Maybe someone can please clue me in on what happened to my iBook G3?

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

A few days ago I was watching a DVD when my Mac came to a grinding halt, with the pinwheel spinning with no end in sight. I hard stopped my Mac and restarted it again. I got the apple gray screen then the blue
and after a half hour with no loading of OSX, I hard stopped again.
I tried several times to reboot and all I managed to get to was the blue screen. I even put in the system disk to try to reboot using it, and my Mac didn't recognize it. So I turned it back on, left it alone and low and behold after an hour the system loaded and the desktop appeared. Once the desktop was finally up, every movement took forever to take, including using the Internet. I then went to a Mac help site (using my office PC) and they recommended checking the hard drive with certain key commands. This meant shutting down and restarting. That worked and the hard drive tested fine. I rebooted and once again, it all took what felt like forever. Going on the Internet took about a half hour, etc, etc, etc. I found my local pennysaver and found a mac repair person, wondering if I would have to send this old friend to the computer graveyard if the repair would be too pricey. I decided to call him/her in the AM.

I fell asleep leaving my Mac running.

When I woke up, everything was back to normal, or even better than normal. My Mac has zipped up!

Does anyone have any idea what just went on, so if it happens again, I'll know why???

Thank you in advance!
Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[alfredo]

1. Macs run self diagnostics/cleanups in the middle of the night. Laptops are

usually off that late, so owners have to run things like MacJanitor or OnyX to keep the machine happy.


Until then, open a terminal and at the prompt type

periodic -daily

*Hit return

every week type

periodic -weekly

*Hit return

Every month type

periodic -monthly

*Hit return

Better yet, get OnyX or MacJanitor

Be sure to go to disc utilities and run Repair Permissions.

Verify your disc too.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

2. Thanks for your response! I think I have a problem. When I went to run disk utilities

it said that my hard drive is failing. I have nothing important to back-up on this computer but I'm really upset. I contacted a MAC repair person who said it didn't pay to have him install a new hard drive in it. I went online to see what it would entail for me to replace it and I don't think I can. It's very intricate. Not a happy puppy here.

[alfredo]

3. A spudger? That sounds like an insult kids hurl at each other. I found

the guide, that looks like a lot of work. Maybe you can work out a deal with a local geek to take the computer off your hands for something you may need or want.

[Pierre.Suave]

4. Are you by any chance

in the Minnesota/Twin Cities Area?

if you are, and I know that is a longshot, I can do it for you. I have done many of them.

Let me know.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

5. Thanks for the offer but I live in a suburb of NYC.

:hi:

[Pierre.Suave]

6. well, that is a bit far away

but dont despair. I have replaced Hard drives of many G3 iBooks, and they are all going strong still.

it is not a lost cause.