"New" iBook keeps beach balling!

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Hello everyone! I just bought a 1.2 GHz iBook G4 ... first Mac ever, trying to get used to how it works >.>

It keeps beach balling, though! Just clicking on "Applications" in the Finder causes it to become unresponsive for several minutes. So did trying to download and install Adium. I repaired disk permissions, and that didn't help. I even had the Activity Monitor open at one point and tried to Force Quit and everything, and that still didn't do anything. I've been restarting this thing a lot!

What could cause this? Does anyone know? Is the hard drive bad or something? Any help would be appreciated ...
 
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Oh ...

And a bunch of the icons in Applications are messed up, too, when it finally decides to load. I'm not sure what's up ... and I thought at least some of them were working when I saw them earlier.
 

dtravis7


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Your Mac's Specs
MacMini M-1 MacOS Monterey, iMac 2010 27"Quad I7 , MBPLate2011, iPad Pro10.5", iPhoneSE
What are the basic specs and especially which version of OSX and how much RAM?

Click the Apple in the top Left corner of the screen and about this Mac.
 
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"About This Mac" will not load. >.<

It supposedly has 512 MB RAM and is running OS X 10.4. I'm wondering if the install wasn't corrupted somehow.
 
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The Activity Monitor confirms 512 MB RAM. About This Mac isn't the only thing that won't load, however ... iWeb won't, either, and I suspect there are other OS components missing. It may be that they used a corrupted install disc ... or perhaps the hard drive itself is messed up?

How can I tell, what can I do about this, and should this be moved to the laptops forum? >.> Any help would be appreciated.
 
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Er, sorry ...

iWeb actually will load. It just takes half of forever. The beach ball is there for awhile, just like trying to access the Applications folder, and the hard drive makes this clunk, clunk, clunk sound.
 

chscag

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Your Mac's Specs
2017 27" iMac, 10.5" iPad Pro, iPhone 8, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 Mini, Numerous iPods, Monterey
The "clunking" sound coming from your hard drive is a good indication that it's failing. Probably need to swap it out. Make sure you have the original install media so you can reinstall OS X once you change out the hard drive. While you're at it, it might be a good idea to max out the memory.

To learn how to add memory and to change the hard drive, go to:

iFixit: Apple Mac, MacBook, iPod, and iPhone Repair Parts and look up your year model iBook and then find the step by step instructions. If I remember correctly, memory modules are located below the keyboard on the iBook. Not too sure about the hard drive though.

Regards.
 

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