Shutting Down Too Hot?

Heyello everyone.

First off, tech details.

Apple iMac 24-inch
2.8 GHz
2 GB RAM
320 GB Hard Drive (about 100gb free)
Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO video card

I'm experiencing a pretty odd problem with my Mac. It started running pretty slow, and eventually pretty slow turned to insanely slow. Like, it took me twenty minutes to open my Apps folder slow.

The first step in my troubleshooting was just to restart. When I was booting up again, I saw the dreaded "Folder with a question mark", and screamed profanities because I had no idea why my hard drive had disappeared. Now, funny thing is that I gave up for a while, left the house and came back after a few hours, and she booted up fine. Still slow, but the boot was okay.

The problem has been consistent every time I've had to shut down my computer, which I have had to do to try and solve the speed issues - I tried an Archive and Install, but I got a fail message midway through. I've also Repaired Disk Permissions, Repaired my Boot Disk, reset my PRAM, emptied my cache folders... Anything I could think of. I'm starting to just think that my computer is inadequately ventilated.

Any other thoughts? The slowness is intolerable, especially now that I'm starting up my classes again for the Spring term...

sounds like a dying hard drive

G'day and welcome to the forums.

First up glo to Disk Utility and run Repair Permissions two or three times. If no improvement boot from the system disk, go into Utilities and run Repair Disk from there as you cannot repair a disk you are booted from and see what is reported.

Next step is to download a utility called Applejack. Install and print the instructions. Boot in Target Disk mode and run Applejack as set out in the instructions. Personally like the option where it auto-reboots when finished. In single user mode the fan will take off but do not worry about that. Here is the link to download Applejack:-

http://applejack.sourceforge.net/

Final step if no improvement run Apple Hardware Test from disc one of the original install discs, running the extended tesat which checks out the logic board, memory, graphics etc etc.

Keep us posted?

For sure guys, thanks for all the help. I'll try those steps right away and keep you posted over the evening!

What's with the "hot" part of your title? The word appears only there, not in your post.

toMACsh said:

What's with the "hot" part of your title? The word appears only there, not in your post.

Click to expand...

Sorry if I wasn't specific enough. The heat was implied in my first deduction that the problem may be inadequate ventilation.
As for an update on my status, still no such luck. I tried repairing my permissions/disk again from my OS X installation disc, and after much drudgery (I had to reboot three times before I could successfully start Firefox) I downloaded Applejack and ran it at my next boot, to no avail. I'm thinking it may be my power supply cooking things...
Only thing left is the Apple diagnostic though. I'll post the results hopefully this evening.

If I was you I'd take this time to backup everything (if you haven't already), as it does sound like a HDD on its way out, then run the Apple extended diagnostics.