12-29-2005, 07:04 PM

I'm on a Powerbook G4, running Tiger.

For the last few weeks I had been experiencing some sluggishness. Namely, I would get the pinwheel at completely random times. It would spin for 5, 10, 30 seconds at a time sometimes. Even when there were no programs open and I simply clicked on a window, or tried to drag a file.

I regularly verify & repair permissions with Disc Utility. But, when trying to veryify and repair my Harddrive, it would stall out and "unexpectedly quit" or leave me with a message saying it couldn't verify the disc for some reason.

Calling support via my Apple Protection Plan, I was told to back up everything up and do a complete erasure and re-install of my Operating System, Data, and Applications. The thought of having to reinstall all my applications was cause enough for me to take it in for diagnostics.

So, After dropping 2-hondy on having my Directory Repaired (which as far as I know is how my computer recognizes locations of files and such?) and my Drive Optimized.

Is there a way I could have done this myself? Is there software out there that will assist me or help me regularly repair my directory and optimize my drive?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, by me and anyone else about to drop big monies on getting something so simple done to improve performance.

THANKS!

(oh yeah - 1st post! )

12-30-2005, 06:49 AM

Alsoft DiskWarrior v3.0.3 $79.95 It does those two things very well. Most likely what your tech folks did.

12-30-2005, 07:44 AM

Originally Posted by QuinnEskimo

I'm on a Powerbook G4, running Tiger.

For the last few weeks I had been experiencing some sluggishness. Namely, I would get the pinwheel at completely random times. It would spin for 5, 10, 30 seconds at a time sometimes. Even when there were no programs open and I simply clicked on a window, or tried to drag a file.

That sounds more like a RAM issue and perhaps a caching issue...not anything wrong with a directory. You would want to be running with at least 512 MB of RAM for Tiger, and even then that can seem sluggish for some things. Slimming down startup items, clearing caches, trashing prefs and then running a permissions repair would have likely improved your perfomance...without dropping any money.
You could also run a utility like Cocktail or Onyx to get pretty much the same thing. And Disk Warrior is a good option as well, and just like MacsWork said, that is probably all that was done to your system.
That or they did an archive and install of the OS.
And if that is all they ended up doing, then you really did get hosed for a couple hundred bucks.

12-30-2005, 02:00 PM

Well, it's most definately working much, much better. No more random spinny wheels!

I do have 512mb of RAM. One of my widgets monitors how much free RAM I have at any time. Right now, with only Safari open I'm at 25-30. I have no idea if this is normal or low or what. Nor do I know how the cpu doles out RAM as new programs are opened.

It really seems to be working great now. It really sucks that I panicked and spent all that dough. I'm a freelance designer so... it was pretty much an emergency. (75 of the 200 was spent expediting the order).

I think we all know that I got totally hosed...

12-30-2005, 02:35 PM

Uh, you could have simply done an Archive and Instal and put a clean copy of OSX on the machine while saving your profile. At worst you would have had to backed up your personal info and simply done a clean instal of OSX. None of this would have taken more than about 2 hours of your time or so.

You got boned and just wasted $200 IMO....

12-30-2005, 03:18 PM

So remember kids: Always ask us first before you get ripped off elsewhere...

12-30-2005, 03:53 PM

Originally Posted by D3v1L80Y

And if that is all they ended up doing, then you really did get hosed for a couple hundred bucks.

Not necessarily. It's like the old joke, where the ex-wiz was brought in to consult on a problem the staff could not fix. He fixes the problem in 20 minutes and charged $100,000. Insensed, mgt wants an itemized bill. He sent this:

Installing the fix: $10
Knowing where to put it: $99,990