month ago now, my sound suddenly stopped working. At first I thought it was a hardware problem, but then I noticed the sound was still working with some things and just not others. For example, the sound increase/decrease indicator (the 'pop' sound when turning up or down the sound) stopped working, yet the startup sound still worked. I've found that Realplayer, MPlayer X 2, and Windows Media Player work fine but iTunes, VLC, and Quicktime don't. Most of the applications simply don't make sound but when I try to video in VLC I get the following error: "auhal: we cannot find our HAL component" or "auhal: audio-device var does not exist. device probe failed."
Other minor errors I have come across include inability to detect the Airport card (remedied upon restarting the computer) and occasional seizing up of the keyboard (the letter keys, exclusively, were unresponsive for sometime before working again suddenly without need of restart).
I've run diagnostic tools such as Disk Utility and the 'fsck' command in single-user mode, but nothing has been detected. It consistently comes up saying that everything is alright.
I have backed-up all important files and programs (with the exception of my Firefox bookmarks, do you know how I can save those?) and am prepared to do whatever it takes to bring my computer back to working order. I need my computer for schoolwork and assignments so if I can fix it myself in anyway... I would prefer to avoid lengthly repairs if possible.
Please let me know what my options are, and/or possible things I can do to repair these problems. This whole affair is, unsurprisingly, driving me crazy.
One last thing, upon launching Microsoft Word, I get the following pop-up:
Application Launch Failure
The application "Word" could not be launched because of a shared library error: "3<Microsoft Word><Microsoft Word><MicrosoftLSLibZ>"
I do not know whether this is linked to my other problems or not. This too, is something that has recently come up and is significantly affecting my work (I have had to switch to writing my essays on TextEdit).
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Eric Oosenbrug

Answer 1

Hi, Eric.
1. You wrote: "...my screen would darken and center box would appear telling me, "You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.""You are describing the following message:
That indicates a kernel panic. Failure to address these when they first arise can result in bad problems becoming worse.
See my "Resolving Kernel Panics" FAQ. This FAQ includes step-by-step instructions for identifying and resolving some of the most common causes of kernel panics. The FAQ is a roadmap: start at the beginning and work systematically through the end, i.e. the "If all else fails..." section.
2. You wrote: "…upon launching Microsoft Word, I get the following pop-up:
Application Launch Failure
The application "Word" could not be launched because of a shared library error: "3<Microsoft Word><Microsoft Word><MicrosoftLSLibZ>"
I do not know whether this is linked to my other problems or not."It's probably related. Failure to address the kernel panics when they first arose may have resulted in a corrupted OS. I discuss shared library errors in my "Troubleshooting shared library errors" FAQ.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.